Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A high-profile example has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a warning tale about the perils of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer expires.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
