Cinema Spotlight: The Cereal Scene in The Hurt Locker

One of the most powerful scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie is a simple one in Kathryn Bigelow’s amazing Oscar winning movie The Hurt Locker. I’ve been told by soldiers that even though the movie doesn’t reflect the literal truth of what fighting in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was like, it’s the best encapsulation of the feelings of fighting there and then returning home afterwards a changed person. It’s the returning home that’s often the problem. The Hurt Locker is hardly the first movie to deal with the issues of PTSD and the struggle of returning to civilian life after war, movies from The Best Years of Our Lives in the 40’s, to The Deer Hunter and Coming Home in the 70’s, to Born on the Fourth of July in the 80’s have all dealt with what it’s like to serve and to return home. But there’s a shot in The Hurt Locker that sums up the experience of Sergeant First Class Will James very understatedly and powerfully.

Will (Jeremy Renner, who owes his career to his tremendous work in this movie) has returned home from Iraq and is grocery shopping with his family. His wife (a thankless role for Evangeline Lilly) tells him to go get some cereal and meet her in the next aisle. We then see Will, blankly staring at this endless sea of cereal boxes, unable to choose one. This man who is a genius in the insane world of bomb defusing is overwhelmed by the mundane task of choosing a box of cereal. His skills are not applicable in this world. His ability to stay calm under immeasurable pressure is negated in regular civilization. He has been made into a specialist by the military and the situations in which he learned to thrive, and it robbed him, seemingly, of his humanity. He doesn’t make sense in this world.

The Hurt Locker opens with the quote “war is a drug.” This sounds insane, impossible, as we are taught to believe the line “war is hell”, and saying that it’s a drug seems counterintuitive. Who would want to keep going back to war the way that junkies go back to drugs? Exactly a guy like Will James, who has no life skills other than the very specialized ones he uses to defuse bombs. He can’t live in regular society, and sadly the movie ends with Will headed off to do another tour of duty in Iraq, not because he wants to fight, but because war is the only place he can feel normal.

The Hurt Locker is one of the greatest of war movies because it allows us into both the exciting action, as well as the hellish interior minds of the soldiers scarred by their service. The moment of Will standing dumbfounded in front of cereal has become the image most associated with the movie in my mind. One of the most powerful shots in cinema because of everything attached to such a seemingly innocuous task by the context in which Kathryn Bigelow expertly puts it in the story. She thoroughly deserved her Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for this movie.