Roger Ebert writes of seeing "Inglourious Basterds" for the first time at Cannes: "I knew Tarantino had made a considerable film, but I wanted it to settle, and to see it again. I'm glad I did. Like a lot of real movies, you relish it more the next time." Keith Uhlich says he's "loving [it] more and more as I reflect on it." Glenn Kenny has already seen it twice and has offered "a structural breakdown" of the film's five chapters.
And Karina Longworth -- well, she has a whole new take on "Inglorious Basterds" since she saw it in that French place last spring:
When I first saw "Inglourious Basterds" at Cannes, I walked out of the theater and felt like something was ... off. I rushed to my computer and wrote a dismissive review. "Quentin Tarantino," I wrote, "has never seemed to strain so hard to just make A Quentin Tarantino Film." I complained about the film's pacing, the quality of its dialogue, the excessive exposition. "'Basterds' plays almost like an assembly edit, defiantly presented as-is," I concluded.
And then I saw the film again, this week, in New York, in a version said to be different from the one I saw at Cannes. Some scenes are said to be shorter, although I couldn't tell you specifically which ones; one scene excised before the French premiere has been reinstated. After that screening, I went back and read what I wrote about the film from France, and cringed. The review of "Inglourious Basterds" I wrote in May simply does not apply to the film I saw with the same title this week.
This happens sometimes. We don't talk about it much, but it happens. Sometimes movies change -- and Tarantino and The Weinstein Company have made no secret of the fact that 'Basterds' has changed since its Cannes screenings....
[...]
But I honestly don't know what has changed more since May: the cut of "Inglourious Basterds," or me.
Maybe this is unfair to you, the reader -- maybe film critics shouldn't change. Maybe we should go out of our way to lead extraordinarily stabile lives, to avoid financial stress and familial trauma, to not get depressed or even date for fear of swinging too far towards any emotional extreme in the hopes of maintaining absolute objectivity. If that's the case, I didn't do what I should've done -- I've been sent through the wringer by all the above over the last three months, and come out a different person. But the world changes, whether or not I stay the same, and at the rate this one is changing, it's unrealistic to expect something as trifling as a movie opinion to stay fixed indefinitely....
Very nicely put. Times change, too. As I like to say, movies are neither made nor seen in a vacuum. Or as Arnaud Desplechin said: "You can't stop a film from meaning things." Even if it doesn't mean what the maker, or anybody else, wants it to mean. Art, like everything else, evolves, along with the people who imbue it with meaning. (That last sentence is really about the idea of god, but don't tell anyone.)
Tarantino has never expressed a desire to make political films, but, given the pocket-synopsis of this one (victims torture and kill the torturers and killers), he can't blame anyone for seeing parallels to post-9/11 American history. Ten or 20 years from now, when the movie is removed from its current context, those echoes may seem insignificant. Is it really about Abu Ghraib? Is it even about World War II? Or is it more importantly another movie-movie wish-fulfillment fantasy of the Tarantino kind?
Hey Jim,
I read something once that discussed the way the meaning of a particular work of art evolves over time to the person observing it because of the different experiences one brings to it based on their current stage of life and all of the respective baggage that comes along with it.
The thing is this piece I read used a specific term for this phenomenon. Do you or any of your readers know what it is? This has been eating at me for years now.
JE: Roger Ebert has this wonderful passage in his Great Movies review of "La Dolce Vita":
http://bit.ly/hjSMc
Tarantino has "Team America" in his top 20 movies, and i can't help but see a little of them and their gung-ho brutality in the "basterds" (even though I'm juts going off the trailers/reviews)
No man every crosses the same river twice, because he's not the same man, and it's not the same river.
I haven’t seen Inglorious Basterds, but I get the feel of it somehow. And I can’t help but wonder about the Brando monologue from Apocalypse Now and what it all means. Or the same profound truth, shown visually in Full Metal Jacket in that final sequence.
Maybe Tarantino’s soldiers believe in their war. That makes the movie not just defy history, but defy the genre itself. Or much of what accounts for the great/cream of the genre.
I wonder how much more potent it would have been if it was Vietnam.
Movies do change, if the director is George Lucas.
Actually I would be fascinated to see Quentin Tarantino go more into detail of why he didn't like The Matrix sequels. I know I didn't like them, but I'd like to see Tarantino's views on the subject.
I wonder how much more potent it would have been if it was Vietnam.
But you can have no idea about any of the things you said, because you haven't seen the movie. I'm tired of this phenomenon of people reading a lot of reaction to a film and then discussing the film in a way only people who've seen the film ought to do.
JE: I'm not pretending to "have any idea" about "Inglourious Basterds." Read the piece. Everyone quoted has seen the movie -- twice (that being the point of the post). Now it's up to the rest of us to see it and continue the discussion. It's now Saturday morning. The movie opened in theaters yesterday. Let the discussion begin... (And gimme a break -- I've been in the hospital with heart problems three times already this month and it's been a bit tough to get to screenings.)
Jim, reread my post, including the part where I quoted another poster. Wasn't to you. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
JE: Thanks for clearing that up, Paul. The way these comments come in, it's sometimes hard to tell to whom they're addressed. Anyway, I'm going to try to catch a 2:30 matinee of "IB" today, just so I can weigh in with my own observations!
Finally, somebody admits it! Critics change and, thus, so can their opinions! It's OK to do it! The bigger crime would be to keep standing by something you don't believe in now. Thank you Karina!
Sorry but in my discussions with friends I always say a sign of a bad critic is the critic who never changes their mind. Sure, we all have our movies where nobody can talk us out of what we see in it. But for time to pass and no changes in opinions ever? How could any one person ever be right about every movie?
And if I wasn't allowed to change my opinion about anything, I'd still be that 12 year old kid who thinks "American History X" is, like, the greatest movie everrrr...
Or I'd be that 19 year old kid who thought the characters in "Point Break" are all idiots. A year later I've returned to Bigelow's films, especially "Strange Days", because my view of 'what matters in life' has become more uncertain. Who am I to say living for entertaining adrenaline isn't the most fulfilling philosophical choice one can make? When there's probably nothing in life, spending your time conquering thrills could be a smart idea.
Now I'm not gonna go off and become a bomb defuser for kicks... But I might react differently to a movie about that than I would have in the days where I was sure there had to be something of a little more meaning out there in life... Long story I won't tell short, I'm not so sure now and that does change my view of films, particularly films made mostly for fun - Tarantino's work.
Tony Dayoub: Do you mean "hermeneutic circle"?
All of my worst fears about "Inglourious Basterds" were confirmed when I saw the movie last night: it really IS a deranged version of Jewish revenge porn. Tarantino has this fetish for revenge stories, and I don't understand why; apparently he would be comfortable if the laws of this country made it so that citizens could freely take the law into their own hands whenever they so choose.
I take a moral stand, therefore, against Tarantino's right-wing extremist politics. Not that I'm saying he's a Republican- a "hip" guy like him no doubt voted for Obama- but his movies seem to suggest a fascination with vigilantism and, worse, even his support for capital punishment and the death penalty. Personally, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, Jim.
Two responses to Adam Zanzie's comment (because I had the same fears but then saw the film and loved it)...
Doesn't the movie make a pretty persuasive argument (in that movie's universe at least) that, overall, the Nazi party - the most dangerous group in the history of Earth - had to be met with extreme hostility or else? A necessary evil as they say...
And, more importantly now, I think your underestimating Tarantino's nuance. The 'Bear Jew' scene and the very end of the bar scene show two Nazis killed that... maybe weren't bad guys? The first was given a medal for bravery, won't give up information, meets his death with grace... The way he's acted you get the sense that this is a man who genuinely believes he's on the right side... And, if he were in an American uniform instead, would be an exemplary soldier. And then the Basterds just... You know. So there's the first scene where, if we're a viewer watching closely, a flag is raised and the Basterds seem to have killed a man who is innocent by intent (though ignorant of Nazi atrocities perhaps). Later, a new father who has every reason to be afraid to compromise with the Basterds and then ultimately does only for a vicious woman to... You know. Was that a fair killing? I think the human in both those killed characters comes out in their scenes and I didn't cheer, I cringed...
On the other hand Adam, I respect your basic worry... It is true though that we're still waiting for a definitive movie about how most Germans at the time were just scared people following in line to protect their family... Sure, they were 'wrong' but what an unlucky time to be alive there. Would any of us have done any better? Maybe, maybe not.
Still, as Ebert said at the end of his "Triumph of the Will" review: "Hitler curls his fingers back to his palm before withdrawing the salute each time, with a certain satisfaction. What a horrible man. What insanity that so many Germans embraced him. A sobering thought: Most of the people on the screen were dead within a few years."
It definitely affects a viewing experience if you see a movie alone or with an audience (and what kind of audience). Not to mention seeing a movie on home video or in a theater. It's not just the size of the screen or film vs. digital format, but as Stanley Kauffmann has said, it's the feeling of "going out" to the movies.
Responding to Karlos' thoughtful reply, that was indeed what I thought at first; that we were supposed to feel pity for the Nazi executed by the Bear Jew, as well as the Nazi father who is shot dead. But the audience that I saw the film with was laughing and cheering during these scenes, and that led me to wonder if maybe that was how we were meant to react. That Tarantino wanted us to be pleased that they meet their demises.
If he has said otherwise, by all means provide a quote- his moral decency still remains a troubling mystery to me.
JE: I don't think Tarantino conceives of the movie in moral terms (which, you may argue, is a moral decision in itself). I think he sees this one (which I saw yesterday) as a revenge cartoon about the mythmaking power of cinema. I plan to write more about the meaning of that phrase later today or tomorrow...
Tarantino has no moral opinions, or at least none can be found in his movies - including this one.
As mentioned, the contrast between the noble (is there a more noble line than "For bravery" right before being brutally killed, w/o flinching?) Nazi in the first Basterds scene and the loudmouth savage ahole played by Roth is definitely in the film. The contrast was certainly supposed to be there. Tarantino meant for Pitt in that scene to be cool and funny, but he went out of his way to make the German seem noble and Roth seem like a dbag. So when audiences cheer, I think Tarantino is playing them.
This is all brilliantly commented on later when the Nazis watch their own version of this movie. It's impossible (to my mind, anyway) to say Tarantino is condoning the moral or intellectual content of the film when he goes out of his way to depict certain players of the good side as bad, and the bad side as good, and then later makes a huge commentary about the nature of the viewing experience by having the Nazis have their own version of this.
Now as to whether his films in general have a revenge/vigilantism habit, sure they do. But to say this is a reflection of his morality or his politics is unfair - lot of liberals, lot of pacifist types even, like violent movies. There's nothing for it. What you're seeing then seems less likely to be Tarantino's intellectual or moral preoccupations, as his cinematic ones. The only time in this film, IMO, he gets into the territory of intellectual preoccupations, like we expect from an art director, is in the film's content on movie-watching. Otherwise I think it's all just a lot of flash, a guy who loves movies making a movie full of the kind of things he loves in movies. Same as he's always been.
Before his death, Stanley Kubrick used to make ther EVENT FILM for filmmakers. Now I believe this mantle has been passed to Quentin Tarantino. Who else now has developped such a distinct tone and style as Tarantino? There are a few (Roy Aundersson, Guy Maddin). But Tarantino is at the forefront. Is there anyone here who honestly did not cheer the climax of Inglorious Basterds.
I believe he does reveal his opinions but does not let them get in the way. One second a character might do something reprehensible and the next, we'll applaud that character for his actions (The Bear Jew for example). He reveals more to us about US then his characters.
My immediate response after seeing his latest film is a filmmaker expressing his joy of film. Giving us distinct characters who seem to relish the thought of themselves only as themselves and no other context. Only later after pondering it do I see a bigger picture. After seeing countless war movies going to the effort of making them about honor and nobility, it took Quentin Tarantino to make a war film about a broader reality... we love seeing heads scalped, baseball bats bashing in heads and masses of people machine gunned.
Tarantino is one of the most intelectually mature filmmakers today. Of all the WWII movies out there this is one where germans can enjoy it as much as anyone else.
Adam, I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what to make of those two scenes I mentioned, I was more just reporting on what I saw/ my interpretation... (I have a feeling Jim's next blog entry on the film will put much into perspective...)
As for audiences and what they laugh at... Hitler (and his Nazi audience) in "IB" laugh at people being shot repeatedly... Now follow that thought up with Ebert's review of "The Jerk" and there you have my view on audiences - not just in regards to comedy. If we could always rely on audience reaction, "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" would be an obvious masterpiece. After all, the audience elected it weeks in a row... (But, then again, that's not a fair argument because that has more to do with marketing and people being ignorant of what other movies are out there/ too lazy to find anything else/ apathetic about what they see. Still, none of this makes them sound any more credible.)
But I wanna clear something up (and I honestly forgot this as I was writing that sentence to you but that says something right there): I did laugh at the 'Bear Jew' scene. I cringed and then I laughed. (Which I did a lot of during "Watchmen" also, a melodramatic movie I took as partial satire.) What I didn't do was cheer and neither did the audience I was with for "IB", they seemed to cringe and laugh too. Why is that? The violence is so brutal that... it becomes comedy? I mean, how else does one explain it? But make no mistake, the Basterds are not portrayed as clean cut heroes. They're Rorschach-ish vigilantes, to be sure. And my memory of that scene is not a flattering one of the Basterds, however amusing that scene is to watch and despite me rooting for them in later scenes.
Whether you're against *their* actions is up to you. To echo Gabriel Joy's comments above, Tarantino doesn't do the preaching, he leaves that to you. (Which, as Jim notes, does say something about his moral views...)
He's a smart enough director to raise the stakes, making the characters (and thus the scene) more complex and, therefore, more interesting by making his Nazi characters more sympathetic and not so predictably pure evil. Does that make Tarantino any more moral himself? Or is he just a clever writer? That's for him to know really. But you have to admit his scenes are not necessarily written so straightforwardly. (That's what I meant by his nuance. What it indicates about him is more unsure...)
But I don't care what he (or Zack Snyder with "Watchmen") thinks (unless it sheds light on something I hadn't considered that seems to have some validity). The movie is out of his hands and into our heads and bodies once we watch. How do we feel? What are we thinking about? If we're conflicted, that's not such a bad thing... In fact, it can be a sign that we actually experienced something (as oppose to films that are dead spaces of predictable heartstring pulls - all in one direction). Personally, I left "IB" with a blend of feelings and Mick LaSalle's review in this case seemed closest the movie I saw. Particularly this segment:
"It would be an epic misperception to see "Inglourious Basterds" as some irreverent pastiche. It's not. Every liberty Tarantino takes, in both tone and history, is part of the filmmaker's overarching determination to remind audiences - remind them so they feel it - that World War II was, to put it mildly, the worst thing that has ever happened. Nearly seven decades of cinematic cliche may have dulled our response. Tarantino explodes those cliches to shake us awake."
'WWII was the worst thing that ever happened'. That line doesn't say whose side Tarantino is on... Just shows (as do the scenes I mentioned) he's not totally ignorant. And I guess I'll toss in this general feeling I have - which means nothing but here goes - that Tarantino is not the type you'd see up there comparing Obama to Nazis. He's not an idiot. Whether he cares? Has any interest in politics? Contemplating morals? Is he a nihilist? Every man for himself? I dunno... He made "Jackie Brown" though. How bad can he be?
Just my two cents. Great comments on here from everybody. This place is a haven of intelligent posters. Jim, 'a revenge cartoon about the mythmaking power of cinema'... Final scenes in mind, that makes a lot of sense.
Tarantino is an intuitively gifted filmmaker. But to call him "one of the most intellectually mature filmmakers today" or ascribe deep moral statements about WW2, revenge, or ANYTHING to his films is a mistake, IMO. He's the least intellectual great filmmaker I can think of. I mean Welles for all his Shakespeare and his riddles was a bit of a charlatan, but at least he WAS dealing with serious intellectual problems in his films, even if he wasn't always completely aware of them. He chose very carefully what he made and why, and it was no accident he loved Isak Dinesen, who shared many of his preoccupations. While Welles is reading Dinesen and Shakespeare and thinking deeply about the nature of art and whether or not the artist is ultimately a fake - Tarantino, god love him, is watching Xena Warrior Princess re-runs. He is an anti-intellectual filmmaker, if anything.
That's not to say he's stupid; he's not. He's especially not stupid about movies (altho his tastes being, seemingly, so limited outside of movies, his taste in movies, content-wise, is rather lowbrow - he goes to the movies for style and for a rush and to be swept up, one feels - not to think, not to be moved, etc).
Love Tarantino tho I do (and when I was 10 I saw Pulp Fiction in the theater several times with my dad, and QT has been a major part of my filmgoing life ever since), he is not the event filmmaker of this generation, tho he is one of the few best, and maybe the most fun. And he's certainly a distinct and original voice (even if the originality often manifests itself in re-using and re-combining old elements). But the event director of this generation is Paul Thomas Anderson. Even his throwaway (Punch-Drunk Love) is kind of a masterpiece. I loved Tarantino's throwaway (Death Proof), it was great fun, but it was just great fun. It was an exercise. Much of Tarantino is just - an exercise. It's often a fun, brilliant, funny, brutal, memory-making kind of exercise, but it doesn't strike deep, because QT is, at least in his films, shallow. But then again to me there are many greats in the canon who are shallow (Kubrick, Hitchcock [except for Vertigo], etc), so maybe that's not a dealbreaker for some people. But like Ebert I think films are mostly an emotional experience, I think film at its best is an art form that perhaps more than any other, can inspire empathy, can train that faculty in people. And Anderson, besides being a big league talent at least equal to Tarantino, writes real characters and evokes real emotions. The two represent two distinct ways of approaching movies, two different reasons people go to the movies. I love QT but I think Anderson's using the medium for higher things.
JE: Beautifully said with regard to QT (I believe Kubrick and Hitchcock go far deeper, but that's another discussion). I'm just writing about that now. Tarantino's movies are about movies. They are not -- except in the most generic sense -- about story, character, emotion, or (of all things) morality. I think "Reservoir Dogs" is probably his most emotionally involving film, about honor among thieves, though I don't think he sees it that way. He is interested in artifice -- and he is a magnificent stylist. But emotion? No, he's interested in a very narrow range (suspense, fear, horror) and that's all.
"But emotion? No, he's interested in a very narrow range (suspense, fear, horror) and that's all."
Then how do you explain "Jackie Brown"? (The ending especially. And don't you dare just answer: Elmore Leonard.) Or that he loves "Lost in Translation"? I think you guys are shortchanging QT's emotional range. Tell me he couldn't write a great romantic comedy someday.
His movies are primarily about fun... and how to make a scene interesting and unpredictable. And, indeed, movies about movies (or a movie movie about movies). I like what Jim has said elsewhere about his films being abstract art. But in his deconstruction of our expectations (about how clean cut good a hero should be / how pure evil a villain should be), he stumbles into some provocative territory here... All the more because we end up rooting for the heroes anyway. Isn't that something to think about? Though, I'll agree, it's how you feel walking out that counts.
Ps. Paul... P.T. Anderson may be a great, *young and full of potential* director and an event director... but higher purposes? ...What's one problem that will always keep the world from being perfect? Boredom, the greatest human disease. If QT makes movies for entertainment (and, with a few exceptions that I've written about here, I think he basically does), who's to say that's not very important?
Also, Anderson writes 'real' characters? How about 'he can' write real characters. His Plainview and Sunday Bros. are more on par with Aldo Raine... And QT's 'Jew Hunter' (or even his "Bill" character) is actually a more real character than any of those... so QT can do that too... And I'd say "Jackie Brown" deals with some real emotions... But whatever, whatever, whatever, cause I really like Anderson, think "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights" are tha bomb and look forward to whatever he does next. I'm not sure he's made a film that could really open people up though... I think a blog could be written about how his movies are abstract art...
("Punch Drunk Love" -- his 'throwaway' film... is the one movie that, while I think it's his 'worst', could actually help somebody out there emotionally... "Magnolia" could maybe mature somebody... Then again, nevermind, that person, for them to be understand "Magnolia", would have to be fairly mature to begin with...)
JE: I've often used "Jackie Brown" as the exception that proves the rule. There's a tenderness in that movie that QT hasn't reached for, before or since. (The relationship between The Bride and BB is in a more melodramatic vein, fitting with the hyper-stylized world in which that film takes place; it's not about characters, it's about legends, and the emotional relationship between the audience and the figures onscreen is more abstract.) Meanwhile, if QT were to pull off a romantic comedy someday, nobody would be more delighted than I.
So Pulp Fiction revolves around the character arc of Samuel L. Jackson's spiritual redemption, but his movies aren't about character? So Kill Bill ends its revenge story with the avenger curled up on a stark floor bawling, and his films aren't about emotion? I tear up whenever I get to Jules' final speech in Pulp Fiction.
Of course IB is a revenge fantasy (it reminds me most immediately of Raiders of the Lost Ark), but it is also a sly rumination on revenge and the way it both empowers and perverts. Pitt is the hero, but he's also sadistic and one-dimensional, scarred with a Hang 'Em High ring on his neck, under his square-jawed caricature. Roth is a coincidental casting: we live through his actions at the end of the movie, but at the same time are repelled when we look at him -- or at least I was repelled. But Tarantino is pointing the camera back at Roth as he wreaks his havoc (either against Nazi's or against teenagers with his own movies). I could go on, but I'll keep it short by saying I think there is evidence that Tarantino is subverting the very experience he creates, but looking at the moral implications of a genre without flinching. When you take away the sepia tone of World War II dramas, you can't enjoy it without shame, or without just dismissing Tarantino as an amoral filmmaker, the same way people have wrongly dismissed the Coens as nihilistic over the years.
Just because you don't see any depth in Tarantino's movies doesn't mean there isn't any. I think he might be one of the most moral directors working today, and that is not hyperbole for the sake of argument. I probably actually believe it.
JE: Thanks for that. I'm not saying there's no "depth" in QT's movies, just that it's not usually the conventional kind that relies on identification with characters or three-act storytelling. He is indeed interested in subverting responses to his films, as you say.
Another thing IG demonstrates is the ease with which a filmmaker can play with an audience's emotions and sympathies. Look at how much sympathy can be built for a would-be rapist and confirmed killer with just the right music and facial closeups.
It's a reasonable question to ask to what end is this masterful puppet show. But you can't deny the mastery of the puppeteer and the ease with which we block out the strings in our mind.
I couldn't disagree more with the people who just said Tarantino is a moral director, and his movies are filled with emotion. I say this as a fan. I think I've gone over that ground enough, and I leave anyone to decide.
Also, I didn't say Tarantino isn't important. I called him one of the best directors in the world. That implies he's important. I called him a genius, said there was precedent in the canon for a relatively shallow filmmaker to still be an Official Genius. And so on.
And I grant that There Will Be Blood is not Anderson's most human, emotional movie, but it's still very different from Basterds in terms of WHY it's the way it is. But if we're in a world where Tarantino making one emotional movie makes him a director of emotion, I see how PTA making one cold one could make him cold. As I see you understand and appreciate his other films, I leave it at that.
Really it comes down to what you most highly value in film. I know what I'm weak for. I prefer Ikiru, Dodsworth, Magnolia, It's a Wonderful Life. Hell, I liked Mumford. And as I grow up I prefer films like that, in many ways, to movies that are simply well made - even brilliantly made - that I might've preferred when I was younger. The best way I can put it, is - all the fanboys consider PJs recent Kong a failure, an interesting failure, because it's so bloated. And they consider it, being bloated, to be a technically very seriously flawed film, they think its being unwieldy and overlong tarnishes it as an entertainment. And in saying that, a filmgoer shows what his values are. I thought that film was perfect, solely because, whatever else was going on around them, or for the first hour+, the relationship between Watts and the ape was perfectly realized, was genuinely emotional and moving, and so on. Because that's what I value in films. Whereas, to stick with PJ, I didn't care about the two LOTR sequels, because they lacked all the sincerity and emotion of Fellowship. Again I saw fanboys marvel at the films (bashing them, again, only for artistic failures, the too many endings, etc), while they left me cold. Because again when it comes to movie, perhaps we have different values. I am not stating objective facts, then, so much as I'm stating a preference. But I could defend the preference very well if need be.
The reason why I call QT a mature filmmaker is that he does not seem to view his stories through a prism of morality. Like he says in interviews he follows his characters rather than leading them, instead of playing God and dictating some kind of moral structure. It's as if his characters write the script and he merely types the words.
I believe this shows, rather than amorality, a humility and respect about the way people behave. Take the character of Fredrick Zoller (one of my favorites). We mostly see him as a cocky young lad infatuated with Shosanna. And we see him boasting about how he shot 300 soldiers in 4 days and that he's now the star of Nation's Pride. He even uses his status to force Shosanna into a dinner with him and Goebbels. Shosanna is not impressed and continually turns away. It's as if QT is setting him up for a fall because of his arrogance. And yet look at him at the screening of his film, while all in the audience applauds his actions Zoller keeps his head down and does not enjoy it one bit. He leaves the screening and tries again to win the heart of Shosanna, only to be turned down again. From his point of view he was doing THE RIGHT THING by leaving the movie and thought perhaps would be rewarded by her for this. His explosion aftertwards can only be seen as all too human. And Shosanna smartly insinuates sex to calm him down. What follows after happens because of circumstance and not to punish Zoller for his behavior, and yet still QT show the emotional result of this.
It's because of scenes like that one that I appreciate Quentin Tarantino so much. The bar scene is QT in classic suspense mode, the scenes between Frederick and Shosanna deepens his story into tragedy.
But if those "free willed" characters are stylized, sometimes to the point of being cartoons, or are merely mouth pieces for the director rather than distinct characters - ie, if all their behavior is unrealistic, even if it's intentional (as it is) - is he really showing respect for how people behave?
I just think everyone in this thread is defending a director worth defending, but for the exact wrong reasons. What he is is enough, forget what he isnt.
There were elements in the movie that you pretty much see in all of his movies, and so I saw the movie in a kind of weird Tarantino universe. There are elements that are kind of his trademarks...although, I think they were inspired from other movies. Okay, I don't know what I'm saying anymore, but adding to that last statement, it seems Tarantino sees movies and says, "I would have done that differently", and with his movies that is what he does (in part at least). Here's what I meant about the first thing I said:
Tarantino elements in the movie: Spoilers Ahead!(kind of)
(villain extended talk before kill)
The beginning of the movie shows the nazi (Col. Landa) talking and talking to the guy before commiting his horrific act. Just as Jules says his thing before he kills someone in "Pulp Fiction" or Christopher Walken in "True Romance." It's all about as Jules says, "And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass." The "ear scene" in "Reservoir Dogs"; there's supposed to be a courtroom scene in "Natural Born Killers", or kind of where he tells the joke as a distraction before taking the deputy's shotgun.
(gun conceal reappearance)
In "True Romance" where Christian Slater puts a gun in his sock, which is very needed later on; at the end of "Pulp Fiction" where Jules turns the table on the robber; Jackie Brown points the gun at Samuel L. Jackson's (Ordell character) privates; Mr. Orange suddenly rises (Tim roth)and shoots Mr. White (Michael Madsen) with gun he concealed in his ankle at his apartment.
(Mexican standoffs)
(use of imagination of violence)
"Bear Jew" tapping his bat in the shadows in IB; Bud in "Kill Bill Vol. 2" explaining the burning mace; Christopher Walken again in "True Romance"; Marcellus Wallace going-medieval-on-their-asses in "Pulp Fiction"; Ordell opening trunk w/dead body inside for Deniro character (but not us) in "Jackie Brown"; "Ear scene" in "Reservoir Dogs" (which ends abruptly); Woody Harrelson in "Natural Born Killers" alone with girl tied-up when Juliette Lewis runs out on him in disgust for suggesting a 3-way. Kurt Russell in "Death Proof."
(business meeting w/ a bad guy)
Shoshanna talks w/ Colonel Landa at restaurant; Bruce Willis talks with Marcellus Wallace at bar; Beginning scene of "Reservoir Dogs" at the restaurant; Christian Slater "True Romance" brings envelope (w/no money in it; empty) in a faux-business meeting w/ pimp; Robert Forster does business with Sam Jackson character in "Jackie Brown", or where Jackie discusses the scheme with Ordell at the bar; Bud talks with his awful boss at strip club in "Kill Bill Vol. 2" or if that's stretching it, where Uma talks with Esteban who tells her where Bill is located; there's seems to be a lot of this one, such as also with the "card scene" in IB.
(bad guy gets double-crossed)
(explanation or qualifying violence dialogue)
Pitt in IB: "There the foot soldiers of a jew hatin', mass murderin manic, and they need to be destroyed. That's why any and every son-of-a-bitch we find wearin a Nazi uniform, there gonna die" Bill in "Kill Bill Vol. 2": "I'm a murdering bastard, you know that. And there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard." Ordell in "Jackie Brown": "Now that my friend is a clear cut case of him or me. And you best believe it ain't gonna be me." "Reservoir Dogs" Mr. White talking to cop: "I don't give a fuck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It's amusing, to me, to torture a cop." Walken in "True Romance": "I haven't killed anybody since 1974. Goddamn his soul to burn for eternity in fuckin' hell for makin' me spill blood on my hands!"
There might be more but nothing I can think of off the top of my head at the moment--and this was plenty enough.