In 2010, Catherine Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" defeated ex-husband James Cameron's "Avatar" and won the 82nd Oscar for Best Picture, with 9 mentions and 6 in total.
In 2013, she was shortlisted for the 85th Oscar with "The Hunt for Bin Laden" and won 1 of 5 prizes.
This year, her new work "Detroit" will also be the seeded contestant of the awards season.
On July 23, 1967, a black riot occurred in Detroit. The cause was that the police raided a bar in a black area. This law enforcement action aroused dissatisfaction among the blacks. They heard the news and threw stones and bricks at the police.
In order to quell the riots as soon as possible, Michigan Governor George Romney ordered the Michigan National Guard to enter Detroit and asked President Lyndon Johnson to send an army into the city to forcefully disperse the blacks, but this behavior was counterproductive. The large-scale riots throughout the city further evolved into one of the most destructive racial riots in American history.
The riot lasted for 5 days, resulting in 43 deaths, 467 injuries, more than 7,200 arrests, and damage to more than 2,000 buildings.
But facts have proved that the declaration advocating equal opportunities for all races ended up being a dead letter.
"Detroit" was adapted from this riot and was selected to be released on the 50th anniversary of the event.
The film briefly summarizes the riots, focusing on the boy band "Drama Choir" after the riots.
At this time, the entire Detroit is in chaos, arson and robbery occur frequently, schools and shops are also closed one after another, and the entire city will have a curfew at 9 p.m.
At the Fox Theatre, the theater choir was preparing to perform on stage and wanted to take this opportunity to sign with Motown Records, but was ordered to leave the theater immediately before the performance.
Fred and Larry, members of the theater choir, came to the Algiers Hotel and met two white girls and some blacks.
During their gathering, the black guy Karl used a starting gun to shoot outside the window to scare the police, but was mistaken for a sniper, causing the Detroit police and state police to surround the hotel.
There is a small foreshadowing at the beginning of the movie. A girl looks out from the blinds, but was shot as a sniper, which shows that the police are very sensitive and valued to snipers.
Among them, Detroit police officer Philip Klaus has a serious tendency to discriminate against blacks.
At the beginning of the film, he shot and killed an unarmed black man, who eventually bleeds to death.
This black man is indeed a robber, but he is not guilty of death. When the detective said that Philip had committed the murder, Philip only said "I'm sorry".
The detective said, "Is it over?"
Philip asked confidently, "Otherwise?"
The detective told Philip to calm down in the future, but Philip didn’t remember much. After receiving a notice that there was a sniper in the Algiers Hotel, he rushed into the hotel and shot Carl first, and put a handful next to Carl. Knife,
Afterwards, he lied that Karl had a knife in his hand and wanted to grab his gun. He fired it out of self-defense.
It seems that his understanding of "calmness" is not to avoid random shooting, but to remember to frame the victim after shooting.
Afterwards, Philip and his colleagues lined up the hotel guests and began to insult and beat them.
Philip's goal is no longer to find out who the snipers are, but to play with them.
Dare to stare at me? Then hit you.
Dare to be obedient? Then hit you.
Dare to refute me? Then hit you desperately.
Philip treated them subdued, they just tremble all over, but they dare not say anything.
Philip also righteously said, "If you feel that you can shoot at innocent people at will, and you can escape the sanctions of the law, then you are very wrong."
This sentence should be what the victim said to him.
Next, Philip started to play a kind of "death game" with them. He took Li into a room and questioned who the sniper was. Seeing Li did not answer, Philip shot the empty space and ordered Li not to make a sound. , Otherwise it will be real, and others will mistakenly think that Philip really killed Lee.
The beginning of the film also made a foreshadowing. The black police used the same method to pretend to assault the suspect. It seems that this method has become quite popular. It is not only a technique of interrogation, it is more like a kind of policeman like Philip. game.
Philip continued to insult them. Among them, Green (Anthony McKay) served as a paratrooper for 8 years, served twice and was honorably discharged. He is a true national hero, but now he is beaten by Philip like a dog.
They didn't even let the white girls let go, tore their clothes to pieces, and verbally insulted them.
Later, Philip asked his colleague Dimans to interrogate the black boy Aubrey. However, he did not know that Philip was Dimans who pretended to kill before, and he actually shot Aubrey.
Philip knew the seriousness of the matter and decided to let these people go, but only if they had to make sure that they had never seen themselves. In this way, Philip and others can claim to the public that Carl and Aubrey were dead when they came to the hotel.
Green and Larry, who chose to protect themselves, were released, but Fred, who did not want to lie, was shot by Philip.
After the incident, the court heard the case, and the three police officers, including Philip, were all suspects. In fact, the three police officers were also criminals. But the skillful lawyer helped them escape all charges. The lawyer even selectively ignored the crimes of the three police officers, and instead asked the victim's fault: "Have you ever done anything illegal before?"
As a victim, the black plaintiff was asked such a ridiculous question. He was furious: "I am not being tried now. When you see that I am a black, you will naturally think that the person on trial is me, but it is the one who killed my friend. People are them. They beat us, lined us up and insulted us, and what you are doing now is exactly the same. There is no justice here."
What he said won a wave of applause from the audience. Unfortunately, the law is not humane. Under the defense of a lawyer, all three policemen were acquitted.
Faced with such a ridiculous result, even the white people present sneered at it: If it was not three blacks but three whites who died at that time, then the court would definitely not make such an unfair judgment.
At the end of the story, a civil court sued one of the three policemen, but the policeman only compensated Aubrey's family for $5,000.
Fred's family took Detroit to court, but Detroit did not plead guilty.
The other members of the theater choir successfully signed with Motown Records, but Larry himself rejected the olive branch offered by Motown Records. After that, he never joined the choir and chose to work in the church choir because of him. Don't want to sing to white people.
Maybe this doesn’t change anything. He took a lower pay and just feels sorry for himself. In the end, he only hurt himself, but he has the courage not to lose his feet for five buckets of rice. He just wants to stick to his beliefs and principles. Young angry and respectable.
Through this film, we can see that the social status of blacks was still quite low 50 years ago.
In 1862, Lincoln promulgated the "Proclamation for the Emancipation of Black Slaves." For a hundred years after that, the equal citizenship of blacks was never implemented in the South. It was not until the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1950s that discrimination was caused. The problem of black people has taken a turn for the better.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement in the United States rose, and racial conflicts reached a breaking point. Blacks in Montgomery city boycotted the bus movement. Blacks in southern states generally took sit-in demonstrations in public places. Black protests and demonstrations broke out in Birmingham. Washington held the city’s largest demonstrations in history, Harlem, Philadelphia, Watts, There have also been many violent demonstrations in Newark.
In Detroit, Americans are prohibited from entering a few relatively crowded neighborhoods. The police patrolling these neighborhoods are mostly white, and they are known for their violent law enforcement.
Change is inevitable, but the question is how and when.
The black riots in Detroit became an important opportunity, but it took decades to realize the advancement of black status.
As the congressman in the movie said: Change does not happen as soon as you sleep, but change is happening.
The pattern of the movie is very small, but it can be seen from the small. The incident in the Algiers Hotel radiates the entire Detroit and even the entire United States. A police officer like Philip who severely discriminated against blacks was not an exception. He represented a part of the white people at the time, and this movie was a microcosm of the entire United States at that time.
Philip felt that he was superior. He enjoyed the experience of deciding the life and death of others. He could treat black people like playing with a group of ants. He shot and killed black people wantonly, and in turn said to the victims: "If you think you can freely face innocent people. If someone shoots and can escape the sanctions of the law, then you are very wrong."
It turns out that he was talking about himself. He not only shot and killed people, but was also acquitted.
National heroes like Green have no resistance to scum like Philip, simply because Green is black and Philip is white. Did Green really beat Philip? I'm afraid I just don't dare to fight back. No matter how great a hero is, it is only a great ant in Philip's eyes, which is really ironic.
As for why this group of victims didn't tell the police the fact that Karl used a starting gun, the film did not give a clear answer, and different audiences have different interpretations.
My personal understanding is that teasing the police is a very serious matter, and it is even more serious for blacks to tease the white police, especially at the juncture of the Detroit incident. If you tell the truth, you may be punished more seriously. There may be more serious punishments if you stay silent. A silver lining, so he simply refused to admit it.
It is worth mentioning that there is a state policeman who released Lee privately in the movie, and the Detroit policeman extended a helping hand to Larry and took him to the hospital. There were also white people outside the courtroom who helped the black victims speak.
But the state police are not all good people. The two state police know that “the Detroit police are completely crazy. They are intimidating the suspects, beating and scolding them, trying to force them to confess guilt.” They said, “It’s definitely not right to do this, they They also have civil rights," but they chose to watch because they "do not want to cause trouble, especially those related to civil rights disputes." Although they did not kill the blacks with their own hands, their inaction made things worse.
The director did not say black and white that all whites discriminate against blacks. He did not say that the Detroit police are all bad people, nor that the state police are all good people. She looked at this issue dialectically, and made the film present different personalities. Different characters objectively restore historical facts. If you don't handle it this way, it will appear that the director is biased and black for the sake of black.
Not only does the movie fail to say that white people are bad people, it doesn't say that black people are not bad people. There are two types of victims killed in the film, one is innocent people like Fred and Aubrey, the other is the robber who Philip shot and killed at the beginning of the film, and Karl who used the starting gun to tease the police. Prior to this, the behavior of military and police forces attacking the little girl looking out the window also shows that they really value snipers. But the key point is that no matter whether it is robbery or teasing the police, it is not guilty of death, let alone being insulted and played with.
It is not enough to tell the story of the deaths of Fred and Aubrey. The director should have collected a lot of material about the Detroit incident before shooting the film. There must be no lack of white police killing innocent blacks, but the director finally chose two blacks to make mistakes. The reason for the first and second case of the white man being killed is that this can make Philip's criminal motives tenable and also play a role in shaping Philip's image.
If all the black people in "Detroit" did not rob, did not tease the police, and were killed for nothing without doing anything, then this movie would be meaningless, because it has nothing to do with race, it is just a crime of police killing innocent people. piece.
The robbers in the movie made a three-point error with Carl, but were severely punished, which highlights how low the status of blacks is.
It must be wrong for Karl to play tricks on the police, but if the Algiers Hotel is a group of white people, they might not be intimidated and beaten. If they are still shot, the police will not be acquitted.
Just as the white people outside the court said: If it was not three blacks but three whites who died at that time, then the court would definitely not make such an unfair judgment.
The most shocking thing is not that this happened in history, but that the Americans made it into a movie for men, women and children across the country to watch in the cinema, and allowed anyone to freely score high or low scores on IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and metacritic. . To achieve this, what kind of courage and tolerance this country needs!
Of course, the United States today cannot achieve equality for all, and no country in the world can achieve it. Because equality is only relative, there can be no absolute equality. Moreover, we must admit that it is already a very significant progress to be able to make the serious problems of our country into a movie and to reduce discrimination in the past two hundred years.
I hate people labeling "politically correct" films about race, female, same-sex, and disadvantaged groups. After all, such films are not available in every country, and not in every country, and not in every country. Citizens can comment freely, unless the country is democratic enough, brave enough, confident enough, and tolerant enough.
A nation that dares to face history and the past is a nation that has hope.
Those who dare to laugh at themselves are those who are truly confident and open-minded.
This is why American films frequently bombed the White House and kidnapped the president. This is why Catherine Bigelow made this event, which can be called a "historical stain", into a movie. She is not self-defeating, but embodies the Americans. A strong heart and firm confidence.
From this perspective, whether "Detroit" hits the Oscars successfully or not, it has proven itself to be an excellent movie, and it also proves that the United States is a powerful country.
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