Wednesday, August 26, 2009

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS TALK PART 3: "THIS MIGHT JUST BE MY MASTERPIECE!"


UPDATED 8/27 1:09 p.m.


Behold, day three of the ongoing e-mail conversation between The Kind of Face You Hate’s Bill R. and I regarding Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. I don’t know if it reads this way to the merely interested, but my own feeling about the way this discussion is playing out, with all the extra commentary from readers at both my blog and Bill’s (with Greg Ferrara of Cinema Styles poised to join the fray), has allowed access to a greater exchange and examination of ideas and impulses and reactions to this movie that a single review (at least one that I would be capable of writing) ever could. I’m really enjoying the back and forth, and I hope you are too (whoever you are). I encourage you to pipe in, agree or not, and liven up the discussion even more, either here or at Bill’s place, where there are some very interesting examinations of the film’s violence and its tone going on-- which just happens to be the part of the pool into which I feel like jumping into (no diving!) tonight.

(Access part two and part one of our ongoing discussion by clicking the links.)

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Bill, I’m gonna start off by reiterating a couple of things from your comments page and from that Atlantic article (the link to which has been fixed, by the way) that I think are germane to where I’m sensing the conversation is headed.
Here’s part of what I had to say on your site regarding a point made by one of your readers:

“I don't want to forget The Caustic Ignostic's point: `It's not that IB is a cerebral film masquerading as a visceral film, or a visceral film that critics are inappropriately reading as a cerebral film. It's a cerebral *and* visceral film. I suspect QT would scoff at the notion that he had to choose, or that the audience wants to choose.’

I think this is crucial, certainly to the way QT lays the groundwork for what he's up to in Death Proof, as it applies to IB. The first group of girls die in that spectacular sequence, which gives us the visceral thrills of suspense and kinetic car action-- the basis of QT's genre exploration-- but goes further by emphasizing, in a honorable way, the true price being paid by these girls with whom we've spent the last half hour (however fascinating or pointless you may have felt that visit was). We see the gruesome reality of the crash for each victim, which leads to some uncomfortable contemplation to go along with the excitement we've felt, but QT does it not to pooh-pooh us for getting off on the action, but instead to suggest the real humanity lost here.”

From the Atlantic article, here’s IB producer Lawrence Bender:

`At the end of the day, the people in that auditorium’—during the film’s climax—‘are Nazis. You kind of feel bad for them because they’re burning to death, but you’re not feeling too much sympathy, even for the Nazi who gets a swastika carved in his head.’”

And here’s Jeffrey Goldberg, writer of the Atlantic article, who does a good job, I think, wrestling with his own ambivalent reaction to the film’s violence, speaking from the perspective of one who fought in the Israeli Army:

“But why risk creating sympathy for Nazis at all? Why have any scene that, in Neal Gabler’s words, `conventionalizes Jews, puts them in the same revenge motif as everyone else’? Given the chance, of course, I would still shoot Mengele in the face. That would be a moral necessity. But I wouldn’t carve a swastika into his forehead. That just doesn’t sound like the Jewish thing to do.”


To my mind, the open-mindedness with which Goldberg infuses his own questioning and the interview with Tarantino is refreshing. Inquisitive and serious, but not baiting (he knows Tarantino will supply the juicy quotes without a whole lot of prompting), Goldberg makes clear that Jews are not immune to fantasies of revenge even as he questions the appropriateness of some of the specific imagery in IB. That, to me, is playing fair.

The questions that he asks above, though, in response to Bender’s less qualified response (Bender is Jewish also), is the nail on which some have become snagged in regard to Inglourious Basterds. Why risk creating sympathy for the Nazis at all? Well, I think a very simple response to this question, an answer also, perhaps, to why some of these other more sober dramatic inquiries into the Jewish experience don’t seem to work very well (Jakob the Liar, Life is Beautiful, Defiance), is that while Tarantino is unapologetically keyed in to the pleasures that movies can offer us, not even close to the least of which is the unambiguous and vicarious rush of seeing justice meted out to those who may escape it in “real life,” he is also an artist interested in exploring the possibilities within what might on the surface seem like simplistic reactions to purgative violence.


I go back to my example from Tarantino’s previous movie, Death Proof. If that movie was simply an opportunity for a genre apologist to riff on familiar themes and situations from some of his favorite trash classics (which, on one level, is exactly what Death Proof is), then I don’t think Tarantino spends as much time letting us get to know, and get annoyed by, the first group of girls who will be sacrificed to Stuntman Mike’s psychosexually twisted aggression. He would set things up in a much quicker, choppier fashion (all the better to approximate the expository quality of a movie like, say, Trip with the Teacher) so we could more rapidly get to the good stuff. Therefore, in addition to the white-knuckle staging of that head-on collision, and the violence done to the vehicles themselves (which anyone who loves car chase cinema will enjoy without apology or hand-wringing, despite the damage done to those muscle car beauties), we get a particularly terrifying, and moving, tribute to Tarantino’s commitment to the humanity of those women, a few of which we may have concluded previously to be shallow bitches based on their conversation. As Stuntman Mike’s car shreds the top of their vehicle, Tarantino used his newfound visual mastery as a director to offer to us privileged information—we see the horrible violence visited upon each of the victims in ghastly detail. This may be the most cathartic, disturbing car wreck ever committed to film, and it is so because Tarantino chooses to consider the violence of the moment from an angle in addition to the one that his homage would seem most likely to accommodate.

In the same way, the Caustic Ignostic suggests that compartmentalizing IB as either a cerebral film or a visceral one is to deny the way the movie actually works on our sensibilities. (This insistence of the either/or, which I think Tarantino would scoff at, and justifiably so, is at the heart of the divide between what people have come to expect from Tarantino —violence, verbosity-- and how those elements are most often actually incorporated into Tarantino’s movies.) It’s clear that he is interested in providing the rush of satisfaction that history and the movies have routinely denied viewers—a specifically Jewish vengeance fulfilled on screen. But I do also believe that, no matter how much he may marginalize his intentions about creating a fleeting sympathy for Nazis as victims in interviews, a sense of ambivalence for herding humans into a building and burning them alive is part of what’s going on here. Tarantino is too smart, too aware, too (yes) sensitive, for it not to be. The mark of this movie’s status as a masterpiece is that such impulses can co-exist in the precise moment with the Revenge of the Giant face, as Shosanna’s triumphant declarations, projected on a burning silver screen, and then on the smoke rising from the ruins of her beloved cinema, echo forth amidst the screams, a moment she has been denied witness to herself by an awful twist of fate. I would never suggest that it wasn’t a tremendous rush to see Adolf Hitler’s skull perforated by machine gun fire, and I think that in the context of what Tarantino has done here such a catharsis is justified and satisfying. But I would suggest that, for me at least, the extra dimension of contemplation, which has been put in play by the director (whatever his motivation), over the pain and horror inflicted on the Nazis in the theater—the recognition, however fleeting, of them as human beings—makes IB an even richer experience for me. Maybe in interviews Tarantino downplays this because it’s not quite in tune with his own self-portrait as an artist-provocateur. But then, film history is rife with film directors who talk a certain game in interviews, while the films themselves, for richer or for poorer, reveal talent (or lack of it) and intentions that the director may have glossed over during his act of self-promotion. The bottom line is, Inglourious Basterds works on different levels, even when one of those levels, the satisfaction derived from the choreographed destruction of the Nazis in that beautiful burning cinema, is clearly the dominant level.


Goldberg’s final point, that the carving of a swastika into the foreheads of the Basterds’ Nazi victims “doesn’t sound like a Jewish thing to do,” is similarly double-edged. My suspicion is that Goldberg is not downplaying the element of revenge behind the carving so much as the image being carved. Perhaps it would make more sense to him (and I’m merely speculating and putting conclusions into Goldberg’s mouth here) that Aldo’s squad would carve the Star of David into these killers’ foreheads instead, thus forever marking their Nazi victims with a reminder of those whom they sought to exterminate. If this were Tarantino’s choice dramatically, I would think it would be equally justifiable, but it’s also not much of a leap for me to imagine that in doing so he might find the movie and its tone moving a little too close to the self-righteous indignation of the typical Hollywood response to the Holocaust. That they choose to brand the Nazis with symbols of their own ghastly behavior, giving them an inescapable legacy, works perfectly well within the film, however, as I see it. And it may or may not be important that the man ordering the scalping, and who administers the movie’s ultimate swastika-carving, is not a Jew himself, but a Tennessee hillbilly, one not far, genetically speaking, from Tarantino’s own family tree, who claims Native-American ancestry (as does Tarantino), linking him and the Basterds to an entirely different but not dissimilar tributary of historical genocide.

I’m far more troubled by Goldberg’s second poser: “Why have any scene that, in Gabler’s words, ‘conventionalizes Jews and puts them in the same revenge motif as everyone else?’” When we start talking about the immorality of suggesting that one group of oppressed people would never entertain thoughts of revenge, and the immorality of charting their adventures should they do so, then we’ve either elevated, or reduced (depending on your sociopolitical leanings), an entire people to a status above or below that of just about everyone else on the planet who is even momentarily honest about their capacity for such feelings. Maybe Gabler believes that the Jews are above such reactionary violence, or that if they did go about it, then that violence would need to be balanced by the kind of moral debates indulged in by the characters in Defiance in order for it to be palatable screen material. Tarantino bypasses all that because he knows that such a dialogue is likely to be dead in the water, on top of unrealistic for the particular situation, and he has confidence that his talent as a filmmaker will be enough to convey that ambivalence without making a big, Oscar-baiting point out of it. (The look on Eli Roth’s face as he strafes the auditorium with machine gun fire is plenty enough of a nudge in this direction, and I was glad for it even as I was reveling in the story’s violent climax.) This suggestion that Jews should be excluded from tales of revenge, or even the suggestion that they ever entertain them, are the subtext, I think, of objections like Daniel Mendelsohn’s, or Jonathan Rosenbaum’s assertion that the movie is morally akin to Holocaust denial. (That Rosenbaum has yet to elaborate on his claim, at least to my awareness, is telling.)


Absent from any of these objections seems to be an awareness that Nazi baiting and use of the presence of Nazis in the history of World War II as fodder for Hollywood extravaganzas is not exactly fresh news. As I sat with my kids watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen Monday night (an activity I recommend to all parents of age-appropriate children, especially if it comes packaged with a beautiful new 35mm print of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as a second feature), my mind was whirling. Incredible how any objections that may have been raised in 1981 to Spielberg and Lucas’s appropriation of Nazi characters and imagery for their wacky WWII fantasy, which ends with Nazi evil being melted into hellish oblivion, not by Jews but by the very Hand of God, seem to have evaporated. Could this distinction between the two films in terms of how revenge is meted out be the source of the difference? Or are we just not prompted to take the Indiana Jones world as seriously because of its serial connections?

Well, guess what-- Inglourious Basterds is derived from a Hollywood line of WWII fantasies as well, from The Sands of Iwo Jima to The Dirty Dozen and Kelly’s Heroes, none of which has much more claim to historical plausibility than does Tarantino’s movie. The movies produced during World War II were recognized then, as they are now, as specific forms of propaganda meant to bolster the morale of the troops and American audiences, and as such rarely engaged much in the way of wartime atrocities or the reality of significant loss of American life. (Wayne's Iwo Jima dealt with tragedy, but was keyed more toward American uplift.) That Inglourious Basterds does deal in the historical reality of the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews in the context of a thrilling Hollywood-style spectacle (it is, in reality, quite opposite from what one might reasonably expect from Hollywood these days) is apparently reason enough to object to IB which, for Rosenbaum, exists “at the expense of real-life Holocaust victims.” It seems then that Rosenbaum ought to be having a lot more difficulty with the history of war on film than he seems to have in general. Maybe a target as big and juicy as Tarantino, the director and his duped, sycophantic audience just waiting to be deflated and held up as an example of disgusting amorality, is just too irresistible.

I’m looking forward to hearing what your feelings are about all of this, Bill. I doubt I'm far wrong in supposing that you would be pretty annoyed at anyone who tried to downplay the effect of the revenge angle in the movie, especially as a means of making the whole brew go down with less trouble. Finally, before I go to bed, I wanted to key you to old friend Jim Emerson, who is catching up on Tarantino and who weighs in on Inglourious Basterds here. I am very happy to include him in this very satisfying conversation and hope he can find time to check in with us.

Okay, let’s change it up. What did you think of the performances? I’ve heard lots of talk, even from some who loved the movie, about Brad Pitt’s insufficiencies. I’d love to turn back and talk about Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, even Mike Myers and their invaluable contributions to Tarantino’s achievement here. And amongst all this praise, are there any elements of the movie, big-scale or small-scale, that don’t work for you? Let’s hear it!

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UPDATED 8/27 1:09 p.m.

Bill has made it out of the gate with his end of this portion of our e-mail exchange. I envision him coming out to the ominous tapping sound of a baseball bat knocking its way through the tunnel arch of a bridge support, emerging into the sunlight and brandishing his words like weapon with which to lay waste to all comers. Nah, he's more subtle than that, but just as much fun to watch as, say, Donnie Donowitz himself. Take it away, Bill!

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First off, your points, and those made by Caustic, are well taken. I absolutely agree with you about the crash scene in Death Proof, despite my reservations about that film as a whole. This was slasher film violence you weren't meant to laugh off. It was mean to hurt, an idea that I loved, and which made the downhill slide that followed all the more disappointing. And I would agree with you that much of the violence in Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's follow-up to that philosophy, although I remember him saying as far back as Pulp Fiction, that when it came to his films and their use of violence, he wanted the audience to laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and then suddenly stop laughing.

My reason for being less affected in that way when it comes to his new film is a simple one, and I've pretty much said this very thing a few different ways already, but here it is again: never before was Tarantino applying his facility with on-screen violence to Nazis. I'm sure we've all read more than we cared to about the sheer demonic creativity of what the Nazis -- and not a few of the German ground soldiers -- did, the different ways to murder people, and make them suffer, that sparked their brains in the course of doing business. Having swastikas carved into their foreheads and seeing them burned alive would seem like child's play to Hitler and Himmler and Mengele (why couldn't he have been in that theater, too?).

Goldberg does indeed play very fair in that Atlantic piece -- it's a really great little article -- but as far as risking creating sympathy for the Nazis, I must say I don't quite follow him. For one thing, for a film that is so over-the-top, the characters all nevertheless feel real, which is the mark of Tarantino's talent. Were he to have gone in the direction Goldberg may have preferred, he would have had to turn Landa and the others into a cartoon, and I think it's sort of hard to truly hate a cartoon. There's no flesh or blood or mind to latch onto, nothing to recognize as human, and therefore nothing to perceive as a true aberration to humanity. And plus, obviously, I felt no sympathy for Landa. Meanwhile, does anybody, including those who view the violence as double-edged, feel any twinge of anything other than disgust for the fictional versions of Hitler and Goebbels in this film? I would imagine not. They sort of are cartoons, or, more accurately, outlines of the historical knowledge we all carry into the theater with us. No one of sound mind was in danger of feeling any pity, however tempered, when they saw Hitler's face coming apart.


Which brings me to Zoller, a character I found to be a fascinating and wholly original creation. A German war hero, much has been made of his final scene, with Shosanna, in the projection booth. After she shoots him, she gazes out at the movie screen, onto which his life story, Nation's Pride, is being projected. Her face softens, because he's just told her he didn't like watching the film, and also probably because she gets a sense of what he went through in combat. So she softens, sees that Zoller is still alive, and approaches him. What does her pity get her? A death right out of Argento, at Zoller's hands. Furthermore, let's not forget how he violently bulldozed his way into the projection booth, looking for sex. His insistence on this made his claims about finding Nation's Pride uncomfortable to sit through seem a little disingenuous. And look, very few soldiers have ever come home from war, relishing the memories of the men they've had to kill. American GIs returning from WWII were just as tortured by what they'd done as Zoller claimed to be, but does that mean that the Americans thought that what they'd done hadn't been necessary? So why should Zoller have been any different? Let's not forget that however much he may have failed to enjoy watching his exploits on screen, he'd still happily hitched his star to Joseph Fucking Goebbels, and no one can tell me that anyone who had Goebbels’s ear didn't know what the Nazis were all about. So fuck Zoller, is what I'm trying to say.

EVEN SO...yes, of course, it's not beyond Tarantino, or even me, to feel a bit of a chill as that theater goes up, and as the Bear Jew pumps round after round of ammo into the backs of terrified people in evening wear. That whole ending has a definite Italian horror film vibe to it, enhanced by the anachronistic electric sound of the Bowie song (which was written for a horror film, remember) and punctuated by that astonishing image of Shosanna's laughing face projected onto the black smoke. Right or wrong, satisfying or not, cathartic or repellent, that ending is horrifying, by definition. That doesn't mean that I don't wish some form of it had happened in reality. And as for film directors being known for talking about their films a certain way, despite their actual intentions, well, Tarantino has talked both games. So when you're watching the film, you're seeing what you see, not what he says.

It's beyond me what Goldberg's point is when he suggests that Jews should, at least in fictional representations, be free of the impulse for revenge, and I think you've said everything sayable about that point. But I would like to point your attention to a sort of review of Inglourious Basterds by Jeff Wells (and perhaps as a result open up a can of worms that I'd rather leave alone). As I say, it's not actually a review -- it's more of an attempt to destroy a film that he hates, but which is becoming successful against his wishes -- and in it he focuses on one of the film's other controversial scenes, which is that baseball bat-killing of the German officer by the Bear Jew (Eli Roth). Allow me to quote:

“The bottom line is that Pitt and Roth, who plays Sgt. Donnie Donowitz (a.k.a., 'the Bear Jew’), behave like butt-ugly sadists in this scene while Sammel behaves like a man of honor, character and dignity.

Tarantino has Sammel defy Pitt by saying ‘fuck you and your Jew dogs’ so it'll seem right and fair that an anti-Semite gets his head beaten into mashed potatoes with a baseball bat. But what speaks louder is (a) Sammel's expression, which is clearly that of a man of intelligence and perception, (b) his eyes in particular, which have a settled quality that indicates a certain regular-Joe decency, and (c) his refusal to give Pitt information about nearby German troops that would lead to their deaths if he spilled.

Isn't this is what men of honor and bravery do in wartime -- i.e., refuse to help the enemy kill their fellow soldiers, even if it means their own death?”


Dennis, as you're well aware, you and I occupy different areas of the Political Spectrum, American Division. But we've always gotten along well, and I thoroughly respect you and your views. And what I'm about to say doesn't even have much to do with "Liberals" per se, because Jeffrey Wells is obviously a special case, in that he is both a lunatic and an asshole. But nevertheless, my first point is that my take on Tarantino has always been that he is very much an apolitical filmmaker. That takes nothing away from what you say about his sensitivity or humanity, which points I agree with; I just don't believe that he makes films that he intends to fall in a Left or Right-wing category. Second, despite my robust embracing of this film, I would never for a second attempt to claim Inglourious Basterds for "my side". Nevertheless, some critics have attempted to offer the film to my side, after giving it a slap upside the head, based on its approach to revenge and American violence during wartime. While I must politely decline the offer that I think is inherent in some of the things Wells has said about the film, and which Rosenbaum has flat-out stated, I must make mention of the fact that, in the course of my travels, I've found that some people do not like it when you accuse them of steeping their world-views in the concept of moral equivalency. And all I can suggest to them is that if they so dislike being associated with moral equivalency, then perhaps they shouldn't embody the concept quite so thoroughly.

I suppose that's what is known as a "digression". My apologies, and moving on...

As for performances...well, I honestly don't think there's a bad one in the bunch. That opinion doesn't only include Mike Meyers, who I think is perfectly amusing in his small role, but Eli Roth, who has gotten mostly slammed, even by the film's admirers. Roth doesn't have a great deal to do in the film, as far as range is concerned, but what he does need to project -- bloodlust, glee, rage, a Boston accent -- I think he gets across just fine. I will say that in that last shot of the Bear Jew you referred to earlier, I didn't see any hint of any emotion other than cold satisfaction. But you've seen the film twice, and I haven't, so for now I'll defer to you on that.

And Pitt is a blast. I think he's made his three best films, and given his three best performances, and the last few years, with The Assassination of Jesse James by Etc. and So On, Burn After Reading, and this. I don't know what kind of performance people would rather Pitt have given. He's playing an over-the-top, as written, Tennessee hillbilly who demands that his men scalp their Nazi victims, and the lines he's given to deliver -- which you and I have been shamelessly pilfering for our post titles -- would hardly work with a more muted reading. Again, I think he's sensational, and I don't know what else could be desired from the role.

Of course, there are two performances that are objectively unassailable: Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa, and Melanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus. There's not much I can say about either that won't come off as gushing, but among my favorite moments from Laurent is her release of breath, fear, panic and rage when Landa finally steps out of her sight in the restaurant. Her eyes and breathing tell the whole story of that scene. Waltz is a revelation, or maybe that word only applies if you've seen the performer before, but didn't realize they were quite so good. I'm sure I'm not alone in never having even heard of Waltz before, and yet you can't look away from him from the second he first appears. He's just so damn smooth, so assured, and so purely that character. Where the hell has this guy been? I read recently that he's primarily a TV actor, so I can only count Tarantino lucky that Waltz decided to audition.

As for what didn't work for me in the film, there's honestly not much. I can only remember one moment that caused me to actually worry, and that was when three of the Basterds are called to employ their facility with the Italian language. It's not that I didn't chuckle, but generally it was way too broad for me, even in this film. Ultimately, it didn't matter a bit, because as a plot point it was completely irrelevant, because the only character to whom they tried to pass themselves off knew the score going in, and wasn't fooled for a second. So it's just a bit of comedy that didn't quite land. I was also briefly unsure about the Bowie song, but as I said before that ended up tying in beautifully with the giallo tone of the last half hour or so.

So what about you? And what's next!?

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25 comments:

Ryan H. said...

This discussion is fantastic. I've been sad to see that much of the discussion of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS has been nowhere near this level of analysis and understanding, and has refused to really look at what is a remarkable impressive and layered tale.

Food for thought regarding the status of BASTERDS as a Jewish vengeance story: the Basterds echo an Old Testament hero, Samson, in their mission and brutality, and the climax of BASTERDS has more than few echoes of the close of the Samson narrative, where the Philistines are destroyed by the collapse of the temple where they're celebrating.

Anonymous said...

I just want to say, this discussion has been the best thing I've read on Basterds so far. Which is saying something.

In regards to the Raiders comparison. I think the biggest difference is that Tarantino's Nazis are given more humanity, and Spielberg's never exist as anything more than cartoonish villains. In my opinion this gives Tarantino's film alot more depth and makes it a richer film. (I stole that adjective from you, but it really is the perfect adjective for this film)

bill r. said...

Eesh, great stuff Dennis. It'll be a little while before I'm able to respond. You've given me a lot to think about. Plus also I hate work.

Tony Dayoub said...

"Maybe in interviews Tarantino downplays this because it’s not quite in tune with his own self-portrait as an artist-provocateur. But then, film history is rife with film directors who talk a certain game in interviews, while the films themselves, for richer or for poorer, reveal talent (or lack of it) and intentions that the director may have glossed over during his act of self-promotion."

So true... Spike Lee comes to mind as someone who's a bit of a blowhard when it comes to promotion, but whose films betray a certain sensitivity not on display in public appearances.

In this case, QT seems to be playing down his look at the complications arising from inverting the roles of Jews and Nazis (to some extent) in the film's denouement. But a canny self-promoter like QT knows this wouldn't be the best subject to bring up if you're trying to attract people to see your movie.

The Caustic Ignostic said...

Last night I was talking with a friend about how important fame and infamy are in the film, as both elements of the plot and motifs. Many of the characters are celebrities of a kind: Aldo, Donny, Hugo, Landa, Bridget, Zoller, and of course the real-world characters. The film's characters often discuss fame and infamy, and recognition of individuals (or lack of recognition) is a key force behind many of the film's pivotal moments.

This has bearing on the film's subtext of moral ambiguity because QT quite plainly establishes a mirroring of Landa and Raines in the first few scenes vis-a-vis their concern with celebrity. In the opening scene at the French farmhouse, Landa is relying as much on his reputation as his words and actions to intimidate LaPadite into giving up the Dreyfuses. Landa explicitly asks LaPadite what he has heard about him (Landa) and about his nickname, "the Jew-Hunter." In Chapter Two, Raines has a very similar conversation with the captured German officer, asking if he has heard of the Basterds, himself (Raines), Donny, and Hugo. Both Landa and Raines are operating on a playing field where celebrity (or notoriety) itself is a kind of currency. As Raines spells out, a reputation (even a bad one) does half your work for you.

To me, then, this is QT highlighting similarities between the methods of the Allies and the Nazis, if only a recognition that they operate within the same landscape. I don't think it's a repugnant comparison, because it ultimately draws attention to the fact that the authoritarian and genocidal aspects of the Third Reich are not essential aspects of warfare. QT solidifies this but placing a subtle bit of punctuation on the Landa-Raines twinning, when Landa expresses disappointment that Raines has insufficient regard for him. Landa obviously respects Raines on some professional level, and assumes that Raines has equivalent respect. Of course, Raines doesn't, because in the end Landa is a Nazi, and that means he's a moral monster, period.

Interestingly, the one person who lives outside the world of celebrity of Shosanna, as indicated by her ignorance of Zoller's identity.

The Caustic Ignostic said...

I think a comparison of Death Proof and Basterds is quite apt. The two-part structure of Death Proof is necessary in order to clearly establish Stuntman Mike's mislgynistic psychopathy *and* his modus operandi. If Death Proof consisted only of its second half, we would have no context for the violent victory over Mike, robbing the car chase scenes of their specific tension (rendering it little more than Duel with muscle cars) and also making the slaying of Mike more questionable. QT wants us unabashedly on the women's side.

I think what we're seeing in IB is a similar dynamic, but where we as viewers are expected to provide the first "half" of the film from our historical and pop cultural knowledge. QT doesn't really need to show us that the Nazis are bad guys who do bad things does he? Nope, he trusts that we will be on the Basterds' and Shosanna's side, just as we should be. He does show us Landa's cruelties in particular, but that's largely so we learn to fear him as an individual within the context of the plot, and not so much so that we delight in his fate. (Donny's riddling of Hitler with bullets, practically disintegrating him, strikes me as the equivalent of Abenathy's triumphant, likely fatal heel-kick to Stuntman Mike's face.) As I've said before, Landa kind of gets off light in the grand scheme of things. Certainly Landa's murder of the Dreyfuses and Bridget alone merit more than that swastika to the noggin?

Don Mancini said...

Dennis, as you've pointed out, the "Jewish Revenge" genre is nothing new, not even in the realm of pulp fiction, and the films derived from same. How about our beloved BOYS FROM BRAZIL, written by (the Jewish) Ira Levin, in which a barely fictionalized Simon Wiesenthal-type hunts Josef Mengele and his army of Hitler clones. Olivier even got an Oscar nomination for his performance. I don't particularly remember any cries of outrage against either the book or the movie -- at least, not on any moral or ethical grounds. (Possibly aesthetic ones.) Of course, if Tarantino had directed it, he would have altered the humanistic ending, and gleefully slaughtered all the teen-aged Hitlers.

Or how about the '70s-era LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL, in which an anti-Zionist actress is recruited and brainwashed by Israeli intelligence to help assassinate a PLO terrorist? The novel was a best-seller, and the film, starring Diana Keaton, while not a big hit, was certainly high-profile. I don't remember any outcry against this one, either, but does it sound any more "insensitive" to history, or to the Jewish people, than INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS?

Don Mancini said...

That should read "less insensitive."

bill r. said...

I just want everyone to know that I realize in that last paragraph that "felicity" should be "facility", and that, if it was, this would mean that I'd used "facility" twice. So just imagine I said "proficiency" instead. Thanks!

Also -- "The Bear Jew". Where the hell did that name come from? No idea, but I love it.

bill r. said...

Oh, damn it! Eli Roth does a Boston accent, not a Brooklyn accent.

Dennis, you're supposed to fix all my mistakes!

Dennis Cozzalio said...

The typos are definitely on me, Bill. I did a spell check before I ran it, but I think I accidentally replaced the fixed version with the old one. Sorry about that. Accents and all are fixed at this point! And your points weren't diluted in any way, regardless.

Don Mancini said...

Bill, I agree with you about the performances, and specifically about Eli Roth. His getting slammed was predictable, given that he is famously Tarantino's friend, and given that, like his friend, Roth is successful, ubiquitous in the media, and never one to hide his light under a bushel. But I thought he was good in the movie. Physically, he doesn't live up to the hulking image conjured by the moniker "Bear Jew," and that does seem odd. Nor is he, say, a surprisingly puny shrimp whose swagger and myth belie his diminutive presence -- which might have been funny. Still, I thought he effectively projected righteous rage, especially in that final Tony Montana-like image of him (SPOILER!!!) machine-gunning Hitler's face to pulp.

jim emerson said...

Hey, guys -- Imagine my surprise and delight, if you will, when I was finishing up my fifth or sixth post about "IB" (putting together various people's arguments about aspects of the movie -- including lots of quotes from QT -- and letting them bounce off one another) when a Cinema Viewfinder post on Facebook alerted me to this fantastic conversation you're having. I immediately went back and injected a couple of your comments into the conversation/debate I'd built, which is now live. Once I posted it, I started reading your exchange from the very beginning -- and it's so great to see you exploring the same things that interest me about the movie.

Allow me to inject one thing that I've been thinking and writing about: Obviously, on certain planes of plot, character and genre this movie has to do with WWII and Nazis and (the much-used phrase) some sort of "Jewish revenge fantasy." But I think Tarantino's primary motivation is to GET YOU, the viewer. Maybe in kind of a sadistic way, but what he's primarily after is to 1) make a movie he'd want to see; and 2) give you the jolts and surprises he knows he can deliver. Everything else, I believe, is pretty much tertiary, maybe even incidental. I didn't detect the least bit of ambivalence about the slaughter of Nazis in this movie (and the closest it comes to a moral position, I think, is the Basterds' branding of Nazi foreheads so they can never deny who they were, what they did, what they fought for). There's nothing like, say, the moment in "Carrie" where Betty Buckley's coach meets a cruel fate she did not deserve in the firestorm of Carrie's temper. From what I see on the screen, I just don't think QT is interested in that kind of troubling (painful) moral ambivalence. If he were, there are more effective ways of making you "laugh and laugh and laugh and then stop laughing" -- and he's more than capable of pulling that off.

Basically, as I've written, emotional engagement is not something QT's movies excel at -- and I don't think they mean to. (Some say Hitchcock and De Palma, for example, are just technicians, but they're positively operatic compared to QT.) Dennis, you mention the amount of time spent with the girls in the first half of "Death Proof." I think that long scene at the bar (also featuring Basterds Eli Roth and Omar Doom) turns out to be something of a rehearsal for the tavern scene in "IB." It even ends similarly -- with the device of repeating the moment of impact to show the fate of each individual character.

Christopher Long wrote at my place: "For me, both the strengths and weaknesses of "Basterds" stem from the fact that, as Jonathan Rosenbaum, mentions, it refers not to any historical reality but to movie depictions of that reality (Nazis, the Holocaust). We're smack dab in Baudrillard territory now where signs no longer have any direct source in "reality" but only to the web of previous signs in other fictional constructions. You could shrug your shoulders and say "Well, that's post-modernism." Or is it post-post-modernism? I lose track...." (There's more, which is well worth reading.) To which I replied, in part: "It's not a Jewish revenge fantasy -- it's a semotician's wet dream!!! Seriously, this is good stuff, Chris. And, as I say, I don't disagree with your description of QT's movies as "hermetic." They are essays about movies, and the ones I enjoy, I enjoy on that level."

Just wanted to throw that out there; love to hear what you both make of it. Hope everybody's feeling better!

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Jeez, folks, Bill and I are coming to the end of our allotted time exchanging e-mails and ideas about this crazy, wonderful, obviously not easily digestible movie, but I hope that does not mean that the conversation will necessarily stop, either here, at Bill’s place, at Jim’s or Greg’s or anywhere else. As long as there’s something to say, I’m glad that there seems to be an awareness of where to come to say it, a place where as long as civility rules there’s always room for thoughts of every stripe. I say this having spent a good portion of the evening, time I probably would have spent formulating my final thoughts to Bill, sparring with none other than Jonathan Rosenbaum over at The Kind of Face You Hate. Bill and Greg and I tossed it around with the esteemed writer for an exchange or two, and while I think there’s pretty clear disparity between Rosenbaum’s ideas and mine or Greg’s, the point at which the argument came to rest (at least for the moment) is one of agreeing to disagree, at least about what constitutes valid historical reality on film. If you’re following these comments with interest, you’ll surely want to check out the waters over at Bill’s joint.

But before I check out and start my final post to Bill, a few comments about your comments. First of all, I have never been happier with the spirit and substance of the conversation available on this blog than I have been during this week. That this movie could inspire so many divergent trains of thought and awareness really does testify to the folly of dismissing it outright, whatever your conclusions happen to be. Ignostic, I really appreciated your pointing out the motifs of fame and infamy that are recurrent in the movie. On reflection, it seems like an obvious point, but it’s because Tarantino has done such a fine job of weaving it into the fabric of the film’s narrative that it doesn’t stick out as obvious or belabored. I love too how you make the observation of how QT draws parallels between Raine and Landa, and the methods of the Allies and the Nazis. This paralleling is worth considering, not only for the reasons you bring up, but because they lead us also to make note of the comparisons Tarantino draws between the guffawing Third Reich crowd getting off on Zoller’s mounting body count and the satisfaction his own audience will be taking soon in the demise of these bastards (no misspelling). This is not to say that one equals the other—he’s just interested in making sure you know what you’re going to be laughing at.

(I love this from your post, CI: “I don't think it's a repugnant comparison, because it ultimately draws attention to the fact that the authoritarian and genocidal aspects of the Third Reich are not essential aspects of warfare. QT solidifies this but placing a subtle bit of punctuation on the Landa-Raines twinning, when Landa expresses disappointment that Raines has insufficient regard for him. Landa obviously respects Raines on some professional level, and assumes that Raines has equivalent respect. Of course, Raines doesn't, because in the end Landa is a Nazi, and that means he's a moral monster, period.”)

And needless to say, I am on board with your comparison of Donny with Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) and her heel through Mike’s skull at the end of Death Proof. Exceedingly glad to have you here in the mix, CI.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Don, thanks so much for bringing up The Boys of Brazil (“Our beloved”):

“Written by (the Jewish) Ira Levin, in which a barely fictionalized Simon Wiesenthal-type hunts Josef Mengele and his army of Hitler clones. Olivier even got an Oscar nomination for his performance. I don't particularly remember any cries of outrage against either the book or the movie -- at least, not on any moral or ethical grounds. (Possibly aesthetic ones.) Of course, if Tarantino had directed it, he would have altered the humanistic ending, and gleefully slaughtered all the teen-aged Hitlers.”

I never thought I’d say this, but wow, I would love to see THAT movie! Who could possibly match the bizarre ham-tastic trifecta of Olivier, Peck (as Mengele) and James Mason as a mincing SS enforcer, though? To say nothing of the brilliant awful Jeremy Black as the Boys. The closest thing I remember in terms of any kind of objection was Pauline Kael’s observation that it seemed strange to have these Nazis, including a real-life monster, operating in a cartoon mode. But she didn’t find it offensive so much as irredeemably silly. I would knock the “irredeemably” off of that, because there’s so much to enjoy in this Sir Low Grade production. It is interesting, though, that beside the obvious difference between a war film and a speculative bit of science fiction (based in fact), it seems that the current bedwetting going on about Tarantino’s movie could just as easily apply to this one, or countless other fictions that appropriate history to their own ends. Yet somehow, after seeing The Boys from Brazil countless times and enjoying it on its own broad, clunky terms, I still seem to be able to understand the Holocaust as a serious matter, and quite separate from the trashy universe in which The Boys from Brazil spins its wheels. How is this possible??!!

Don, it has been great fun talking about all this with you (though I suspect it’ll be even more fun when we finally get to see the movie together next week), and I really am glad you took time out to be part of the conversation here and over at Bill’s. We both appreciate your perspective and your energy.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Jim! Finally, another movie to which I feel like devoting a week’s worth of discussion to. We had fun with Speed Racer (I more than you, I suspect!), but I just couldn’t get into the whole Dark Knight debate, as uninspired by the movie as I was. I’m glad a few more people feel like jumping in on Basterds than did Speed Racer, though it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm much at all to be in the minority with a movie I loved so much. Anyway, thanks for all you’re doing to gather everyone’s thoughts on this rich argument/discussion we’re all having and enjoying, and thanks for including us in your fun.

“I didn't detect the least bit of ambivalence about the slaughter of Nazis in this movie (and the closest it comes to a moral position, I think, is the Basterds' branding of Nazi foreheads so they can never deny who they were, what they did, what they fought for). There's nothing like, say, the moment in Carrie where Betty Buckley's coach meets a cruel fate she did not deserve in the firestorm of Carrie's temper. From what I see on the screen, I just don't think QT is interested in that kind of troubling (painful) moral ambivalence.”

This is one area where I think we diverge, and to the degree I’ve already examined it, I don’t think there’s a moment as plainly powerful as the one you describe in Carrie that causes us to question the onslaught of terror in which an innocent (or at least well-intended) person gets victimized. Shoshanna’s fate is sealed by her own actions; that circumstances deal her a last-minute card from the bottom of the deck which steals her last moment of triumph out from underneath her doesn’t really count toward what you’re talking about. But I do think that QT is interested in a degree of this moral ambivalence. It may not come crashing front and center, and I certainly don’t think he would ever hit you over the head with it (he’s too interested in hitting you over the head with other things), but I think it’s there. Maybe it’s an indication that I think more highly of Eli Roth’s performance than the average viewer seems to (Don and Bill excepted), but in his furious strafing of the crowd as the cinema burns (assisted as he is by the aestheticized, slow-motion scrambling of those poor bastards on the auditorium level courtesy of his director), I don’t think it was my imagination that Roth and Tarantino communicate just a hair’s-breadth frisson of understanding that the Bear Jew may have finally confronted something bigger than his own thirst for Nazi blood. He’s projecting onto the crowd which is splattering before his very eyes (and hands, and smoking muzzle) a new understanding of what it is to herd human beings into a room (or a barn, or a warehouse) and orchestrate their deaths. The moment is there to be registered, but the movie is not going to collapse if it doesn’t resonate with you. Again, I’m not saying this kind of twinge is Tarantino’s main concern, even if we can also see the comparisons he makes between Audie Murphy and Frederick Zoller, the bloodlust enthusiasm the Third Reich moviegoers express for the fictionalized antics of their hero and the cheers that will soon rise when pieces of Hitler’s skull decorate the carpeting of his opera box seat. But I do think that Tarantino gives us the opportunity to reflect upon these considerations even as we get swept up up in the swelling of revenge carried out successfully.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

One last item, Jim:

"It's not a Jewish revenge fantasy -- it's a semotician's wet dream!!!... I don't disagree with your description of QT's movies as ‘hermetic.’ They are essays about movies, and the ones I enjoy, I enjoy on that level."

Well, I would say that it is, on one level, exactly that—a Jewish revenge fantasy, or more precisely, a revenge fantasy constructed on behalf of the Jews. But that it is not just that is precisely what makes Inglourious Basterds a movie worth loving, and talking about, and sifting through. I absolutely do love it for the fact that it is also a semiotician’s wet dream. On one level, and increasingly so, that has become one way to vividly describe Tarantino’s methodology, and that it can be so goddamned entertaining at the same time seems nothing less than a miracle.

Though it may be coming to a close here (and I really hope not), I’m looking forward to seeing how this conversation continues. This is the most fun I’ve had writing for this blog all year!

Anonymous said...

It's been a pleasure reading along with this conversation! Not to mention all the great comments.

I think it speaks to the richness of Inglourious Basterds that there is so much written about it. I mean, I saw it a week ago, have written about 2000 words about it, and I'm STILL lapping up everything that's written about it, I'm still thinking about it, and I still feel like there's so much to say... I'm not entirely sure I agree with Raine's final proclamation, but I'll definitely see it again soon, and who knows, I might come to agree: I think the script of IB is as good as anything QT's done before, and he gets better at the visual stuff with every movie he makes. The aestheticism of the film is not that talked about, but it's beautifully shot, and filmed in a deliberate, precise way that's rarely seen any more.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Sarcastig, everyone: Vis-a-vis Tarantino's developing visual sense and the spectacular look of this movie in particular, there's a great piece at Bright Lights After Dark which poses the question, is Robert Richardson the best cinematographer currently working in films? Enjoy!

jim emerson said...

Dennis, if we're lucky we get at least one movie a year that's got enough going on we can really dig into it like this. A few more brief observations/clarifications:

1) Robert Richardson is, no doubt, a huge contributor to the growing visual richness in QT's work. Happy B-Day to him!

2) My comment about it not being a Jewish revenge fantasy but a semiotician's wet dream (yes, I like the joke -- but I'm serious!) certainly wasn't intended as an either/or, but as a leap from one layer to another in the movie's multi-layered world. As I said (and I think you did, too), one of the great pleasures of "IB" is that it's never just one thing at a time, it's always many things at once.

3) I still don't read Chapter 5 the way you do, mainly because the only familiar faces he singles out in the crowd are Major Nazis. (Hitler and Goebbels, of course, are in the box above the crowd.) I'm going to have to go back and watch how QT shoots this, but as I recall, he stays above the crowd, at a distance looking down on them, and in many shots you don't even see faces. If he had established a few individuals earlier in the crowd, and then showed their horrible deaths at the hands of the Basterds and/or Shoshanna, I might have felt differently (as is actually FELT for the Nazi victims, and felt differently about what QT was doing in the scene). As it is (SPOILER) the only deaths that have much impact are the beautifully visualized shooting of Shoshanna in the booth (although we knew she and her lover/projectionist were going to go up with the theater anyway, since they'd barricaded themselves in) and the death of the German soldier in Chapter 2 -- simply because he registers as a solid presence when he refuses to give away Nazi locations. But QT backs way off in showing his death (also from above), too. Again, I'm looking forward to revisiting the movie this weekend, for a chance to see more closely how certain moments are put together.

(But I really wish those two unnecessarily distracting Samuel L. Jackson intrusions weren't in the film...)

Anonymous said...

jim, in regards to the point about never really getting in on the ground level at the end there. i read the script this week, and one of the interesting differences is the omar doom character is actually trapped in the auditorium with the nazis. also, eli roth's character dies prior to the fire so not only is there no shooting hitler, but no reference for those POV shots you're talking about.

would that have worked better? it's possible. but i'm happy with the film we got.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

"I'm going to have to go back and watch how QT shoots this, but as I recall, he stays above the crowd, at a distance looking down on them, and in many shots you don't even see faces. If he had established a few individuals earlier in the crowd, and then showed their horrible deaths at the hands of the Basterds and/or Shoshanna, I might have felt differently."

It's fascinating to me how people who see the same imagery can detect different things from it. When I thing of the thing that triggers that sense of dawning horror for me, it's exactly that shot from above down into the (sort of faceless) crowd, juxtaposed with the psychotic rage in Roth's eyes that I do feel is momentarily clouded by doubt. As we all believe, however, agreement on whether or not that frisson is intentional, or even there at all, doesn't impede the enjoyment of the film-- it may in fact enhance it!

I wish i could talk more now, Jim, but my family awaits their chauffeur to take them on a weekend getaway to Huntington Beach! I will check in later, however! Hope you enjoy the last installment!

larry aydlette said...

Isn't Shoshanna's "fate" sealed anyway, whether she's shot by Zoller or not? She's gonna burn up in that fire, just like her boyfriend. I never got the sense that she was going to escape; which, in fact, makes it even more of an emotionally powerful suicide bombing mission, because we have come to learn and care about her.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Absolutely, Larry. It probably could have been expressed more clearly, but that's what I meant by her fate "being sealed by her own actions." In other words, she's set it up so that no one escapes, not even her or her boyfriend. The cruel twist is that she doesn't get to see the greatest scene ever played out in her cinema with her own eyes, because by the time it arrives she's dead on the floor, several moments earlier and by a means much different than she expected.

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