The Hurt Locker

The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug...

The Hurt Locker opens with this framing quote by Chris Hedges (you can find it in an interesting article he wrote here). Framing indeed, because if it was omitted you would have seen this movie in a different light. You would have seen it as just another above average war movie- decent, well-acted but alas forgettable. Such is the power of the opening quote.

What is interesting is what the full paragraph has to say:

"I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by myth makers -historians, war correspondents, filmmakers novelists and the state - all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death. Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths. War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks just below the surface within all of us." (Emphasis Added)

Fortunately I have never shared Mr. Hedges experiences, so I cannot comment on this movie's accuracy in approximating actual combat. A few seem to say it does.

As for me, I am impressed by the filmmakers' great pains in depicting simulating Iraq (and I must say, I had to wonder how they were able to film in so gritty and honest locations and conjure up such spine tingling suspense). Of course, the old adage that TV is life without the boring bits stills holds true here.

So does war possess all the attributes Hedges lists above? Excitement, exoticism, a bizarre and fantastic universe? The Hurt Locker says yes. So what can we say about war? War is unreal, war is hell and now, war is a drug. War is many things then, and eventually as the "myth makers" begin to run out of ideas, war becomes anything. That's a scary thought.