Zero Dark Thirty (2012) / US / Out in cinemas now / Directed by Kathryn Bigelow / Written by Mark Boal / Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Mark Duplass, Chris Pratt, James Gandolfini, Edgar Ramirez / 157 mins.
Zero Dark Thirty is not a movie I went into expecting to feel uplifted. But uplifted was exactly how I felt as I made my way out of the cinema, slightly shaken by what I had just seen. It may sound silly to the Oscar haters or Avatar lovers, but when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director, my life pretty much changed right there and then. I decided I wanted to become a director too, but that aspiration has had some fine tuning over the years and now I realise that it was because of that moment I have learned two very valuable things about myself: I always have wanted to be a leader and do things that not everyone else can do (in this case, Kathryn is a female director who makes 'male films'). In a way, I guess you could say that a very large reason behind the fact that I'm Head Girl at my school comes down to Kathryn Bigelow being a badass woman. While I didn't absolutely love The Hurt Locker (but I sure as hell love it more than most) - but I do quite love her 1995 cult hit Strange Days - Zero Dark Thirty presented something that was rather inspiring to me. It tracks the biggest manhunt of the century, and there was a woman at the centre of it all.
