In his two-part round-up of summer movies, David Bordwell finds himself not only impressed with Quentin Tatantino's latest film (after finding "Death Proof" "merely proof of the director's creative death"), but with the quality, quantity and intensity of the online analysis of it:
It's a measure of the changes wrought by the Internets that "Inglourious Basterds" has in about a month amassed a daunting volume of serious commentary. Without benefit of DVD (let's be charitable and assume no BitTorrenting), dozens of online writers have dug deep into this movie. As if to demonstrate the virtues of crowdsourcing, this flurry of critical discussion has shown that most professional movie reviewers have tired ideas, know little about film history, and are constrained by the physical format and looming deadlines of print publication. At this point, I'm very glad I'm not writing a book on Tarantino; the sort of secondary sources that normally take years to accrete have piled up in a few weeks, and the pile can only grow bigger, faster.
(He also offers well-deserved praise for the "knowledgeable readers" here at Scanners!)
And yet, as always, DB provides plenty of his own insights about the movie's take on revenge, Tarantino's preference for centered widescreen compositions, scene construction, story structure/architecture, texture, detail...
I particularly enjoy the parallels he draws to the exquisitely prolonged suspense techniques of Sergio Leone's Westerns:
Tarantino can lay bare his chapter-block architecture because his scenes are devoted to this sort of prolongation. You may remember the bursts of violence, but what he fashions most lovingly is buildup. Here the spirit of Leone hovers over our director. In each entry of the "Dollars" trilogy, you can see the rituals of the Western getting more and more stretched out, filled with microscopic gestures and eye-flicks.
And DB has the most beautifully written explanation of why saying Tarantino's movie-movies are about movies is not the same as saying they are utterly cold or meaningless:
Many viewers seem to assume that Tarantino's film is somewhat cold. The Basterds are grotesques, parodies of men on a mission; Shosanna, though in a sympathetic position, must maintain a frosty demeanor. Even revenge, so central to films that Tarantino admires, is served frigid here, a purely formal postulate, like the urge for vengeance animating classic kung-fu films.
There is cinema that asks you to empathize with its characters. Then there is cinema that aims to thrill you with a cascade of vivid moments. There is "How Green Was My Valley" (1941) and "Citizen Kane" (1941). I think that Tarantino's films mostly tilt to the vivid-moment pole, seeking to win us through their immediate verve, the way film noir and the musical and the action movie often do. The young man arrested by great bits from blaxploitation and biker movies sees cinema not as merely piling up cinephiliac references--though that's surely part of it--but as a flow of tingle-inducing gestures, turns of phrase, shot changes, musical entrances. There can be pure pleasure in having time to see how actors move, or savor their lines, or simply fill up physical space by being centered in the anamorphic frame. Our fascination with Landa comes, I suspect, from the spectacle of a man who is utterly enjoying himself every second. [...]
So I'm not convinced that "Inglourious Basterds" lacks emotion. The emotions Tarantino aims for will arise not from character "identification" but from the overall structure and texture of the work. We are to be stirred, enraptured, astonished by a procession of splendors big and small. It's the tradition (again) of Eisenstein, particularly in the "Ivan" films, but also of Leone and, in another register, Greenaway. Formal virtuosity isn't necessarily soulless; it can yield aesthetic rapture.
Those paragraphs on the soul of movies bring tears to my eyes.
Bordwell's site is great. And for anyone who is an Ozu fan (and who is willing to deal with the dryness and thoroughness of an academic book), he offers his brilliant 1988 book on Ozu as a free PDF download. Reading it just goes to show that most people who write about film suffer from an unwillingness to truly analyse shots, films, filmographies, and film history in order to reveal how they work and they developed through time.
I've been warming up to the film lately; indeed, it would be difficult NOT to, seeing as how internet bloggers near and far are unavoidably convincing in the cases they make for it.
If there's one thing that keeps me from enthusiastically supporting the film, it's that nagging sense of feeling that there are certain elements that Tarantino wants us to take seriously. Mind you- I'm past the "we're supposed to cheer during the baseball bat scene" argument; I am now rest assured that Tarantino uses that scene to make a statement about audience reactions (hence the similar reaction by the Nazi audience later in the film). And I do agree that the revenge story is not as exciting as we are at first led to assume.
Still, I do remember seeing a brief blurb on IMDB in which Tarantino was quoted as saying that if the Nazis had been killed off in this way, WWII would have ended much quicker. Although he is correct (and I apologize for being unable to find the exact quote), I do have to wonder if he really means it. Would Tarantino be pleased if history had occured in this fashion?
Bordwell compares Tarantino's approach to that of Eisenstein. I am not so sure that is an accurate comparison. Even "Batteship Potemkin"- with its maggot steaks, poked-out eyeballs, overturned baby carriages and exploding capitol buildings- had a nonviolent ending in which the ships ceased firing and enemies became brothers. The film had a point.
If Eisenstein had seen "Inglourious Basterds" today, perhaps he might have reacted to it the same way he (albeit unfairly) reacted to Dreyer's Joan of Arc film: "A stunning collection of images, but not a movie."
I'm currently reading Bordwell's book "Ozu: The Poetics of Cinema". His book is like the Ozu bible, I have come to understand his films even more by Bordwell's rich descriptions. I've been going through all of Ozu's films that are available as I go through Bordwell's chapters about them. He's become my literal commentary to all of them.
JE: And that landmark book (once a very expensive out-of-print item) is available as a free download on davidbordwell.net !
Hey Jim,
I'm going to assume this isn't too off topic. It's about Bordwell's posting, though not about "Inglourious Basterds."
I seem to recall you liking "The Hurt Locker." I was wondering what you thought of Bordwell's somewhat non-committal take. He writes:
"I found the snatch-and-grab look far more distracting in The Hurt Locker [than in "Transformers 2"]...The question is what the harsher surface adds, especially when it’s so pervasive...Maybe it serves to ratchet up suspense? Doubtful. A director would have to be a real duffer to dissipate suspense in a movie about dismantling an explosive device."
I'm taking that slightly out of context; Bordwell's comments are mostly analytic rather than evaluative, but I sense that he disapproves of Bigelow's style.
Frequent readers of Bordwell's blog and his books know that he prefers filmmaking with fewer edits and fewer handheld, "shaky-cam" shots. Yet, he also notes that Ozu, whom he "regard[s] as the greatest filmmaker in the history of cinema" [http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/Bordwell.html], had over the course of his career a low average shot length (around 5 seconds) especially when compared to his contemporaries like Mizoguchi whose shots could range from 10 seconds to 90.
You yourself in your "Dogme 09.8" entry say, "The hand-held camera, once a legitimate tool, has been overused to death. It is beyond a cliché," and "Shoot the movie so that it can be assembled in as few well-planned shots as possible."
"The Hurt Locker" uses mostly hand-held camera, and the "snatch-and-grab" style, as Bordwell terms it, seems to be exactly what you argue against.
How do you reconcile this? Do you believe that while most films should do away with these tropes, some -- like "The Hurt Locker" (and perhaps "City Of God") justify the style?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
JE: I felt the same way about the style of "The Hurt Locker" at first -- mainly because, as I've complained, the shaky-cam style is ubiquitous these days, and often used inappropriately. But I thought it worked in "Hurt Locker" because it was effective in putting you into the place of these guys in Iraq, often surrounded by possible hostiles (never knowing who they can trust), exposed from all sides even when wearing bulky suits for protection. The jittery camerawork helped put the viewer into the bomb squad's physical and psychological space, where the world outside their heads is confusing, threatening, unstable. I thought it worked. After a few minutes, I was so drawn into the film I didn't even notice it anymore. "City of God," on the other hand, made extremely showy use of its razzle-dazzle techniques. It seemed slick, glib and distracting to me. I found the inappropriately glitzy style exhausting and counter-productive -- like it was fighting to keep me from connecting with the core of the movie, which I assumed was the story and characters. I couldn't get past the surface.
Unlike Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, IB has been easily digested and loved by the cultural gatekeepers. Tingle-inducing gestures?? Talk about barf inducing hyperbole. IB is a fart in the cinematic wind, its mannerisms will grow flat in time and those so wrapped up in this film will wonder what all the fuss was about. Don't believe me. This all happens in the future. Why should you?
Is Bordwell seriously comparing Citizen Kane to Inglorious Basterds? Orson Welles' characterization skills are a thousand times better than anything Tarantino has ever shown. Maybe something by De Palma, the director Tarantino loves so much, would be a better comparison.
I love both De Palma and Tarantino, and their movies are great spectacles of cinema, endlessly self-reflecting hommage pieces, and they deserve the praise they get on these terms, but let's not get carried away. Some directors can do these thrilling "processions of splendors" while still having empathy with some of their characters.
No Country for Old Men, for exemple, got about half the conversations that IB stirred up, and it is both an exceptional cinematic experience on these movie-movie terms and a great emotional experience. Well, to me, it was, anyway.
JE: He's contrasting two of the Best Picture Oscar nominees in 1941 ("How Green Was My Valley," a gorgeous Ford film, won) to illustrate what he's saying about the kinds of emotions certain films evoke. That's not to say that "Valley" has no "processions of splendors" or "Kane" has no empathy for its characters. A film doesn't have to be exclusively one or the other, and to say that "Inglourious Basterds" is more like "Kane" than "Valley" in this respect is, obviously, not to say that "Inglourious Basterds" is like "Citizen Kane" in every other respect.
I too have found the volume of what has been written about IB to be suprisingly vast. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading as much as I can as each new blog or message board or whatever that I come across has contained within it some new persepective or idea that I had not yet encountered or considered myself. In some cases, I find commentary that reflects my own thoughts on the film, only better articulated. By reading such comments it improves my own understanding of the film.
I believe that it is a testament to the greatness of this film that it has inspired so much thoughtful discussion. As commentators on this blog and others peel back layer upon layer, I realize that we all ought to be grateful to Tarantino for at least one thing; he has inspired a new development in film criticism. While the discussion surrounding IB may just be a flash in the pan, I must say that I personally have never seen such a broad and substantive dialogue on the internet about a film. Granted, No Country For Old Men inspired a tremendous amount of discussion but I feel confident that if it were possible to quantify such a thing, there is far for people talking about Basterds. That isn't to say that Basterds is a better film than NCFOM, I simply mean than Taranatino has created a piece of art that apparently struck a chord (good or bad) with a wide range of people. I apologize for getting long-winded but my point is, IB has stirred people enough to get them on the internet and write about it. In the process, people are being introduced to new concepts about film and film criticism that they may not otherwise have known about. It is my hope that Inglourious Basterds represents the beginning of a new trend in utilizing the internet as a forum for substantive dialogue about film.
"So I'm not convinced that "Inglourious Basterds" lacks emotion. The emotions Tarantino aims for will arise not from character "identification" but from the overall structure and texture of the work."
The fact that this is even questioned by people puzzles me. I've seen all of Tarantino's films at least twice, and none of them are absent of emotion. Both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction end in moments of outpouring admission: "I am a cop." "I'm trying real hard to be the Shepard". There is nothing hollow about either of those moments. Kill Bill is at times extremely mournful and sad.
While I've had problems with some of his work - certainly not with IB, however - a lack of emotion, or characters absent emotional motivation, has never been visible to me.
IB contains many different driving emotions: fear (Shoshanna vs. Landa), sadism (Landa and Raine), love (Shoshanna and Marcel), lust (Zoller vs. Shoshanna), loyalty (most of the characters)...etc.
A generation raised to embrace piffle like Wendy and Lucy might forget the necessity of "performance" and "drama", but a heightened, self-conscious film is no less real or emotional than a neo-realist work.
Thanks for pointing me towards this, Jim. I especially liked this part:
Formal virtuosity isn't necessarily soulless; it can yield aesthetic rapture.
Bordwell gets at the heart of why I love Tarantino's film so much. Reality TV has nurtured a culture of film-goers who want nothing more than things to be "realistic". I hear all the time from people "oh, that movie was so fake because such and such doesn't really work that way" or I hear how people just want relaism...they look for continuity in a movie (or they want the camera to put them in the action) more than trying to be swept away by its aesthetic.
The irony of this is the people who want "realism" because of reality TV don't realize that their reality TV shows are mostly scripted. It's sad to me that a lot of people have lost the passion to be swept away by (as corny as this is going to sound) the magic of the movies.
I had the privilege to go see the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond at the Salem Film Festival here in Oregon and he was giving a seminar on the art of cinematography. He showed a montage of clips from his films, and when it came time to answer questions a person asked him if it was intentional in one clip that the continuity was broken up. Zsigmond replied "why were you paying attention to that? It's a movie, why must it be real?"
I love that! There's nothing wrong, as you say, with wanting a movie to be like How Green Was My Valley -- a film that primarily focuses on characters, or a Dardenne Brothers film that uses hand held cameras to place you near their characters that they follow with a microscopic intensity; however, a movie should be more than just "how do you relate to the characters", or "are the characters likable people". Besides, anyone who thinks that Ford's film is merely character study is also missing the beauty in the film. Like you've stressed here and in other pieces: a movies doesn't have to be just one thing.
I think that this call for "reality" in film has really neutered movies and the ability for movie audiences to enjoy what Bordwell is talking about when he talks about "formal virtuosity". People aren't looking at what's on the screen anymore and thinking about how that furthers the storyline just as well as good character development and competent directing that worries more about "reality" than how to frame a shot.
JE: Right you are, Kevin. It's why I keep insisting on the unreality of all forms of cinema. That's not a criticism (far from it!), just an acknowledgment of... reality! Put a frame around something and you've left out at least 180 degrees of image on the horizontal axis alone. A single cut can hurtle you many years forward or backward in time. That's why I prefer De Palma's "24 lies per second" to Godard's "truth 24 times a second" -- unless you're talking about art being a lie that tells some form of truth. The only "reality" show I've watched regularly in the past several years has been "Top Chef," and part of what's fun about it is noticing the shot and editing choices, how they put together little snippets of behavior and dialogue to create the personalities of the "characters," to build tensions, to suggest storylines, to hint at who is going to be "voted off" at the end of the episode, and so on. It's so blatant, but it's all part of crafting the show. (I happened upon last season's winner, Hosea Rosenberg, at his restaurant in Boulder last April and we talked about how the show uses some of these storytelling techniques, even if they're totally misleading...)
In the previous issue of Cinema Scope, Mark Peranson wrote that critics would have an easier time appreciating what Tarantino was doing if he didn't "insist on presenting himself publicly as a moron."
I admit that's one problem I have with his work. I let the personality get in the way of the movie, and that's wrong. Yet I do it anyway and it's why I find myself in the odd position of being reluctant to say good things about a movie I thought was pretty good (Basterds, of course.)
The problem is compounded, however, by the absurdly disproportionate amount of attention anything the man does gets from critics and fans, mostly younger ones but not exclusively so. IG is a good movie. It offers plenty to talk about. But I feel like we've reached the point where it's being treated as if it was either the only film released all year or was such a groundbreaking achievement that it renders all previous films irrelevant.
Add to this comments like Cole Smithey's: "Every film that Quentin Tarantino makes is a cinematic event of mammoth proportions" and it's hard, real damn hard, not to want to shout "Oh enough already! There are other directors!"
But I realize that's unfair to the movie. And to QT. And also contributes nothing to the conversation. Forget I said anything.
I’m with ya, Jim. I remember reading some people taking a shot at Tarantino for doing the whole Hugo Stiglitz title card/detour saying that it took them out of the movie…that it was too “showy”. I think you mentioned this in your initial piece on the film, but what’s so wrong with being reminded that we’re watching a movie?
As for “Top Chef”…I haven’t it watched it this season, but about two years ago my wife and I were able to see a trend in how they opened the show and how they ended it. If a chef was being interviewed during the first five minutes before the quick fire challenge then those chefs were almost always on the bottom three.
I also love the decisions the editors make on that show (which a lot of reality shows use now), clearly setting up rivalries and a very basic "good guy versus bad guy" formula by the light they decide to show certain chefs in. Think about they filmed a chef like Marcel or the whole "love affair" angle they played up between Hosea and Leah (I think that was her name), and the rivalry between Stefan and Hosea (The U.S. versus Europe)...it's hilarious. It's almost like watching WWE. Apparently there is a French chef this season who wears a scarf...I'm guessing they don't paint him in a flattering light because they know that some of their audience will be put-off by a snooty French chef.
One thing that’s always made me laugh about the show is that regardless of how talented the chefs are, you have your basic assembly of characters that you would find in any sitcom; every race, gender, and sexual orientation is covered on that show. I don’t know if it could be more obvious that they’re casting the show not as reality, but as entertainment.
Anyway...sorry to talk so much about "Top Chef"...back to Inglourious Basterds...
JE: The reason I don't think either of the Samuel L. Jackson intrusions work is because there are only two of them. It's clear there were others, gone missing, and to me that makes the concept feel a bit lopsided -- an idea that wasn't followed all the way through. I don't know how many other Basterds had little mini-bios, but Donny "The Jew Bear" definitely did in at least one draft of the script...
I'm in the process of re-reading some of Bazin's work on the ontology of film, in reference to IB.
I think the last scene is one for the ages, but not for the obvious reasons. It is the meeting of the binary aspects of the cinema: the ephemeral and the eternal.
This whole theory turns on the image of Shoshana projected onto the smoke produced by the nitrate prints.
Thanks for bringing this piece to light Jim, hadn't read it yet.
I've definitely run across the assumption that emotional power requires realism, though in the context of criticism of Wes Anderson's films. I'm not sure where the idea comes from.
JE: I always come back to music. What does the fourth piano note in the march-like second movement of Schubert's Trio in E-flat mean, and why does it give me chills when it's followed by a slight hesitation (as it is sometimes played)? What does the opening guitar chord in "A Hard Day's Night" mean? Is the work empty if it doesn't link up with some cognitive or programmatic meaning? What if it just has beauty to offer?
Look, there was something familiar about the ending to Basterds that I couldn't quite put my finger on. When I saw the still at the top of your post I suddenly figured it out.
Possibly someone else has written about this, but a cursory web search has yielded no results linking the ending of Basterds with Joe Dante's Matinee.
Yes, Tarantino greatly admires Dante, but it appears no one has compared the screen burning up and the Nazi audience running for the exits with the ending of Matinee. In case you forgot, the audience in Matinee thought they were witnessing an actual nuclear blast, with the movie screen blowing up, and fans blowing hot air onto them as they run for the doors.
Tarantino. Opening with Unforgiven, and ending with classic B-movie homage Matinee. Sublime and ridiculous.
JE: I hadn't remembered that! Though I sure do recall the movie theater chaos in "Gremlins"...
Bordwell to the rescue again...I was having trouble explaining why I loved the film, and felt sheepish saying something to the effect of how consistantly fun it is. But that really is the main thing I take away from it. On my second viewing, I tried out several of the theories I'd read about the film (series of interrogations/film obsessed with performance/exercise in suspense/exercise in Holocaust denying, among others), and felt like some held up, some didn't (some did, but to little end-effect). But what I was left with, is how thrillingly alive and interested this film was in...I don't know...being a film? something to that effect. Just like with NCFOM, I felt the director's passion for sharing his sublime moments (or instants) of cinema with his audience.
P.S. I think the writing on this film is some of the best I've read since, well, No Country (it keeps coming to mind), it's been so much fun seeing the film and reading the 90-page print-out of writing on the film was a wonderful way to stay in that mind set. I'd like to thank you Jim, for being absolutely on top of your game. The film made me excited about current cinema in a way I didn't know I was missing, and the same goes for the critical writing about it.
Hi Jim. I posted the earlier comment on Dante's Matinee, and after I thought about it, there were even more striking similarities that make me want to see the last 15 minutes or so of Matinee again.
Both climaxes feature a black and white movie within a movie (half man, half ant, MANT! versus half man, half nazi, Mazi?). Also, both feature a male and female in locked rooms (one couple is locked in a bomb shelter underneath the movie theater, and the other couple locked in the projection room above). Finally, both feature the thwarted promise of sex (with Tarantino's couple meeting an understandably more gruesome delay of gratification).
Coincidence? I think not.
Some of my favorite movies are surreal fantasies that combine a strong "vivid moments" style with very safe characters and emotions (for the most part); I'm thinking primarily of Miyazaki here. The sort of movies that adults can enjoy but are also generally OK for young children. Pixar movies generally fit into this category as well. (I'm also a huge fan of well done action for its own sake.)
Doing the vivid moments thing with more dangerous characters and emotions (I don't think realism has that much to do with it) is a lot more difficult. Viewed through Bordwell's nice frame, I think my problem with Basterds is that there are a few points where Tarantino isn't very deft with the characters or emotions he evokes, and the vividness just makes it worse because the director is playing without the "seriousness" or "realism" safety nets that cushion (and often smother) other movies.
In most movies I wouldn't feel bad about what happens to Landa at the end because he never would have been allowed to be a fun character, but I, and probably most people, would also have had an easier time taking him seriously as a Nazi worthy of contempt. For that matter, it might have been easier to take the Basterds seriously as people whose judgement about such things actually amounted to anything. But Tarantino eschews all those safety nets, and it burns him a few times, at least for me.
I'm not sure if this is the right thread for it, so please forgive me if it isn't, but seeing IB made me realise why, in the case of QT, I need to separate his films from his persona and public comments. I'm Jewish, so I was confronted with the conflict between his comments and the film itself.
I don't believe that the film revises history or anything like that, it's only his interpretation of history, and as you pointed out in an earlier blog, the Nazies could have been any 'baddie.'
However what confronted me was his comments about his Jewish friends applauding him for making 'Jewish revenge porn' (or something to that effect), and his making the comment question whether he should have treated the Nazis better (or something along those lines). My problem is that this horrifies me. QT's comment regarding his treatment of the Nazies sounds clever, but actually reveals him to be shallow and quite ignorant. I don't know anyone, including Holocaust survivors, who would have taken pleasure from either the burning down of the theatre and the machine gunning of the various Nazi high officials to the bashing of the Nazies with baseball bats to the carving of a swatsika onto Landa's forehead. Many, if not most, Holocaust survivors (and my mother works with Holocaust survivors) do not feel the thirst for vengeance that QT believes that they do. Obviously, I'm generialising, as there are undoubtfully a number of Jews who passionately want vengeance, but hating Hitler and not wanting The Holocaust to have happened does not equate to sadistically taking pleasure at the many things in the film.
However, if taken only as a fantastical tale which isn't about the Nazies or even getting revenge, and ignoring QT's comments, I was very impressed with the film. I think it's superbly written and shot, with fantastic performances (Woltz was great, but so was Pitt), and its concerns with performance, the artifice of film, its uses of prolonged suspence (David Bordwell is IMO absolutely right on this as well on the emotions) and the emotions it conjures make it a great film. Regarding emotion, while QT does not move me in the same way as Eastwood does (who incidentally is IMO a superior filmmaker), he is capable of producing great suspence, some laughs, as well as excitement. The scene with the farmer was also, rarely in the case of QT, quite sad.
JE: Yes, I understand completely. The "Revenge of the Giant Face" is, of course, vicarious, fictional and figurative -- not literal. Perhaps a lot of us would like to punch out (or even kill) Hitler (like on the cover of the first Captain America comic book). But, well, I guess you have to consider that Eli Roth (auteur of the "Hostel" movies) was Tarantino's "Jewish consultant." Knowing that, I'm not surprised the movie goes in the directions it does...
I also found myself writing in-depth about Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS. Unlike many of my close friends and acquaintances who shrugged the film off as vapid and gratuitously violent, I found the film wonderfully subversive and couldn't refrain from exploring it even more deeply for days after exiting the cinema. Not someone taken with every Tarantino film I see, I sensed a maturity in this one. And, regardless of how much was intentional and how much was sprouting from the filmmaker's unconscious, INGLOURIOUS is far from being the "kosher porn" that Eli Roth publicly referred to it as. Like Roth's films, that's a very superficial take. There is more to INGLOURIOUS than meets the eye. Here is a link to my thoughts on the film. I hope it's not bad manners to refer folks over to another site. What I wrote is far too long to paste in a comments section here. Though I think it relevant to this discussion and would love to add my two-cents to what's already been stated. Thanks again, Jim, for your insights. It's exciting to read intelligent commentary on film. There seems to be so little available these days.
http://halmasonberg.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/tarantinos-inglourious-basterds-subverting-a-genre/