Is Kathryn Bigelow changing things for Hollywood women?
Lifetime's moment: Kathryn Bigelow with her Oscars. Pic: Alex J. Berliner/BEI/Rex Features
Last night was a remarkable night for Kathryn Bigelow as she was named Best Director for her film The Hurt Locker. She was the first woman in the Oscar’s 82-year history to take that prize home.
Clutching her award, she said: “There is no other way to describe it — it's the moment of a lifetime.”
In a kind of plot that would have made a fine movie - and it may yet. The 58-year-old director had been up against her ex-husband, Avatar man James Cameron, in all the categories that mattered.
And fittingly, in the eyes of some some commentators, she took home her Academy Award on International Women’s Day.
Bigelow – whose only marriage was to Cameron (1989 to 1991) and who has no children – has tackled traditionally macho subjects head-on. Her 1991 movie Point Break tackled bank-robbing surfers and in 2002 K-19: The Widowmaker she dealt with the trials of life on a beleaguered Russian nuclear submarine. The Hurt Locker is an unflinching observation of life with a team of Army bomb disposal experts in post-invasion Iraq.
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis said: "Something like a woman winning best director for directing an action movie and not a romantic comedy is symbolically important.
”Whether it then leads to a lot of women doing things outside of the pathetic comfort zone of romantic comedy – and I say that as someone who loves romantic comedy – we'll see.
"We know that because women are allowed to make romantic comedies that they can make romantic comedies. That's in everyone's comfort zone. The idea that a woman can be a great action director is not is everyone's comfort zone."
Previous female nominees for Academy Award best director were Lina Wertmüller for 1976's Seven Beauties, Jane Campion for 1993's The Piano and Sofia Coppola for 2003's Lost in Translation.
But the talented newly-crowned Queen of Hollywood doesn’t set herself up as a trailblazer for her gender. In fact, she’s too busy making films and would really like her sex to stop being the issue.
In a previous interview she said: “I’d love to just think of myself as a film-maker, and I long for the day when a modifier can be a moot point.
"But I'm ever grateful if I can inspire some young, intrepid, tenacious male or female film-maker and have them feel that the impossible is possible and to never give up on your dream."
You get the feeling she would just like the world’s media to stop talking about her breaking the mold or how remarkably well she scrubbed up for one of her age and just applaud her hard-won achievement.
Director of The Secret Life of Bees, Gina Prince-Bythewood said: “Kathryn’s stunning film and deserved DGA win and Oscar nomination puts an exclamation point on a mantra that should be carved onto every studio executive’s desk. ‘Talent has no gender!’ She inspires by doing, and doing it well.”
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