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...Open
the hurt locker
and see what there is of knives
and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn
how rough men come hunting for souls.
from the
poem
The Hurt
Locker, Brian Turner
Kathryn
Bigelow winning big this week not only in the arena of film, but a
woman staking out territory in the arena of war. This a
modern war where the enemy is unseen, the tension is all in the
defusing, a movie of action, and equally, of ideas. Mark
Boal, the embedded journalist who wrote the screenplay, says that
the title came from a phrase he had heard a few times while in
Iraq; the word hurt common already in the language of war,
the usage going back to Vietnam and the world of hurt. In
Iraq, in the argot of the bomb squads, the hurt locker is
the place you go to if you make a mistake!
And then
there is another woman singing of war. Sade is back with a
beautiful, meditative new album,
Soldier of
Love,
which has been residing at the very top of the
Billboard
charts
for weeks now. She looks improbably young, her face unlined,
singing in her own classic fashion, impervious to trends.
Unchanging really, perhaps in the sense of being true to herself.
I’ve lost the use of my heart, but I’m still alive,
she sings in husky alto in the
video.
On the
album cover, Sade in silvery clothes that allude to armor and
breastplate, Mayan ruins, roses in her hair. This is the
arena of war, but also of love. Like Bigelow, Sade doesn’t
play the game: she doesn’t give interviews, Bigelow does not
indulge in the market testing that is so common in Hollywood.
These are women who don’t pander. They are tough...about
their art.
Fashion has
always been armor. This year, all signs from the runways are
for the military trend back in full force. Ohne Titel
playing with texture and different fabrics, Philosophy's wonderful
belted coats, military blazers at Balmain, Comme des Garçons' moss-green cropped jacket. All the colors of the clothes of war:
khaki, olive-brown, camouflage, sand. Yet the best looks were when
all that posturing was softened; at Burberry Prorsum the
lovely palliating fluidity of washed chiffon tulle drapery in
skirts and dresses. And now with quick turnaround times, the
global cheap-chic versions to follow at H&M, Topshop, and Zara;
modern armor can be bought at all price points.
In Bigelow’s
1995 film,
Strange Days,
a cult classic of sorts, Angela Bassett plays a tough yet
vulnerable woman, and the flinty thriller ends softly, with the
unabashedly romantic, slow-motion
kiss scene
between Ralph Fiennes and Bassett. The yielding heart
beneath all that battle gear. The language of love and the
language of war have always been inextricably linked. Hurt.
Conquest, and surrender.
Read:
The Hurt
Locker, Brian Turner
Listen:
Soldier of
Love, Sade
See:
Strange Days
Tags:
film music fashion
war
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Burberry
Prorsum, Spring 2010
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