"Bestowed on an elite few, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can be both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can serve as protection: viewing an ennobled director's films through this prism, auteurist critics can feel obliged to make excuses for even the worst among them. (The rationale is that a bad film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best efforts of a jobbing hack.)"
"One disadvantage is that such honorifics can leave a creative patrolling a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A prominent test case has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that if texts from cinephile pals this past weekend are anything to go by seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment."
"Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with 1995's underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.)"
The mantle of Noted Film-maker offers protection by prompting auteurist critics to excuse weak films, arguing that a bad film by a Noted Film-maker still surpasses the best efforts of a jobbing hack. Such honorifics can constrain a creative, narrowing material choices and amplifying dismay when projects fail to spark. Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite on Netflix has underwhelmed and seems destined for the season's 'Gravest Disappointment.' Bigelow earned recognition with expansive genre films—The Loveless, Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break—and with Strange Days, which used the Rodney King case to warn against abandoning reality for virtual refuge. Post-2001 films like The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit engaged fraught national conversations.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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