A film going for a docudrama look doesn't necessarily mean bland visuals. Plenty of movies that go for a raw, gritty, cinema verite look have far better visuals than what Bigelow has done lately. Going back to my two examples earlier, both Alfonso Cuaron and the Safdie brothers make far better use of a similar style in their works.
Children of Men, for instance, while also having a very gritty, documentary-esque look to it, is a far more visceral and visually striking film as a whole as Cuaron makes far better uses of long takes and motivated camera moves as opposed to Bigelow's more sporadic style.
Heaven Knows What, similarly, is also a gritty film, but its visual style compliments the story far more than any of Bigelow's recent works. There, the Safdies make use of very shallow depth of field on purpose to add to the feeling of being trapped and isolated from drug addiction. There's more expressive lighting too, as while most of the film appears very naturally lit, some scenes deliberately employ a more colorful hue to visually represent the high of doing heroin.
You seem to fail to grasp the difference between what a director does vs. what a DP does. The director is usually the one who designs the shot list, blocks out the scene, and coordinates the movement/framing of each shot. The DP, meanwhile, usually focuses primarily on the lighting and the technical nitty gritty behind each frame (exposure, white balance, contrast ratio etc). There's always some overlap between them but that's usually how it works.
A key way to figure out just how good a director is visually is to look at the consistency in their overall works. A genuinely solid visual director would generally make nothing but good-looking films for the majority of their career, whereas a slightly lesser director may fluctuate a bit based on the DP they hire and the subject matter they tackle. The latter is likely the camp where Kathryn Bigelow belongs.
Do you understand me now?
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