LOS ANGELES?Kathryn Bigelow has a tantalizing prospect ahead of her: She has a chance to make history come Oscar day on March 7. Thanks to her terrific ?little? film, ?The Hurt Locker,? Kathryn could be the first woman to win the Academy?s Best Director Award.

Kathryn created a masterpiece of suspense in ?The Hurt Locker,? which follows an elite US military bomb squad in Iraq. The story of three army EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) specialists, played by Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, was written by Mark Boal, who was embedded with such a unit in Baghdad in 2004. Evangeline Lilly of ?Lost? is also in the cast while Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce and David Morse make cameo appearances.

The filmmaker?s chances of breaking the male stranglehold of the top award category im proved significantly when she recently won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Best Director trophy. In the 61-year history of the DGA, its awardees usually (with only six exceptions) go on to win the Academy statuette, too. Kathryn?s DGA win was also a first by a female.

Standing in Kathryn?s way is her ex-husband James Cameron, who?s also up for the directing plum for his ?Avatar.? On friendly terms with each other, Kathryn and James have been duking it out in this awards season. ?The Hurt Locker? and ?Avatar? are tied with nine nominations each in the Oscars.

Kathryn, a Columbia University graduate film school alumna, is only the fourth woman to get a Best Director nod. She joins this very short list: Sofia Coppola, Jane Campion and Lina Wertmuller. Barbra Streisand won the Golden Globe Best Director prize for ?Yentl? but the Academy snubbed her, not even giving her a nomination.

Aside from James, Kathryn also faces competition from Quentin Tarantino, Jason Reitman and Lee Daniels.

Female sensibility

In an interview, Kathryn, striking in a white suit, was asked how her point of view made all the difference in ?The Hurt Locker?s? triumph. ?How transparent a film is and reflective of a particular personality behind it?as a woman or as a man?we do carry to work our life experience,? said the California native who started as a painter (she was a fellow at New York?s Whitney Museum). ?To what extent is my life experience informed by being a woman, I am sure it has an impact but it?s more on a subconscious , rather than a conscious level. I wasn?t aware necessarily of a female sensibility but on the other hand, I was instinctively responding to the material so I was bringing myself into it. I do think films are very transparent in that way.?

The director whose other credits include such disparate films as Keanu Reeves? ?Point Break,? Harrison Ford?s ?K-19: The Widowmaker? and Ralph Fiennes? ?Strange Days? added: ?What?s interesting about this film was the opportunity to humanize these soldiers?to look at this war not standing back and taking a grand view of it from an ideological or political standpoint, but from a standpoint of looking at these soldiers as human beings.

?These are men and women who are fighting and risking their lives. Survival is a fundamental human experience. It transcends all gender lines. The reason why the film has a certain degree of tension and suspense is because of these individuals based on the script. They really come alive for the audience. You really identify with them. You come to care for them.?

Of Mark, she said: ?I knew of Mark?s writing before he went on his embed. Then he sent me some e-mails while he was there. They were pretty harrowing stories so I had a sense then that this would be pretty interesting. I also felt that this is a conflict that?s fairly underreported. These small communiqués by Mark from the front made me incredibly curious so when he came back, we started talking about it immediately.

?I thought that these characters were extremely provocative. I also reflected on the paradox of these individuals who have the most dangerous job in the world and yet they volunteered for the job. I thought it would make a very interesting film so we began talking about it as a movie.?

Reportorial piece

On the nail-biting suspense that she achieved, Kathryn, 58, was modest. ?I can?t take complete credit for the film as much as I?d like to,? she remarked. ?A day in the life of a bomb tech in Baghdad, where bombs are the epicenter of this particular conflict, is so inherently dramatic that as filmmakers, Mark and I shared sensibility, wanting to keep the piece very reportorial and let the story unfold, not to embellish it, not to give it a cinematic flourish. The film doesn?t need it. These are men who are walking along a rubber pile. Nothing there but maybe there are two wires sticking out of the ground that could have a catastrophic result or not. There is no margin for error.?

She explained: ?What I think was important in this piece is geography and making sure the audience is very well-placed within any particular location. In other words, the audience needs to know where the bomb tech is, where they are in relation to the bomb at all times. That?s why I had four cameras constantly working all the time, constantly cutting back and forth from the wide shot. You know where you are so this contributes to the tension. You?re never in this abstract state of noticing and thinking, ?Gee, it?s frenetically cut. I?m not sure where I am. And the music?s pounding.? It?s not like that at all. It?s very clear, graphic and reportorial.?

Did she try the bomb suit that the defusers wear when they walk toward a suspicious rubber pile or wires sticking out of the ground? ?I did not step into the suit although I don?t think I could have,? she said. ?It takes three men to help put it on. It weighs almost 100 pounds. It was very moving to look into the faces of these young men and women. They are facing something uncertain. Yet they have almost unimaginable courage. What?s most moving is the constant reminder that as we?re having this interview, sitting here right now, there are men and women who are taking that EOD tech phrase, ?the lonely walk toward,? and risking their lives.?

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com.