Table of contents:
Target One director Catherine Bigelow breaks the mold about women in films by shooting films on sensitive political topics and receiving serious awards for it.
Over the past 50 years, women have firmly taken their place in the cinema, and many of them have even pushed aside men. Actresses, make-up artists, producers, screenwriters, decorators, but not directors. And it's not that women don't want to shoot. Angelina Jolie, Sofia Coppola, Lena Dunham - there are more than enough people who want to stand on the other side of the screen. The problem is that critics do not always appreciate their efforts and reward their success. The only woman who managed to break through the defenses of the skeptics was Catherine Bigelow.
Path to glory
The person who introduced Catherine to art was her father. Although he was never a real artist, his work in a paint factory helped instill in his 6-year-old daughter a love of painting, and after school, the girl went to the Art Institute in San Francisco. Thanks to her success, Katherine ended up in New York: there she received a scholarship to research work at the Whitney Museum. Catherine completed her art education at Columbia University.
The next man to influence Catherine's career was the artist Andy Warhol, who constantly experimented with genres of art in search of new forms. He prompted Bigelow to turn to cinema.
“Painting has recently become the privilege of the elites. To appreciate a picture, you need to have the necessary amount of information. Films are more accessible art with a wider audience that I wanted to reach out to,”recalls Catherine in The Time magazine.
After a few short films, Catherine came out on the big screen, and quite successfully. First, she recruited Jamie Lee Curtis into the Blue Steel tape about a female police officer, and then removed the iconic 90s tape "On the Crest of the Wave."
Angelina Jolie and other stars who had a passionate affair
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had a passionate romance on the set of the movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith". Pitt found himself in a delicate situation - his wife Jennifer Aniston was waiting for him at home. Cheating on set led to the collapse of their five-year marriage.
Personal successes
In parallel with her first career successes, Katherine's romance with director James Cameron developed rapidly. They had something to learn from each other: both filmed action films and thrillers, the main characters of which were often brave women. Gradually, the working relationship developed into a romance. The wedding took place in 1989, barely James had time to officially divorce his first wife, Gail Heard. Three years later, Bigelow recognized the windy nature of her husband: this time he went crazy over the actress Linda Hamilton, the star of the second part of "The Terminator".
But as true professionals, the former spouses continued to communicate even after parting: James produced some of Catherine's films, and she often consulted with him about the script and the filming process. Cameron taught Bigelow not to be afraid of criticism - it still cannot be avoided. So it was with the 2002 drama "K-19", which tells about the death of a nuclear submarine and the feat of Soviet sailors who saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe during the Cold War.
Despite the fact that the director strenuously studied the documents, questioned the surviving crew members and personally went to inspect the submarine, the story still did not seem convincing to the Russian sailors. And Catherine did not pay attention to the skeptics and stubbornly continued to make her films.
A real triumph
Her main triumph came after the release of The Hurt Locker in 2010. The film about sappers disarming and laying mines in Iraq could not but appease the academics: Bigelow received an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Director, leaving behind her ex-husband with the film Avatar (by the way, this film is still since then in second place in the ranking of the highest-grossing tapes in the history of cinema!).
Many tabloids began to slander: someone accused Katherine of being too sexy, which helped her break into the top echelon of Hollywood (indeed, she still looks luxurious), others linked her success solely with the name of her ex-spouse. But Bigelow was accustomed to not paying attention to rumors.
In 2012, Katherine directed the thriller Target One, another truly feminist message. This time the terrorists were opposed by a woman named Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, who has been tracking Osama bin Laden for 10 long years and finally finds him. Together with the heroism of the special groups involved in the hunt for the criminal, Bigelow also showed the cruelty of her compatriots: it is known that CIA agents did not hesitate to torture prisoners in Pakistan. These scenes were most disliked by critics who considered them deliberately violent. Catherine responded with an open letter to the Los Angeles Times.
“Those of us in the arts know that showing doesn't mean justifying. If this were so, then none of the artists would depict antihuman deeds, not a single writer would write about them, not a single director would delve into the difficult issues of our time,”wrote the director.
Since then, Katherine has released several short films, as well as the films Detroit (2017) and Triple Frontier (2019).
Katherine Bigelow's Rules of Success
- I will not quit doing my own thing, even if many still believe that a woman cannot be a good director. First, I cannot give up my gender. Secondly, I cannot refuse to make films.
- There should be more female directors in the world. It seems to me that many women would succeed in this, they just do not understand that they can really do it.
- When we filmed the torture scenes in Target One, I wanted to close my eyes and leave. But as a director, I have to overcome my personal discomfort in order to get things done and tell people how it really was.
- I always make realistic films and am rarely willing to compromise if it limits my creative freedom.
