Inglourious Basterds

Okri
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Post by Okri »

Tarantino shows us Nazis watching a film of another Nazi slaughtering Americans, and lets us see this audience cheer wildly. Naturally, it's appalling...but the audience in our theatre has been doing the self-same thing every time a Nazi got it (I even overheard the couple near me, on the way out, saying the only disapointment was that Shoshannah didn't get to knock off Landa personally).


Interesting - I was quite uncomfortable during those moments and I heard a number of people in my audience (during and afterwards) talking to the same effect. So I found myself more than a little annoyed at Tarantino throughout. Most of the pleasure I derived was from the performances.

One thing that bugged me, but it's so pedantic I probably shouldn't bring it up. Sometimes the subtitles translated the dialogue. Other times, with words like "oui" and "merci beacoup" it didn't. It bugged me.

I enjoyed the film, but I think I side with the early underwhelmed group from Cannes as opposed to the instant re-evaluation of the stateside critics.
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Post by Sabin »

I've always had some difficulty with Tarantino, finding I admired his abilities way beyond his subject matter. But this was at another level, almost Salieri/Mozart -- I found myself asking, how could god have made someone so annoying and often arrogant so goddamned talented?

I've always felt that Tarantino is one of those accidentally brilliant filmmakers, like he found a magic lamp and wished to make movies and all of them brilliant. Well, they're not. I actively dislike Death Proof and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is pretty dull, but I think Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 are great films and Inglourious Basterds sure resembles one. But it's a mess.

My mother called me yesterday to ask if I'd seen Inglourious Basterds. I said yes. She said she saw it and loved it and asked if this is what Tarantino does. I asked what she meant, and she said "Y'know, make comedies?" She had a great time in the movie. I think Tee makes a phenomenal point about showing Nazis cheering for violence but the titular character of the film repelled by his actions...only moments later to have the audience (for we too are Basterds) enjoy some of that ultra-violence that moments prior was condemned. All that aside, the fact that my mother loved it points to a few nominations in its future. She's a sharp lady.
"How's the despair?"
Mister Tee
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Post by Mister Tee »

I was annoyed from literally the first moment of this film, as the music from The Alamo kicked in to show us, as if we needed reminding, just how much old Quentin knows about movies -- an irritation intensified by Pitt's un-hilarious character name, and the fact that half the characters are film buffs dropping trendy names. Then there was the matter of two sequences -- Landa in the farmer's cabin, the cellar-tavern encounter -- that stopped the story cold for significant snatches of time. Further, as Sabin says, the film is wildly episodic with, seemingly, important passages left out. And then the final sequence features a, shall we say, unexpected turn from Landa, a rather cavalier revamp of historic record, and a closing line that smacks of arrogance, since you know it's what Quentin himself is declaring to the audience.

So, with all that, why was my main feeling during most of the film pure exhiliration? Why did I feel, for just about the first time this year, that at last I'd seen a real MOVIE? I've always had some difficulty with Tarantino, finding I admired his abilities way beyond his subject matter. But this was at another level, almost Salieri/Mozart -- I found myself asking, how could god have made someone so annoying and often arrogant so goddamned talented?

For me, despite those lengthy sequences I mentioned, the film flew by (it's impossible to believe it's about the same length as Australia, which felt twice as long). It's probably better viewed as a series of set pieces (the farmhouse seduction; the uncomfortable luncheon; the tavern standoff) than as a fully integrated plot -- and I agree, that the Basterds themselves are the element least linked to the overall arc. But despite this, it achieves some sort of organic whole-ness, more than any other QT fillm since Pulp Fiction.

And, despite an overall seeming flip nihilism, the film does have an interesting subject or two. The first, more obvious, is that very use of film which so irritated me. Tarantino shows us Nazis watching a film of another Nazi slaughtering Americans, and lets us see this audience cheer wildly. Naturally, it's appalling...but the audience in our theatre has been doing the self-same thing every time a Nazi got it (I even overheard the couple near me, on the way out, saying the only disapointment was that Shoshannah didn't get to knock off Landa personally). And the only person who doesn't enjoy any of it? The guy who did the actual slaughtering; for him it's still reality. This isn't exactly an insight of bold genius, but for a director who's thought to have trouble distinguishing between film and reality, a somewhat notable one.

Even more interesting is the use of language/culture as barrier and signifier. It's pretty bold to make an expenisve American movie with 60% or more of the dialogue subtitled. But the use of differing languages accomplishes all kinds of things. On the plot level, there's the startling revelation of why English was used in the first scene; the body-language tip-off in the rathskeller; and Landa's easy exposure of Pitt and crew when he shows fluent knowledge of Italian. And on an existential level...the fact that so many of these characters speak in different tongues gives us some sense of the dislocation/disorientation at the root of a foreign occupation -- and maybe even gets to the core of a war whose most grievous sin was treating non-native citizens as despised outcasts. And what about this?: does the fact that Landa seems fluent in at least four languages make even his unlikely act at the end foreshadowed; it tells us he's always had his feet ready to plant in a new camp if it seemed the more proptious way to go.

None of these things, of course, makes the movie perfect. It's still got all the flaws I started with, and alot of those Sabin cited, as well. And I wouldn't have a clue as to how it'll do at the Oscars, beyond the clearly deserving Waltz nomination. All I can report is, this movie got my motor running at a time when I'd begun to despair of such a thing. So, Quentin, much as it pains me, I must salute you this time out.
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Post by Sabin »

The eight feature from Quentin Tarantino begins with duel depictions of conversational savagery. The first is from Col. Hans Landa as he brilliantly systematically breaks down the resolve of a Frenchman harboring Jews. It's perhaps the only lengthy discourse in the movie that belongs alongside Tarantino's best monologues. Waltz plays Landa like a Nazi pick-up artist. He doesn't want to get into your skirt, he wants to prove that he could rid Germany of Jews within the week. Waltz is so good at this part that the fact that none of his characters' decisions makes any sense doesn't seem to matter. His first scene ends with a leap in logic that does not return, that does not make sense, that never makes sense. His last scenes in the movie feature such leaps in logic of the same nature that he remains a question mark throughout that you love every minute he is on-screen. It's a performance so superlative that never makes sense at the end but throughout is nothing short of godsend.

The second bout of conversational savagery is from Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, a half-Apachy heir who announces with equal-parts eloquence an ocean apart what his assembled-team of 'Basterds'' mission will be: in the service of delivering "one hundred Nahtzi scalps! An' I want them scalps!" Such sets into motion a cinephile's infantile jerk-off fantasy of revisionist Jewish vengeance as the Basterds hunt through Germany for Nahtzi (love it!) scalps and face moral quandaries as to what makes them righteous Jews. Munich with a David Bowie song. Right?

EPIC FAIL! Inglourious Basterds is not about this team of Basterds but rather about a lengthy rendez-vous seemingly independently between a French Jewish woman Shoshanna (gorgeous Melanie Laurent) with a Nahtzi grudge and plans to trap them all in a movie theater and burn them to the ground AND a meet-up between the Basterds and a woman-on-the-inside who can get them into Joseph Goebbels' premiere of his latest masterpiece where they can take down the Big Four: Goebbels, Bormann, Hitler, and I believe Goring, shame to my family (epic fail).

You will notice that the above paragraph is (with the exception of EPIC FAIL!) one sentence. This is for a reason. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is long on word, sentence, paragraph, and document that it robs us of the world of these Basterds. It's a film about the revenge of a Jewish woman who runs a theater, not of the men and women in the Basterds unit. There is the start of an interesting relationship between Shoshanna and Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl, excellent), a Nahtzi superstar who had a record number of kills on his first days that closed down a city for the Nahtzis. Goebbels commissioned a film based on his travels that he would go on to star in. Beyond anyone else's contributions, Bruhl gives the most subversive performance in the film as a Nahtzi who takes an immediate liking to Shoshanna and talks film to her and sets into effect a series of events that will bring down the Nahtzi regime. And he seems like a totally nice guy. When he watches his movie, he cannot look at himself with anything but disgust. Shoshanna's eye is never on anything but her plan to burn a small mountain of nitrate film and kill all the Nahtzis in attendance. Bruhl's Zoller is one of the most interesting characters in the film and he's not given proper due. Nobody is.

Quentin Tarantino tells a story in two-and-a-half hours that could so easily be told in one-and-a-half. It's not that there aren't any good scenes in the film; there are. It's not that he is an incapable director; he's not. It's that we don't get to spend any time with the Basterds promised in trailer and title. They're barely in the movie. It's not that I don't enjoy wartime France or beautiful French Jewesses who run theaters that show Cocteau films. It's that his wartime France is one ripped so closely from other movies and his own love of movies, that the longer it lingers the more dubious it appears.

Conventional screenwriting logic dictates that your first act is spent setting up your characters and then Breaks into II with the announcement of your quest. Between Waltz's "prologue" and Aldo Raine's demand for one hundred Nahtzi scalps, this would complete our first act. The film is set into motion. The second act usually is devoted to Fun & Games where the stakes are continually raised until a boil halfway through the second act resulting in false victory or false defeat. I'm not one to say that this needs to be followed strictly as it has resulted in more bad movies or not, but take note of this mention of Fun & Games because every movie has them, where the car is taken out for a spin. This would involve the (re)introduction of Shoshanna and setting her plot in motion, and the continued adventures of the Basterds. Well, you don't really get the second part. Quentin Tarantino is very savvy in how he structurally sets-up a degree of innate storytelling in his script reveals the Basterds' nature through one person talking to another. But as quickly as it begins, we divulge into lengthy scenes with Shoshanna under duress and her humorless plot against the Fuhrer.

After your False Victory or False Defeat, there is usually a regrouping, a Dark Night of the Soul (period of doubt), and All Is Lost Moment, and something that forces us into the Third Act. The Third Act is usually either a total disappointment or a huge showcase for tying together the threads in an explosive, imaginative fashion. A wedding. A party. "Heaven and Hell" from 'Rushmore'. Inglourious Basterds has such a huge third act that it makes me wish it had a second act. But it doesn't. It has five scenes, maybe. And they're so long that the film chokes on them. This film is so huge it doesn't have the lung-power to keep itself going, something that only becomes apparent when the premiere of 'Nation's Pride' comes along and it feels too soon for such a climax.

Sorry to tangent into Screenwriter-Speak. That was a lengthy way of saying that Inglourious Basterds is good, quite good, but ultimately feels a little malnourished. If there was a film that could benefit from the Kill Bill: Vol. 1 treatment, it would be Inglourious Basterds. Imagine Kill Bill as one malnourished movie minus a half hour or so, and you've got Inglourious Basterds. To be clear, Inglourious Basterds would make a better Two-Parter than Kill Bill.
"How's the despair?"
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