If you haven't seen it, you need to. The Oscar winning flick offers a decently sharp look into what one might imagine Iraq might have looked like in 2004-05, based on what friends, cousins, brothers, husbands, sons have reiterated in brief stories about their arduous time "on duty" in the desert.
There's one scene in the movie that rang home for me though - and I never have, nor will ever (God willing) be at war in Iraq.
There's a brilliant scene when the main character, Sgt. William James, has returned home to the U.S. after another tour in Iraq. James is pushing a shiny metal and plastic shopping cart up and down sparkling aisles in a sanitary grocery store. Elevator music offers the soundtrack. (This contrasts splendidly with the movie's previous scene where James led an adrenaline-charged sprint down a trash- and terror-filled street in Iraq. I'd heard from guys who've been in Iraq that the streets were just filled with plastic bags. The movie reinforces this detail nicely.)
James crosses paths with his sort-of girlfriend, the mother of his son, who he's clearly at the store with but not actually shopping with. She orders James to go get some cereal.
James walks into the cereal angle and stops. The producers captured long angle shots from both ends of the cereal aisle in all it's marketing glory. Endless shiny boxes with pretty eye candy on the front, filled with breakfast candy and ready to make kids' lives happy and fun; womens' bodies fit and sexy.
James just stands there and stares before knocking a random box into his empty cart.
It's a brilliant scene.
And it made me think.
It made me think about the ridiculously soft lives we live here in the U.S. On the one hand it's sort of splendidly posh. On the other hand, I believe it's made us disconnected from any genuine human experience. Not that I want or could even handle the adrenaline-filled rush of war, like James is hooked on in The Hurt Locker. And it's not that I want such a challenged life like people in Iraq and other repressed countries have to endure.
But with all our excess, propelled by all the marketing agencies and the corporations trying to figure out how to capture minds and sell more, we've let ourselves spin into this fucked-up reality where we consume things that aren't necessities and spend entire careers doing tasks that are, in the grand view of the world, inconsequential.
Take apart a bomb and save thousands of lives.
Write creative copy and try to sell someone else's shit.
Shit made in India, no less.
I"m a fan of balance - not that I have any in my own life.
But after watching The Hurt Locker, it's been more clear than ever that I'm on the extreme edge of being inconsequential on a daily basis, as opposed to doing something that impacts people with my life.
The ridiculous thing? A flipping Hollywood movie made me realize this.
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