Brawny and Bold: Kathryn Bigelow and Peter Berg

With Detroit having been released in U.S. cinemas, Kathryn Bigelow's gritty and pseudo-documentary style 'trilogy' of sorts comes to a suitably controversial conclusion. Some critics have opined that it's yet another example of Bigelow twisting the truth for thriller and exploitative means, some that it misappropriates the 'black perspective' of the 1967 Detroit riots and the Algiers motel incident; on the other side, some considering it to not only be the finest work Bigelow has ever done, but a rousing powerhouse that deserves to be in Oscar contention in multiple categories, come awards season.

Having not seen it yet, I'll await judgement of it, but needless to say I'm excited. Bigelow's one of the most talented directors in Hollywood, distinguished not just by being a female director dabbling in what some might deem atypical genres, but by just being a downright fantastic visceral talent at capturing such an in-your-face immersive quality of her films. Her earlier work like the iconic cheesiness of Point Break was already notable in this regard, but with her last two films - the terrific The Hurt Locker and the effective, if slightly wavering in focus, Zero Dark Thirty - she's established herself as the go-to person for adrenaline-drenched filmmaking with quality; a Bay with a brain, so to speak.

As we've watched Bigelow's gradual transformation into this talent, we've also seen the emergence of Peter Berg. An actor-turned director who helmed a decent adaptation of a great sports novella (Friday Night Lights, highly recommend the source material), a few flops (Battlefield) and problematic hits (Hancock's great first half and awful third act, anyone?), took awhile to get into stride in this 'grit and grind' brand of filmmaking, but with 2013's Lone Survivor he finally seemed to hit the mark.

It's a very solid war thriller, tautly directed and with excellent sound editing, and its third act switch to the Pashtun villagers isn't nearly as tonally deaf as some make it out to be. It tells the story of the failed Operation Red Wings in the War of Afghanistan, and how four soldiers assigned to track down and kill Taliban leader Ahmad Shah are forced to fight for their lives against the Taliban. It is in many ways, a traditional 'Team America' story of fighting against the odds, subverted in style by Berg's blunt and incisive direction, but not in spirit. It's an interesting counterpoint to Bigelow's The Hurt Locker in that regard, which told the fictional narrative of a bomb disposal expert (Jeremy Renner in his breakthrough role) going on tour in Iraq. Where the heroism in Lone Survivor is violently and bleakly depicted, it is also honoured with the due respect to the brave men fighting; in The Hurt Locker, Renner's William James is a maverick and daredevil who's technically being very 'brave', but in a way which creates great unease among his squadron (Anthony Mackie and Brian Gergharty). 

Bigelow and Berg are not overly similar in style; Berg, as aforementioned, is a bit more stylized, a bit more 'gung-ho' and All-American in his approach, while Bigelow prefers to eschew heroism for more brutal interrogation of the human nature. Her protagonists, like Jeremy Renner's William James in The Hurt Locker and Jessica Chastain's enigmatic and feisty CIA operative Maya tracking down Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty, tend to be more morally murky protagonists than Berg's Mark Whalberg avatars in his 'real-life trilogy' of Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. In each of these films Marky Mark plays the hero our focus is primarily directed towards: real-life Navy SEAL survivor Marcus Luttrell, real-life electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig Mike Williams, and a very fictional composite cop character investigating the Boston Marathon bombings.

The perspectives of these protagonists create a vast range of possibilities for both directors. The Hurt Locker achieves its claustraphobic, often quite troubling atmosphere of constant unease through us sticking with a 'decoy protagonist' in Guy Pearce's swiftly deceased bomb disposal expert, and switching to the unpredictable William: all bets are off, and Renner's terrific, rightfully Oscar-nominated performance only serves to enhance this destabilizing effect on the narrative.

Zero Dark Thirty is a bit less assured in this regard. Chastain is a very strong lead, and her co-star Jason Clarke is equally good as a fellow CIA operative who resorts to less than savoury means to track down Bin Laden, including extreme torture. But there comes an influx of subplots surrounding different members of the CIA, which is effective in showing the interesting behind-the-scenes drama and decision-making. I do prefer The Hurt Locker's more focused narrative, but then again these are very different sorts of stories Bigelow is telling. We're kept somewhat at a distance from all characters involved, and with Detroit I'm hoping there's a bit more proximity to our characters than this film.

Which isn't to say I dislike Zero Dark Thirty; while I may not love certain elements of the storytelling structure, and the facts themselves that are used for the narrative may be dubious at best, Bigelow's direction throughout Zero Dark Thirty is consistently strong, and when it ups the ante in the third act with the Navy SEALs carrying out the mission it's a very terrific procedural thriller. It sets up a rather intense third act with good build-up in the first two, similar to what Berg does with his disaster thriller Deepwater Horizon. Deepwater Horizon's effectiveness hinges upon how it shows the before as well as the during and after of the disaster. By introducing the various characters working at the oil rig and allowing us to embrace them, it adds to the effect of seeing them struggle out of their predicament.

It never feels exploitative of the real-life tragedy; one of Berg's strengths as a director is not letting the horrors of the situation being the all-encompassing attribute of his films, but rather the strength and heroism used to confront it. Similarly, in Patriots Day, while he does show the terrible events of the Boston bombers' actions, and decry the callousness of the terrorists, he also ensures we focus on the bravery of the cops and authorities who tracked down the two killers, as well as the many ordinary citizens who bravely stepped up to help their beloved city. Sentimental? Perhaps, but with just the right amount of it coupled with realism. Berg's pseudo-documentary approach is a fascinating contrast to Bigelow's; whereas she uses it to capture the ugliness of human actions, Berg often uses it to capture the bravery of them. What is similar is their shared interest of what drives humanity in the most extreme of circumstances: the thrills in their stories never seem like mere cogs in a machine, but rather truly vivid circumstances which their characters struggle through. The Hurt Locker puts us in a position to witness tropes we've seen again and again - the rescue of an innocent citizen, a shootout with militants - and twists and turns our expectations, and we are as emotionally drained as the characters onscreen. Lone Survivor, in particular out of the three aforementioned Berg films, is intent on showing us every wound and gunshot endured by the four men; each setpiece is most remarkable not just for the technical elements, but also the emotional intensity he finds within them.

It should be noted as well that beyond being just technically impeccable, both are terrific actor's directors. Bigelow turned out a starmaking turn from Renner as well as terrific supporting work by Mackie in The Hurt Locker, and uniformly strong performances from a varied character actor ensemble in Zero Dark Thirty.

And if critical reactions are anything to go by, it looks like John Boyega, and Will Poulter have truly knocked it out of the ballpark with Detroit; we'll see about that. Berg, on the other hand, has the ability to coax realistic and invested performances by Whalberg (which should never be a given, check out the latest Transformers film) as his leading man, as well as many dark horse standouts: the magnificent depiction of Matthew 'Axe' Axelson by the one and only Ben Foster in Lone Survivor, Kurt Russell's defiant rig supervisor 'Mr Jimmy' in Deepwater Horizon, and fantastic performances by Jimmy O. Yang, Kevin Bacon, and J.K. Simmons as people on both sides of the conflict in Patriots Day all are very notable performances.

Really, Bigelow and Berg have only upwards to go after the recent quality of their work; here's hoping they keep on with their brave and gritty style to stylistically 'in-your-face' filmmaking at its finest.