Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is about World War II in roughly the same way that, I suppose, Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is about a haunted hotel. The war is indeed the setting, but that's not so much what the movie is about. I also don't see it as an act of Holocaust denial or an anti-vengeance fable in which we are supposed to first applaud the Face of Jewish Revenge, and then feel uncomfortable sympathy for the Nazis. The movie comes down firmly on the side of the Jews, and of revenge, of an early end to the war and the saving of thousands of lives, with barely a quibble.
But while "Inglourious Basterds" is indisputably a WW II revenge fantasy (and, of course, a typically Tarantinian "love letter to cinema"), a theme that is central to nearly every moment, every image, every line of dialog, is that of performance -- of existence as a form of acting, and human identity as both projection and perception. As you would expect from a film that is also an espionage picture and a detective movie, it's shot through with identity games, interrogations, role-playing and people or situations that are not what they appear to be...
(Spoilers follow.)
It's all there in the first shot -- the carefully composed image of "typical" moment on a dairy farm: a small house on a hill, a farmer chopping cleanly at a perfectly sawed double stump (with no sign of wood chips or debris from the removed tree), a young woman hanging sheets on a line. And it's there in the final shot, as two of the title characters look straight into the camera after permanently blowing the villain's cover and the ostensible star of the picture declares: "This may just be my masterpiece."
Back to that opening: The sheer perfection of the image -- one that is soon to be shattered by the arrival of SS Col. Hanz Landa (Christopher Waltz) and his men from off-screen, or rather behind the white screen of the sheets as we first see them -- perhaps telegraphs that this scene is not quite what it seems. There seems to be noplace to hide out here, but once the interrogation scene begins, do we ever doubt that Monsieur LaPadite is, in fact, sheltering the Jewish dairy farming family Landa is hunting? (Their name is Dreyfus -- a Jewish name notoriously associated with anti-Semitism in France.)
Farmer LaPadite sets the scene, telling his daughter to fetch him some water to wash up and to join her sisters in the house. He watches the German soldiers approach in the reflection of the window (we see a reverse angle of what he sees). Landa greets him with a ceremonial handshake and requests to move the stage inside the house, where the three girls are lined up formally. Two of them frame Landa and LaPadite, with the other soldiers outside remaining visible through a window. All this business is about preparing for, and putting on, performances. Even Landa's "manners" (asking permission to switch languages, if only to flaunt his fluency, for example) are part of the show -- and the aspect of his job that he clearly enjoys most.
There's something obscene and invasive about the way Landa requests a drink of milk, served to him by one of the girls. (Listen for the "moo" when she pours it. He will later order a glass for Shoshanna -- an act she and we will find profoundly disturbing, though he may be unaware of, or only subconsciously attuned to, its implications.) Aside from the unsettling associations (cattle, daughters) Landa makes by drinking the milk of LaPadite's heifers, he's also letting everyone know that he has been and will be absolutely thorough in his inspection of the LaPadite farm.
The revelation of Landa's Sherlock Holmes pipe has received a lot of attention, a flamboyant gesture that indicates a dramatic nature as well as perhaps a form of overcompensation. Audiences tend to see Landa as the butt of this joke, but Tarantino has suggested (on "Charlie Rose") that he and Waltz agreed before the scene was shot that it's non-smoker Landa's joke on LaPadite -- a way of letting him know that he already knows that the farmer smokes a pipe.
Everything that happens in "Inglourious Basterds" -- from Landa's interrogation methods, to everyone's concern with their myths/reputations, to Shoshanna's application of her make-up, Apache war-paint style, to the Big Show she puts on for her cinema's final audience -- is about preparing for, or putting on, a show for an audience. In Chapter One, the spectators (the three LaPadite girls) are sent outside, at which point LaPadite himself becomes the audience for Landa's performance. But, of course, we soon learn that there are other spectators beneath the floorboards. After an accounting of the members of the missing Dreyfus family, at the mention of Shoshanna's name the camera drops beneath the floor to reveal her terrified face.
When Shoshanna escapes at the end of the scene, she is seen running off through a black-framed doorway. It's the last shot of "The Searchers," of course, with Shoshanna leaving her shelter in an inhospitable landscape, destined to wander forever between the winds... as a fugitive. She is leaving one frame, one movie, to enter another, with a new name and a new life as Emmanuelle Mimieux (after the '70s softcore classic "Emmanuelle" and Yvette Mimieux), owner and proprietor of Le Gamaar Cinema in Paris. But that's not until Chapter Three. (I've previously gone into some detail about the strategies Tarantino uses to constantly remind you, the "Inglourious Basterds" viewer, that you are watching a movie, a work of artifice.)
We could go through the movie shot by shot to see how the dialog, the actors, the camera and the editing are continually framing and re-framing the action in terms of performance. (I've done it with Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," too -- another movie about life as acting, acting as life -- all in pursuit of the titular "good life.") But I'll just skip through a few highlights from the remaining chapters:
Chapter Two begins with Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who claims to be a direct descendent of the legendary "Mountain Man" and teller of tall tales Jim Bridger, explaining to the actors/Basterds what their roles will be. Their unit is to act as real-life propaganda film behind enemy lines. The stories of their bloody exploits will put fear into the hearts of the Nazis, weakening their morale and their will to fight. Like Landa, they are concerned with creating a myth, a reputation that will precede them, then spread in their wake ("Do you know who I am/we are?" is a repeated refrain), that will become a far more powerful weapon than they themselves are, even if each man in the squad does get 100 Nazi scalps.
When we are first introduced to the Führer himself, he is not so much concerned with the war's military campaign as with the propaganda campaign, which he feels is a serious threat to the Third Reich. As an artist works on a mural portrait that dwarfs the man himself, Hitler forbids any reference to the Basterds' so-called "Bear Jew" (Eli Roth), who is infamous for beating German soldiers to death with a Louisville Slugger, and orders the survivor of an encounter with the Basterds not to breathe a word of what happened. (Of course, this soldier has been released specifically to spread the Basterds' myth amongst the Nazi high command.)
The scene in the ditch begins with a re-enactment of the Basterds' legendary reputation for carnage, into which three captured German soldiers are escorted. The landscape is littered with dead Nazis whose bodies are being scalped and otherwise mistreated. Raine sets the scene ("There's two ways we can play this..."), attempting to persuade Sgt. Werner Rachtman (Richard Sammel) to give up German positions. But Rachtman -- excuse me, "Werner" -- "respectfully" refuses:
RACHTMAN You can't expect me to divulge information that would put German lives in danger.
RAINE Well, Werner that's where you're wrong because that's exactly what I expect.
This is the occasion for the introduction of Donny Donowitz, aka "The Bear Jew," who gets quite an entrance, the sound of his bat echoing off the stone walls as he emerges from a dark tunnel. When Rachtman again refuses to crack, Raine is unruffled, indicating that perhaps this is what he was really expecting: "Actually, Werner, we're all tickled you said that. Frankly, watching' Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies." The other Basterds laugh and cheer their cohorts' various performances. (This segment is interrupted by a Samuel L. Jackson-narrated flashback on the background of the former Nazi turned Basterd, Hugo Stigitz [Til Schweiger]. Other Basterds were, no doubt, also given their own mini-dossiers, but only Stiglitz's remains in the U.S. theatrical release of the film.)
As Sgt. Rachtman gets his brains bashed in, we're introduced to the most important audience for this act -- two captive German soldier, hands behind their heads, one of whom, Pvt. Butz (Soenke Möhring), is crying and clearly terrified. "About now I'd be shitting my pants if I was you," taunts PFC. Hirschberg (Samm Levine, from "Freaks and Geeks" -- also, some say, the artist painting Hitler's massive portrait). Moments later, the other soldier is shot dead (the Basterds, you may have heard, are not in the prisoner-takin' bigness) and Pvt. Butz, who will later be interrogated by Hitler himself, is pointing out the locations of German military on a map.
Chapter Three begins in 1944 with Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) on a ladder, changing the marquee of her cinema, which has been showing G.W. Pabst's¹ 1929 mountain film, "Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü, starring Leni Riefenstahl, later to become the Nazis' favorite propaganda filmmaker (The Triumph of the Will"). Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) attempts to engage her in conversation about the cinema: Pabst. Riefenstahl, Chaplin, Max Linder... He wants her to accept him as a fellow cinephile; she treats him as a Nazi occupier. He may be able to play both roles, but to Shoshanna/Emmanuelle, the latter is more significant.
Later, in a cafe encounter, he tries to persuade her that he's "not just a uniform." "You are to me," she replies. In fact, although he wears an undecorated private's uniform (he is, in effect, in disguise), Zoller is, in fact, a celebrity, a war hero, and soon to become a movie star -- "the German Seargent York" (or Audie Murphy) -- playing himself in Nazi Propaganda Minister (and UFA studio head) Joseph Goebbels' would-be masterpiece, "Stolz deer Nation" ("Nation's Pride").
One of the Nazi autograph seekers in the cafe (setting the scene for movie star Bridget on Hammersmark's napkin-signing in the next chapter) assumes that Shoshanna is the famous Fredrick's girlfriend, but Zoller corrects the mis-casting. Shoshanna is soon whisked off for a meeting with Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) himself at a Parisian restaurant. (My favorite Shoshanna moment: Her goofy, incredulous expression when Goebbels and Zoller engage in some affectionate rough-housing at the table.) It is here that Landa re-enters the picture and Shoshanna meets him, face to face, for the first time. Again, he puts on a flamboyant show -- always seeming to imply more than he actually says. In the end, he frightens her with the threat of a question, only to dismiss it as something he can't quite remember so it must not have been important. This may well be the case. Perhaps there's something familiar about Shoshanna that he can't quite call to mind. Or maybe he just does it to f**k with her. Or both.
Chapter Four introduces us to former film critic, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), who is briefed by General Ed Fenech (Mike Myers) about Operation Kino -- in the presence of Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor) himself. The British, however, don't know that there's another operation (see The Piranha Brothers), masterminded by Shoshanna with the assistance of her black projectionist and lover Marcel (Jacky Ido) for the same occasion: the premiere of "Nation's Pride" at Le Gamaar. Hicox says he's never heard of the Basterds, who are cooperating with the operation, and Gen. Fenech reiterates their purpose: "Whole point of the secret service, old boy, you not hearing of them. But the Gerrys have heard of them..."
In its most daring and suspenseful set-piece -- the "basement" scene set in La Louisiane tavern -- "Inglourious Basterds" reaches its role-playing apotheosis.⁴Movie star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) plays an identity-guessing card game with a group of Nazi soldiers celebrating the birth of a son to one of their comrades. Each has a card with the name of a person or fictional character stuck to his forehead and, in turn, is allowed to ask a series of questions to determine his own identity. The "characters" include: Winnetou (Native American hero of a series of popular German novels written by Karl May), Pola Negri² (UFA and Hollywood silent-movie vamp), Edgar Wallace (British crime writer and creator of King Kong), Mata Hari (exotic dancer and WW I double agent), Beethoven (a rather well-known German composer -- conspicuously not Wagner, who may have been too easy)... and Bridget von Hammersmark as Genghis Khan, the legendary Mongolian warlord.
It's supposed to be an intelligence meeting between Fraulein von Hammersmark, Hicox and two of the German-speaking Basterds, Stiglitz and Wicki (Gedeon Burkhardt), who will pose as Bridget's escorts to the "Nation's Pride" premiere. But all Raine worries about is that the "goddamn rendezvous" is in a "basement." Before Bridget can deliver the big news to her contacts -- that Hitler himself will be in attendance at the gala -- they are interrupted, first by the new father, Master Sgt. Rudolph Wilhelm (Alexander Fehling), then by the sudden reappearance of the sinister Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl), who collected Shoshanna for the meeting with Goebbels.
In an attempt to suss out who's really who, Hellstrom proposes another round of the identity game. "Real or fictitious, it doesn't matter," he says, again emphasizing Tarantino's approach to the movie he's in. Hellstrom quickly and correctly deduces that, since he is not "the story of the Negro in America" (brought from the jungle to America in chains and against his will), he must be King Kong. But not until Hicox orders three more glasses of some vintage scotch does Hellstrom determine, once and for all, that Hicox is not, in fact, a German. (Though Archie's accent is odd, it's a gesture that gives him away.)
In Chapter Five, Operation Kino becomes "The Revenge of the Giant Face" as Shoshanna's sabotage effort (using actual footage from Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film "Sabotage," that features an explosion and fire at a London movie theater) intersects with a newly improvised version of the British plan. This one entails having Basterds Raine, Donowitz and PFC Omar Ulmer (after the Austrian director of "Detour" who came to America with F.W. Murnau), accompanying Bridget von Hammersmark up the red carpet, posing as an Italian director, cameraman and assistant. (Shades of Groucho, Harpo and Chico.)
All the scenes in "Inglourious Basterds" consist of combining and recombining the characters in various configurations. At the "Nation's Pride" premiere, one shot unites all the major characters. In the bustling lobby, Shoshanna approaches Zoller and Goebbels, who introduces her to the great German actor Emil Jannings (Marlene Dietrich's co-star in Josef von Sternberg's "Der Blaue Engel," and the star of Murnau's "The Last Laugh, who appeared in some of Goebbels' Nazi propaganda efforts during the war). The camera follows a passing cigarette girl and then a waiter with a tray of champagne flutes up the stairs to the balcony, where Landa surveys the scene. He sees something and descends the stairs on the other side of the lobby to greet (fictional) movie star Bridget von Hammersmark (in foot cast) and the three tuxedoed Basterd impostors ("imposters"?).
During the premiere screening of "Nation's Pride," Fredrick excuses himself and attempts to join Shoshanna in the projection booth. Why does he do this?³ Is he, as he suggests to her, really abashed by watching his own exploits? If so, the pretense doesn't last long. When she tries again to shut him out, he explodes with arrogance and rage: "I'm not a man you say 'no' to!" he exclaims, and invokes the 300 men he famously killed as a means of demanding her respect. Fortunately, she responds by shooting him.
But then, as he lies motionless on the floor, Shoshanna looks out at his image on the screen and feels some kind of... regret? Compassion? Misdirected cinephiliac emotion? Zoller moves, she approaches him, and he shoots her dead. In the most poignant scene Tarantino has ever filmed (OK, he's not known for evoking the tender emotions), the lifeless bodies of the two movie lovers sprawled on the floor while, above them, the fourth reel keeps inexorably unspooling. All the events these two have set in motion will now come to a climax without them. The show must go on.
Some have said (and even Tarantino has hinted at this) that the slaughter of the bedecked and bejeweled Nazi elite (including Hitler, Goebbels, Hermann Goering and Martin Boorman) in the cinema audience is supposed to be met with ambivalence by the audience for "Inglourious Basterds." (Some have even claimed to detect this in "Kill Bill" and "Death Proof," but feeling a little sorry for pathetic and wounded Stuntman Mike as he is outclassed by stuntwomen at the end is not quite the same as questioning the cathartic nature of the women's righteous anger -- and the vicarious revenge of their unknown sisters, Mike's victims in the first half of the movie.)
I don't see anything in the movie to support this claim, though I understand the impulse behind it. For one thing, the flaming finale deliberately recalls "Carrie" (one of Tarantino's favorite films, by one of his favorite directors, Brian De Palma), which does indeed "punish" the audience for sharing Carrie's uncontrollable rage. As she wreaks her vengeance, burning down her school (and metamorphoses into a blood-soaked Nosferatu), she kills the innocent along with the guilty -- in particular, one of the film's most sympathetic characters, the coach played by Betty Buckley. But to say that same dynamic is at work is, perhaps, wishful thinking for those who would prefer to feel at least a little bit guilty about the revenge scene, especially inasmuch as it deliberately recalls the ovens of the Holocaust.
Tarantino is a savvy, skillful art-house exploitation filmmaker. (You can't separate one from the other or it wouldn't be Tarantino.) If he wanted to undercut Shoshanna's revenge by inflicting sharp pangs of ambivalence on his audience, he would have made sure he shot his film that way, and you would feel it beyond any doubt. But he doesn't. There's some room for ambiguity, but not a whole helluva lot. For most of the sequence, as the place goes up in flames and the giant face of Shoshanna glories in her revenge (first on the screen, then as an image projected in smoke), Tarantino shoots the Nazi audience as if they were lemmings -- bearing down on them from above, or looking up at the Basterds firing their machine guns at them. Most significantly of all, we rarely even see their faces. They are shot from behind or above as they attempt to flee through the blocked exits. Tarantino does not choose to shoot them coming toward the camera, or to single out individuals in the crowd (see Eisenstein's Odessa Steps sequence, quoted in "Nation's Pride"). When the cinema explodes, we're treated to a spectacular shot of a body flying through the round window above the marquee. The effect of the entire sequence is more cathartic (and kinetically thrilling) than anything else, no matter what undertones you may also read into it.⁵ Because it's patently unreal, a movie metaphor.
In an Atlantic profile I quoted previously, QT reacted rhetorically when it was suggested his depiction of "Jewish revenge" might be too much: "I was too brutal to Nazis?" (This and "The Bear Jew" remind me of Woody Allen's line from 1979's "Manhattan": "Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point.") "IB" is quite deliberately "putting out the fire with gasoline" -- QT knows what he's doing -- and has few, if any, qualms about it. There's room for ambiguity, but
Ever concerned with his public image, Landa concocts a plan to go down in history as the hero who ended World War II. He even extracts an agreement from U.S. brass (phone voice by Harvey Keitel) to present him as a double-agent working undercover as a Nazis all along. Turns out his legendary status as "The Jew Hunter" just isn't enough for him. (Nice bit: He insults Basterd PFC. Smithson Utivich [B.J. Novak] by saying he's been nicknamed "The Little Man.")
But the movie's final twist, its last laugh (and it is meant to be a laugh) belongs to Lt. Raine, who tarnishes Landa's dreams of a new identity by carving the mark of his old one -- a Nazi swastika -- into his forehead so he can never deny his past, or who he really is. And, thus, the Basterds' legacy, "inglourious" as it is, will endure. As Raine begins to cut, a jaunty, semi-military tune begins to play in the background, as if taunting Landa. It swells into a rousing theme to accompany the end credits.
No, Tarantino doesn't feel sorry for Landa in the least, and the movie isn't suggesting the audience should, either. The guy's a f**kin' Nazi, after all...
* * * *
¹ This is the first of several Pabst "cameos": The director is the subject of film critic Archie Hicox's book, "Twenty-Four Frame Da Vinci," and "Piz Palü" will become Hicox's alibi for his peculiar German accent in Chapter Four.
² The name may also be intended to recall the word "Negro." Both Goebbels and Major Hellstrom make comments about how America has built its power and reputation on the backs of African slaves.
³ Personally, I think he realizes he might have a chance with Shoshanna if he makes his move while his movie is still playing. The reluctant hero routine is just a piece of acting he does for Goebbels and Shoshanna. There's a suggestion -- if only for a moment -- that he may even have an impulse to rape her in the booth: "It's nice to know you can feel something, even if it's just physical pain."
⁴I can't help but think some of this has to do with Quentin Tarantino being, and playing, "Quentin Tarantino" -- a man whose reputation now precedes him wherever he goes. When does he get to take off the quotation marks, and what would it mean to do that? Or is it even possible anymore?
⁵ I've mentioned again and again that "Inglourious Basterds" exists on a plane of cinematic unreality, an alternative movie-movie universe. Ed Howard, who likens "IB" to Philip Roth's alt-WWII novel The Plot Against America, perfectly describes how this affects the way we view Operation Kino and Shoshanna's Revenge: "Tarantino's vision of a fiery end to the Third Reich is only powerful when it plays off of the knowledge that this isn't what really happened, that this is a "what if" scenario. Tarantino knows he can't rewrite history, but he can create a cinematic alternate history that resonates in various ways with the real world, with real ideas."
Jason Bellamy makes another distinction I think is essential: "My point is, if you watch the theater scene and come away confused, conflicted or distressed, I think that speaks more to your ethics than to Tarantino's. Atypically for a QT picture, the climactic chapter of 'Inglourious Basterds' seems designed not to unveil Tarantino's feelings but to put us in touch with our own. Or am I giving Tarantino too much credit?"
Below: Conan poster, Basterd poster...
UPDATE: Be sure to read these two excellent conversations about Tarantino and "Inglourious Basterds":
Dennis Cozzalio and Bill R. at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.
Ed Howard and Jason Bellamy at The House Next Door.
Opening shot of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven":
Heh. Well all I got to humbly say is I'm glad I discovered Jim Emerson. You expand my understanding and appreciation of movies so much. Well, I love great critics.
It is because of posts like these (not just because I agree with every detail of your critique) that I keep coming back to your site, Jim. Bravo, you may very well be the best film critic working today. That may not mean much coming from a blog-comment but I mean it and i mean it sincerely: you're excellent, practical, neither populist nor elitist, a well-rounded, earthly theoritician, with a prudent means of judging the cinema (based on form and integrity rather than some insular, moralistic perspectives)... thanks for the lessons... Keep on keeping on...
Cory
An extraordinary analysis, you've definitely made me think about (and appreciate) IB in a whole new way. Bravo!
Have you, or any of your readers, mentioned the fact that there is no "The" in the title of the film?
I have heard some complain that not enough attention is given to the Basterds as a group when the movie is named after them. But my impression was that Tarantino wanted to include the ladies as well. The ad campaign seems to back me up here, as there are posters with the tagline "Diane Kruger is a Basterd" and "Melanie Laurent is a Basterd". Christopher Waltz does not have any such poster. I wonder how much Tarantino is involved in the design for ads.
Thanks for actually taking the time to seriously consider the film itself, Mr. Emerson. Reading through much of the critical response to IB reminds me of how I felt after Casino was released in 1995. If these films were made by anyone else than the men who actually made them, they'd be hailed immediately as masterpieces. Or at the very least, they'd receive widespread acclaim rather than the instant backlash that has soured IB's release. I've only seen IB once thus far, and I don't think an additional viewing will cause me to label it a masterpiece, but I'm certainly anxious to give it another go. Though his comments in the press sometime make it easy to dismiss or even despise him, Tarantino has yet to direct a bad film. It's just that simple.
Nice piece, Jim, and it's good to see someone of your taste and experience taking Tarantino with the seriousness he deserves.
I don't like "IG" as much as most of Tarantinto's other films -- it feels rushed and sloppy to me in a way that his work almost never does, and I really though it needed a first act in which we might see the Basterds on a mission and get to know them better, rather than only meeting them in the last couple of reels. But what really bugged me as a film historian is QT's deliberate distortion of the nature of Nazi propaganda films. I don't know of a single fiction film produced during the era that takes the form of an American -style action film set on the front, as "Pride of the Nation" does: most of the Nazi movies are carefully escapist period dramas and musicals meant to take the collective mind of the German public off the war and its horrible costs as it was being fought. That said, it's a picture that does depart from history in some other, fairly significant ways . . .
JE: Thanks, Dave. I think QT was definitely thinking more along the lines of Audie Murphy (or Seargeant York, as mentioned in the movie) than real German propaganda pictures, but I appreciate what you're saying.
Its-a-twist-on-propaganda-movies. Tarantino is just twisting genres around like he's always done. The reason why the movies are well-made is because Tarantino takes it seriously. That's it. There's nothing more to it then that. Am I the only one who sees the sheer desperation in a majority of critics' reviews for Tarantino's movies whenever they come out trying to make them more then they are? I believe this "analysis" and Ebert's reviews of his movies are good examples.
Brilliant analysis, but one thing I disagree with you on is the ambiguity in the second Shoshanna/Landa meeting. It's perhaps the central question of the film: does the Basterds intervention facilitate the cinema burning by distracting Landa, or does it rob Shoshanna of her revenge by allowing the man who killed her family to escape.
I'd like to think that Landa doesn't consciously suspect Shoshanna -or, even better from a dramatic point of view, he recognises her but sees no reason to suspect an attack, as he thinks of her as a "rat" who can only run and hide. In which case the Basterds, with their kill counts and their tortures and their superhero codenames, just mess up a much more straightforward and sympathetic tale of French/Jewish resistance, rushing in at the end to get a few kicks in a bunch of Nazis who are already being dealt with (just as Tarantino is doing in a way, I guess). And I can't be the only one who left the theater wishing for a full movie on Shoshanna's tail - the Resistance sidelined by the Americans again, perhaps?
I'm not sure you've said anything here that you haven't said already, but I like having it all in one place. One thing: I think Hellstrom must have been onto them from the start, because, how could he not recognize Hugo Stiglitz? "Everybody in the German army knows of Hugo Stiglitz." Maybe Hellstrom was just playing around with them, cat-like, to get Hicox to slip-up and drop his façade first. Later, Kruger says "[Hicox] blew his German," instead of, "A german officer found out about us."
Jim: Sharp analysis, as usual. One place we see things differently though is in regard to the "ambivalence" of the theater massacre. Now, I wouldn't use "ambivalence," as I think the casual connotation of that word suggests something closer to vagueness rather than conflict (which isn't to suggest you've used the word incorrectly), but conflict? Yes, I 'felt it beyond a doubt.' In fact, my initial reaction was something closer to genuine horror. The conflict came from wondering if I should feel horror, not the other way around. Even though most discussions of this film assume that the initial audience reaction must be one of pleasure. It wasn't for me.
So, from the same images, that was my gut reaction. The horror was by no means some kind of PC-programmed "wishful thinking."
You use as evidence for your reading this observation: "Most significantly of all, we rarely even see their faces. They are shot from behind or above as they attempt to flee through the blocked exits."
I see your reasoning, but I'm not sure how that negates a feeling of horror. It didn't for me. Indeed, watching the Nazi mob climbing over one another reduces them to anonymous helpless animals desperate to survival. It's like watching the slaughter of helpless cattle in Hud. To flip it around, if a filmmaker used the same behind-or-above, faceless treatment to show Jews climbing over one another in a gas chamber, would we doubt the horror of that visual even for a second?
Yes, the crowd is shot (by QT) from behind and at a distance because the crowd is shot (by the Basterds) in the back and at a distance. This lessens the thrill of the vengeance. To be able to recognize Hitler as he is filled with bullets is to feel he deserves each and every one. But at a distance, the crowd's uniforms blurred, the Nazis lose their Darth Vader-like villainy and become just people. Suddenly the execution of the crowd (justifiable or not) doesn't seem as heroic. And there's the gut feeling of horror, even if the brain justifies it. That's my reading.
JE: I get where you're coming from, and the film certainly allows some ambiguity. I'd say, from the way it's shot (and QT could well have put the camera at the back of the theater and had the crowd rush toward it, or could have singled out individuals in the crowd if he wanted to create actual sympathy for the slaughtered) that the movie does indeed regard the audience as cattle. If you feel pity for them, that's fine, but the Basterds sure don't, and the movie itself is, I think, more interested in the spectacle of the "Revenge of the Giant Face" than in the humanity of the Nazis. I suppose you could read the laughing face of Shoshanna (the movie's most sympathetic, humanized character) as a symbol of revenge gone berzerk -- laughing on film after she herself is dead, set on a course that can't be changed and that doesn't allow for moral qualms because it's all been planned and filmed in advance. But I don't think it plays that way, especially given that the Nazi high command is in the audience. Shoshanna's laughter is part of the revenge on the entire Third Reich. BTW, I'm halfway through your conversation with Ed Howard about "IB" at The House and, again, it's really great stuff. I added a link to it above. UPDATE: Now that I've finished your splendid conversation, I think you yourself said it very well, and I added a footnote to quote you: "If you watch the theater scene and come away confused, conflicted or distressed, I think that speaks more to your ethics than to Tarantino's."
You know, Jim, you're getting pretty good at this.
...like the "Time to get into character" line from Pulp Fiction...and isn't there something like this in Kill Bill as well...?
Interesting piece, Jim. As always a pleasure to read your critiques. And I am especially pleased that you have addressed something that so many others have chosen to ignore (or worse, as critics are ill equipped to address).
I am still utterly bewildered how many people are leaping through hoops trying to justify, sanction or even find merit in Tarantino's latest work. Until now, almost all of his films have been completely lacking in moral semblance. Because his films have existed within that hermetically sealed world that is post-modern cinema, that has until now, not been so much of a problem.
But since he has chosen to place his film in actual history, it is a problem. Especially considering the license he has granted himself with that history. To me, it is abundantly clear that Tarantino feels no moral obligation whatsoever to display the slightest bit of fidelity towards history (and especially since that history is about the Nazis and since we know that there are so many Holocaust deniers). In interviews, Tarantino has danced around that issue (and worse, critics have heaped praise on his film as evidence that "cinema triumphs over history")
It appears from his interviews that as far as Tarantino is concerned, the Second World War happened so films could be made about it and now, he can make a film about those films. And so, many minds are now confined to talking about the aesthetics.
Because Inglourious Basterds is so completely morally bereft (and to my mind, aesthetically dull), very few critics can talk about the morals.
The public and thus, populist discourse runs the gamut from "cool" to "lame."
So, what next for Tarantino? Possibly a movie about the war in the Pacific which culminates not with Hiroshima, but a "cool" sword-fight between General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito.
I thought this was a great movie. There were two Nazis in the movie that I feel have never been represented in movies before: Landa and Zoller. Landa is a stunning creation. I have to agree that the pipe was a joke by, not on, him. It was abnormally big and it looked like Sherlock Holmes' pipe. He's basically saying Chad Palmenteri's line to Verbal in Usual Suspects, "I'm smarter than you and I will get what I need whether you like it or not." Although this time, it is the person saying it that is the Devil rather than the person hearing it. While Landa is a brilliant creation, I never sympathized with him.
I did sympathize with Zoller. Here is a German with a skill(being a marksman). A skill that, by the way, I think we are supposed to recall Barry Pepper in Saving Private Ryan. That skill is being used to defend his country, a noble thing. Now that he's done this heroic act, the Nazi are using it as propaganda, a unnoble thing. The way Zoller acts, did anyone else get the feeling the story was bogus? His uneasiness, especially when seeing himself on screen, is very affecting. In another reality, he and Shoshanna could have had a great romance, but not in this reality or Tarantino's movie.
Isn't the opening shot reminiscent of the opening scene of Unforgiven? In that shot, I believe, Clint Eastwood is digging a grave, but the setup appears the same.
And is that shot itself reminiscent of another one? It seems too iconic to have just appeared in the 90's, but I can't place it.
JE: I immediately thought of "Unforgiven." (Added a frame grab from the opening shot at the bottom of the post.) Irony/coincidence: Clint Eastwood was head of the jury at Cannes when "Inglourious Basterds" was in competition.)
Yvette Mimieux wasn't in "Emmanuelle". That was Sylvia Kristel.
JE: Right you are. Should have been "and" instead of "in"! I'll fix that. Thanks.
I knew I was in for, at the very least, a well-made film when I noticed, during the opening interrogation scene of the French dairy farmer, dirt under his fingernails. This actor surely doesn't, as a rule, have dirt under his fingernails. He had only one scene to play, a relative bit part. If his nails were impeccably clean, nobody in the audience would have noticed or said anything and the movie would have been just as great. But Tarantino, or somebody, thought, "This is a French farmer in the 40s with no running water. He will have dirt under his fingernails." What great attention to detail, thank you Tarantino.
Thanks for the analysis, Jim. My teenage step-son is a complete Tarantino-phile (his love for film making really blossomed once I had him watch "Pulp Fiction"). We both felt "Jackie Brown" was Tarantino's best film, and we are engaged in the discussion on whether or not IB is, in fact, his masterpiece. The fact that QT says it through LT Raine at the end of the film is just another irreverent poke at the audience, film lovers, and fans. I commented to my wife this morning that I have a disdain for people (and critics) who watch a film and dismiss elements as "unrealistic". It's a damn movie!! It's all unreal!! And QT continually plays with, and defies, our expectations of what the film experience SHOULD be.
"Real or fictitious, it doesn't matter" is a perfect summation of why we go to movies. Roger Ebert talked about the "suspension of disbelief" in one of his columns, and I thoroughly enjoy that QT not only asks us to suspend our disbelief, but we know he is going to toy with that suspension as much as possible.
One final observation . . . there were so many references to other films and filmmakers, but I haven't read anywhere what struck me as a very powerful evocation of another film in the opening shot: Clint Eastwood's masterpiece "Unforgiven".
I had a slightly different interpretation of the climax in the cinema. As the fire from the 35mm film rises up at the laughing Shoshanna; Hitler, Goebbels, the Nazi generals, and even the basterds (or whats left of them), are cast down into hell and are trapped like rats (the Jewish equivalent to a beast according to Landa, yes?). They are left crawling for the doors while being brutally mowed down by people who are going to hell with them. As the smokes builds we see Shoshanna's giant laughing face projected into the white smoke of the burning theater (an image like I have never seen before). This is her ghost and the ghost of her family finally getting back at the Nazi's, who when her family was trapped underneath the floorboards, they are now trapped in a cinema.
When I saw the film the sound was very loud and as the theater in the film exploded it felt as if the theater where I was sitting exploded with it. Perhaps in this final image Tarantino is saying something about films or going to the movies. Perhaps maybe he took films to a place where no one has gone before and the cinema (in the film of course) could not contain it and did the only thing that it knows how to do in these situations. BOOM!
Just something about that tavern scene. There's a little thing that piqued my curiosity, and that I don't thnik was discussed here : the apparent "duplication" of the bar staff at one point. It seems like an editing mistake (but seem only, since QT uses camera tricks to mask part of the table where we see the soliders playing) that makes both employees, for a moment both playing with the nazis and attending at the counter.
So a reference (that I didn't get) to another movie? A way of showing how the reality of his world is depending on editing? Am I reading way to much into this?
Great read, Jim. There is so much willful underestimation of this film going on, it's nice to see a clear-eyed look at some of the things going on underneath.
While it would be foolish to paint Tarantino as some kind of anti-violence moralist, he likes a good movie killing as much as many of the rest of us I think, I do think there is a lot of ambivalence about it in the film. Violence never seems to be easy in a Tarantino film. It's usually brutal, unpleasant and full of consequences. In this case, he paints the Basterds as being a fairly ugly and loutish group while most of the Nazis behave pretty honorably. Yes, you cheer when the bad guys get their due, but there's a lingering unpleasant aftertaste.
In some ways, in the final sequence when the Nazi elite are laughing and ghoulishly enjoying the exploits of their hero Zoller, Tarantino is turning the camera on the audience. I was reminded of the sparse audience I saw Rambo with. A handful of guys were seriously working out their aggression, hooting and hollering like they were at a combination boxing match/strip club.
The thing is, Stallone makes it easy on the audience to enjoy the killing by making his mostly faceless enemy into pure evil. They're no longer even human beings, they're like the monsters in Aliens. With Tarantino, it's not so black and white.
In the final scene, did I feel ambivalence? Not exactly. I wasn't sorry to see the Nazis get taken down, but in the twisted face of Donowitz as he shot Hitler's jerking body apart with a machine gun and in Shosanna's giant face cackling madly on the flaming screen, I felt a kind of horror and a sadness for the literal hell that had fermented from mutual hatred and a lust for revenge.
So, I've seized on one small point in your terrific piece and ran in another direction with it. I hate it when people do that. Getting back to your overall ideas, I love this sense of identity and performance that you've pulled out. It gets at the very nature of cinema and the power of it. Goebbels knew it and Riefenstahl knew it. Tarantino knows it too and in a sense he's using it against those others.
I don't quite know what to make of Zoller. He does look genuinely troubled when watching himself on screen, and I think he's being quite honest when he says that the difference between the theatrical and the real disturbs him. That is, being there and having to actually kill was not as simple-mindedly glorious as the movie made it look, and being in a theater full of voyeurs rubs it in. (In principle this adds to one's ambivalence about the killing that follows, but, agreed, it's hard to actually feel any.)
So why does he act as he does when he comes up to the projection booth? Is he a basically nice kid who's been corrupted by fame and power, and is he just not bothering to be charming any longer? That may be part of it, but I think a lot of it is disgust and self-loathing. It's just become unmistakeably clear to him who the people are who have called him their hero, and he can no longer miss the ugliness underlying their adoration. He hates himself for the role he's being playing, and in his rage he parodies it. That doesn't mean that he's not dangerous, of course, both in the short run and the long run. He might despair enough to give himself up to the role completely.
That's why Shoshanna can relate to him in the end, I think. He's a boy whose life has been twisted by the same evil hers was, not at all in the same way, but still, it's something she can recognize, and she can feel regret. It means that she can go outside of her own hatred, and that she's still human, despite what's been done to her, and in that way she wins.
But then Tarantino turns it into a 70s Italian exploitation movie moment. The style of the movie changes for a few seconds, reinforced by the musical quote. I don't know what to make of it. For me, it was so nearly arch that it threw the emotion away. But I can also imagine that Tarantino saw it as a way of reinforcing the emotion, or, at least, that it might have worked that way for someone who didn't see it so much as just Tarantino's doing someone else's style.
Anyway, the effect, for me, was distancing, and what I ended up feeling was mainly that at least Shoshanna didn't have to burn to death, which is a way that no one would want to die. But maybe that was the point. If the fire represented vengeful rage (not much of a stretch), Shoshanna was spared being destroyed by it through her final moment of compassion, regardless of what Zoller himself may have been like.
Great insights. But rather than focusing on the 99 percent of your thoughts that I agree with, I'll pick on the 1 percent I don't.
"But to say that same dynamic is at work is, perhaps, wishful thinking for those who would prefer to feel at least a little bit guilty about the revenge scene, especially inasmuch as it deliberately recalls the ovens of the Holocaust."
I don't think this has anything to do with me wanting to feel guilty. As proof, when I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, when very nearly the same thing happens (during filming rather than showing), I don't feel the slightest repulsion towards the brutal revenge of Yahweh on behalf of his people. But when I see Basterds I do feel that, and the only differences that I can see are the context and the style of direction. Both Tarantino and Spielberg are deliberate film-makers, and every shot is a choice and every evocation of feeling is a bit of manipulation. Simply passing over this feeling and stating that I want to feel guilty seems like an odd bit of ad hominem reasoning.
I've argued elsewhere that Tarantino questions the morality of revenge. I actually don't think this runs contrary to your (great) interpretation of the film being about performance. In other words, for me, I don't think I need to abandon one interpretation for the acceptance of the other. Actually, the two work pretty well together, the more I think about it.
JE: I don't see the evidence in the film -- this one or "Kill Bill" or "Death Proof" -- that QT "questions the morality of revenge" at all. He allows for some ambiguity, but he doesn't significantly undercut it, either. My comment about "preferring to feel at least a little bit guilty" was my perhaps-too-"clever" way of saying that I think the interpretations of moral ambivalence in "IB" have been overstated. Indeed, because some see QT as an "art film" director rather than an exploitation film director (and he is both), it actually does feel more comfortable to read ambivalence into QT's violence. In the case of this particular film (how about that shot of the body being blown out the round window in the front of the movie theater), I think QT is "putting out the fire with gasoline"... and loving it.
Thanks Jim! You sure made these last few minutes slacking off in my cubicle that much more enjoyable! :D
Look out, here come the sycophantic fanboys! "Inglourious Basterds" is an entertaining film, but it is no masterpiece. Tarantino takes us yet again through revisions of scenes he's done before, including his standard overwrought dialogue, campy characterizations, foot fetishes, and pornographic violence -- only this time, with Nazis. Along the way, he rips off scenes and characters from dozens of movies. And you're impressed that an ADHD plagiarist like Tarantino -- surprise -- builds his schtick around movie metaphors?? You're working too hard to turn a B-movie director into an artist.
JE: I'm just writing about what's actually in his B-movie.
First of all, JIm, this is your masterpiece. (Haha... One of them anyway.) Thank you for taking the time. Seeing the movie as a series of interrogations is, I think, the truest interpretation anybody has seen yet.
Although, it's also one of the reasons I saw the climax as self-reflexive. The audience -- the real audience, us watching "IB" -- is interrogated now. We watched this German propaganda film in which the Nazis -- Hitler especially is singled out -- are made to look like bastards for laughing at these deaths and cheering on the one hero. Then we watch... basically the same thing happen before us (except even more gruesome).
But my original interpretation was that we're being interrogated to see if we feel conflicted about this. After reading what you've written here about 'wishful thinking', I want to readjust my position on this. I think you're right. I think my culturally regulated conscience told me I should feel... something else. But deep down (in my feelings), I think I kind of enjoyed it. I was laughing. And then another part of me (my head perhaps) was trying to be supremely empathetic and was like "oh god, this is so terrible".
So, in conclusion, I think the interrogation is the whole movie of Tarantino trying to use myth to win the audience over into admitting that good guy bad guy entertainment overcomes all political correctness or moralizing. And that this is why he hates so many of those types of movies -- because they simply aren't entertaining. And so this was one grand attempt to try to prove his point once and for all. And, from that perspective, this really is his masterpiece. He made a fool of me.
And yet and yet and yet... Others here don't seem so convinced that the ending is so straightforward. Even Tarantino himself... after that Jewish screening... seemed to suggest something other than what I/ you have stated here. I'm having fun though. Let the debate rage on.
Oh, one more thing...
The comparison of the climaxes between "Carrie" and "Basterds" was brilliant. That's what clarified it for me. There's certainly a drastic difference between who is being burnt alive in the two examples. Even the 'bad kids' in "Carrie" are still highschool fools. They aint no Nazi elite. And if people really wanna get real life about it, those associated with Nazi elite are, in the end, guilty by association if they're at that glitzy premiere while others are suffering unspeakable horrors in concentration camps... From that POV, those in the fire still got off easy. But the movie doesn't even go there. It's not about the Holocaust. It's all about Shoshanna's revenge. It begins with her and... ends after her actions were still in motion after her death.
JE: Thanks, Karlos. While it's tempting to see P.J. Soles, Nancy Allen, John Travolta and crew as Hitler Youth in the making, you're right. In Ed Howard's and Jason Bellamy's conversation about "IB" at "The House Next Door," one of them brought up an interesting point that supports what you say: What if the movie had begun with the introduction of the Basterds in Chapter Two, rather than with the slaughter of Shoshanna's family in Chapter One? Would have been an entirely different movie.
Small correction, Jim. Karl May's Apache Winnetou is actually a man, so the line should read: "Native American hero of a series of popular German novels..." They actually still read those novels in Germany, and a very popular film spoof of the Winnetou/Old Shatterhand mythology, "Der Schu des Manitu" was released earlier this decade.
Thanks for the analysis of the film, by the way.
JE: Yargh. Thanks. My brain must have gone all Sacagawea on me for a moment.
Hot damn, Jim. This was a wonderfully entertaining and insightful read.
I liked the way that Aldo and Landa were foils for each other. Although they both enjoy putting on a performance, Landa likes to disguise his true intentions and shift his personality to perfectly fit any situation. Aldo is very blunt and seems incapable of hiding his true nature or intentions. At the premiere, it seems like he's barely trying to be Italian. This make the ending very fitting, as Aldo's straightforwardness cuts right through Landa's attempts to negotiate. Aldo knows exactly what he wants to do and is not afraid to say so, and of course, now Landa is no longer able to use his greatest skill which was to hide who he really is.
magnificent, Jim. I have a feeling that this film is going to only grow in stature, and will service as the source for a lot of analysis like this.
i'm glad you mentioned the preoccupation with personal myth and reputation, as well as nicknames. since the film itself is essentially about the power of myth and mythmaking in cinema, it makes sense that these characters would manage, as it were, their own myths.
why would Utivich be concerned about his nickname being Little Man? Well, first there is the obvious...it's embarrassing. But secondly, such a nickname will eventually become his real identity. Our myth outlasts our reality. Always. We only live so long, but our myth lasts as long as the memory of us lasts. Utivich wants to affect the Nazis, and history, through his myth...which is perpetuated both by ourselves and others.
This applies to every character. Consciously they manage their myths. As strategy, because they intend to grow as a giant shadow in the Nazi mind. And for personal reasons.
Of course, this applies to Landa as well, and the other Nazi main characters.
The film, too, attempts to assert its own myth onto the reality of WWII history. Using cinema.
Upon first viewing, I did not like the fact that Soshanna dies. It seemed arbitrary, though artistically beautiful. Why would QT kill his female obsession, leaving behind no significant female bombshell, like he usually does? It bothered me.
But upon second viewing, I realized that she had to die. The brilliant, and I mean BRILLIANT, scene with her face projected on a screen which burns away, with her face finally projected in smoke (looking like a spirit) presiding over the rewriting of history, is the key. She had to die, so that she could become timeless. As timeless as the power of art (in this case film). If she remained alive, her act of vengeance would have been earthbound and mortal. Instead, she changes the course of history, through the transcendent power of myth/film.
Literally, in front of our very eyes, the movie screen goes from being tangible material to ethereal, mythic, spirit.
JE: We know Shoshanna and Marcel both plan to die in the nitrate fire, and we witness their final goodbye. It's just that things don't happen quite according to plan -- just as Operation Kino does not go off as planned, but is successful anyway.
I just want to agree with those who felt something more like repulsion during the Revenge of the Giant Face. When Shosanna says, "This is the face of Jewish revenge" and laughs diabolically, it strikes me more as ironic (on the filmmaker's part) than gleeful. Shosanna is dead, and here is her revenge? How very satisfying for her.
Throw in the rather inglourious shots of Eli Roth and Omar Ulmer and the screaming of the rats trying to escape, and I think there's a lot more than mere ambivalence about the revenge here.
That's not to say Tarantino is particularly innovative or insightful, but I think it's just as myopic to say the climax here (and the ending, which, make no mistake, was not a laugh for me or my sparsely populated matinee audience) is especially giddy about the violence in portrays.
JE: I like what Jason Bellamy said (which I quoted in footnote #5, above). The movie leaves room for that interpretation, even if it doesn't particularly make an effort to support it.
Fantastic, informative read! Keep the good work!
I laughed at the Karl May reference in the movie.
I believe I read that Hitler was turned on to Karl May's novels by an acquaintance who said they were better than the works of James Fenimore Cooper (Last of the Mohicans) as they were more exciting. Basically May's books are the pulp fiction of the western genre.
Another medium giving false images of an era!
First I'd like to say I'm really enjoying your critiques and analysis’s of Inglourious Basterds. They are really helping me work through my own feelings and interpretations towards the film.
However, I'm going to have to disagree with you; if anything, Inglourious Basterds was an examination of the audience, of the self-riotous modern-day people today who view the German's of that era as pure evil and like to believe they would have been above that. In a way, Tarantino makes the audience become the Nazi's and exposes our own "evil" or immorality. I wouldn't say he asks us to sympathize with the Nazi's, but he in turn exposes our hypocrisy when viewing the Nazi's. There are too many numerous instances that support this for me to believe this mere coincidence; it appears very deliberate on Tarantino's part.
Throughout the film Tarantino never shows the Nazi's as the one-dimensional monsters they are often portrayed as, here they are human beings. Celebrating the birth of a newborn son, playing bar games, refusing in the face of death to rat out fellow comrades (Tarantino even suggested in an interview it's hard not to like that man, or something along those lines) and boyishly attempting to woo a beautiful girl. There is only one despicable acts shown on account of the Nazi's: Hanz Landa's massacre of Shoshanna's family. Even then, there are floorboards shielding us from the view. The one opportunity Landa has to kill someone in front of us as Shoshanna runs across the field, he opts for a cheery "goodbye" instead. The gas chambers, the murders, the discrimination, all of this takes place outside the confines of the screen. Instead, we are presented with likable human beings. Even Hitler has been cast as more of a goof rather than the cold, manipulative dictator we often see.
Contrary to the Nazi's, the "Basterds" are, well, bastards. There isn't one scene where we see them expressing any dimensionality or any humanity. We are presented to them with Aldo Raine detailing the torture and mayhem they are going to inflict on the Nazi's. We next see "The Bear Jew" bashing a Nazi's head in as the rest of the "basterds" laugh on in amusement. In the barroom scene Emil Jannings shoots the new dad even as he's about to let her go, which is followed by Raine digging his finger into her wound to obtain information. They are never once shown in anything close to a positive light and contrary to the German characters, they are unlikable.
In the theater sequence, as "Nation's Pride" plays, we see the Nazi's laughing in glee at every new death on the screen. While I can really only speak for myself, it imeddiately made me feel queasy to see the Nazi's taking such pleasure in depictions of Jews being murdered. This is quickly followed by the Basterds themselves mowing down the Nazi's. The Basterds have replaced Zoller, the Nazi's have replaced the Jewish soldiers and the audience has become the Nazi audience, cheering with amusement and chuckling with every new death.
In the end, the movie left me with so many conflicted feelings. I actually liked the Nazi's. I disliked the "basterds". The good guys had become the bad guys and vice versa. This all left me feeling incredibly disgusted and uncomfortable with myself.
This all really seems to be deliberate (at least to me), although I have difficulty trying to determine what exactly Tarantino intended as there are so many possibilities. It could be a comment on the power of film, particularly propaganda, and how it can be manipulated to make us feel certain ways. We know the Nazi's are bad, but through his film Tarantino makes us like them. We know the Basterds are good, but by depicting only their violence and their cruelty, Tarantino makes us hate them. And does this not partially explain why so many German's could be oblivious to the horrors going under Hitler's regime, delusioned by propaganda and the power of film.
Thus, Inglourious Bastards is a comment on how if we had been alive back than in Germany, we may have partaken in that atrocity. These were not "monsters", but real people with feelings and thoughts just like any of us. It's a very discomforting realization as it makes one realize it could have been them. And just like the German people were made to applaud and encourage despicable acts, Tarantino has made us applaud and take joy in torture and violence, something which really should never be acceptable. Of course this is a film and there's a flaw in that fictional violence is not the same as real violence, but this is likely a flaw brought on by Tarantino's character as he's expressed before that he can't particularly distinguish between the two (9/11 didn't shock him because he saw something similar in a film prior). In a way, I see this as a companion piece to District 9, another movie that I thought explored how normal people can do terrible things.
This is really how I see Inglourious Basterds and while I believe the film failed on an entertainment level, it truly is very deep, layered and open to different interpretations.
JE: Thanks for that take on the movie, Dylan. One of my major problems with "Schindler's List" is the way it features the character of Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a psychopath who stands on his balcony and picks off women with a rifle for sport. Not that there weren't plenty of sadistic, psychopathic Nazis, but to put such emphasis on them is to miss the true horror of the Holocaust, which is that in the name of some larger cause (whether it's nationalism, religion, philosophy...) otherwise "normal" people can indeed become agents of evil. (If you haven't seen Marcel Ophuls' documentaries, "The Sorrow and the Pity" and "Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie," by all means do.) If anything, 9/11 (and America's response to it) should have reminded us of that. Not that I think Tarantino cares a whit about any of those things, but there's room in the movie to read similar things into it if you're so inclined.
The truth is, during the '30s and the war years Hitler was habitually portrayed in American media as a sputtering buffoon. People saw the newsreels and couldn't believe Germans were enamored of such a lunatic politician. And those were indeed Allied soldiers Zoller was shooting in "Nation's Pride," but I don't think they were necessarily Jews. Anyway, I think the title of "Inglourious Basterds" says all that needs to be said about the Basterds. Their mission was to fight the Nazis by being monstrous, and they obviously chose the right men for the job!
I can understand feeling 'repulsed' by the massacre in Chapter 5, but I never felt emotionally involved in the deaths of the Nazis. The whole scene is so...cartoonish, which is exactly what it intends to be. I love how the rushing masses of Nazis run straight into the locked theater doors and continue to pile up in the aisle. It's some kind of familiar Looney Toons image.
I can't decide what the projected smoke-face reminds me of more. The Wizard of Oz or Metropolis.
Great post, Jim!
It would be interesting to step back a little and take a look at how Tarantino has treated violence throughout his films and about the difference between moral ambiguity and moral ambivalence. As a previous poster pointed out, violence has consequences in Tarantino's world but those consequences are merely acknowledged never explored. Tarantino doesn't really seem interested of exploring the question of whether violence is good or bad although he certainly leaves room for both. It's also interesting to note that he doesn't feel obligated to display acts of violence on screen to make the audience aware of them. The narrative possibilities that violence open up are even more important than the cinematic ones. Violence makes for good stories. That's probably the only conclusion you could draw on the subject of violence from watching Tarantino films. He really doesn't seem interested in exploring the question of violence beyond that.
JE: I think you are correct. (I'm trying to avoid the facile phrase "I agree"!) Violence is a form of action that QT finds cinematic. In his cinematic vocabulary, you might say it's one of his favorite "verbs."
What I think most people mistook for ambivalence in the theater sequence is instead a small bit of postmodernism Tarantino inserted into the scene. Early on in the fifth act, we watch the Nazi audience cheer and applaud as Allied soldier after Allied soldier is gunned down- an image naturally upsetting to anyone who grew up in a country where the Allies are the heroes of the story. When the theater blows up, the tables have turned on the audience- they were sitting in a movie theater, nice and safe, watching their enemies get gunned down. Now they're in a movie getting gunned down, while an audience (you and me) watches and cheers. It's a great moment of postmodern irony, but it still invites the audience to examine their own feelings of joyful bloodlust upon watching Hitler get gunned down, and compare those emotions to Tarantino's image of the Fuhrer, cackling and slapping his knee at 300 Allied deaths.
Friends of mine who hadn't seen the movie yet invited me to see it again tonight. So I went. The movie was even more enjoyable the second time, for me, and certainly clarified many of my feelings from before...
For example, 'the brave German' that is killed by Donnie The Bear Jew... I had forgotten, was a passionate racist and seemed, on this viewing, to meet his death with a tinge of pleasure, as a KKK member dying at the hands of a black man/woman seeking vengeance/protection might. He seemed less humane than I remembered him. In fact, that he was so dedicated to his insane cause made it seem like his death was all the more necessary... and all the more excusable. After all, he dies feeling like he did a good thing, why should we worry? The bigger crime is that he was delusional.
Then there's the newborn father - whose name escapes me at the moment - and his death-by-angry-actress-with-a-real-loaded-gun. The first viewing he's a scared child. This viewing he seemed a little more grotesque and inexcusably naive in his insults of von Hammersmark, disqualified to be a father on those grounds. Would that kid grow up to be crazier with him as a father? In this universe, Shoshanna seems to have become a good person without a family and despite tragedy. While von Hammersmark was being quite ruthless in her killing of him, there seemed to be more reason for on this repeated viewing.
My friends had some surprisingly insightful comments. One of them is studying to be a doctor... I wasn't sure he'd have anything interesting to say. He surprised me though. The movie ends and he says "So that was a comedy, right?" "A comedy about what?" "About other war movies...? Agree or disagree with it being a comedy -- and I can certainly understand that because it is a very funny movie (in clever ways, audacious ways and sick joke ways) -- he did seem to recognize that it was a 'war movie' about war movies. Later he told me he doesn't watch war movies... implicating he wouldn't know how a war movie really does act but he, like all of us, has a subconscious conception of a war movie, just from living and being exposed to images in culture perhaps. "IB" seems to tap into that in moviegoers who aren't necessarily knowledgable of film. But I suppose that's because movies can teach us how they would like to be watched...
Ps. For what it's worth, he also had conflicted feelings about the climax, while also acknowledging most of the audience we were with didn't seem to (for whatever reasons). I have a feeling this discussion about what the climax means to audiences morally (or what it says about humans and how they react to violence) isn't going away anytime soon...
Pps. I highly recommend repeat viewings of this fascinating feast of fun known as "Inglorious Basterds" to all. There are so many little pleasures to appreciate in each scene. The dialogue is great but the actors come up with some hilariously uncomfortable facial expressions to suit it perfectly when things go awkward...
I agree with a lot that's been said lately, specifically that Tarantino thinks that violence is cinematic. And as someone who thought the ending was not so cool, I have to say that the scene where Eli Roth and his friend take out the guards for Hitler's box was awesome. So was the shootout at the end of Chapter 4.
But apart from the ghostly smoke image, I really don't see what tricks Tarantino uses to glorify the violence in Chapter 5. Wasn't it mostly shots of a burning theater, a longer than expected shot of the two gunmen, and random shots of the Nazis dying (but not close enough that we are invested in their deaths)? I think if Tarantino really wanted us to cheer, he knows how (Kill Bill 1, Death Proof). That's not to say laughing or cheering is the wrong reaction; like Jim said, I think there's room for that interpretation. But as Jim is fond of saying, I don't see the textual evidence that Chapter 5 is saying revenge is cool, man.
Just wanted to jump in to say that the opening shots reminded me as much of Heaven's Gate, with those white sheets on clothes lines, as Unforgiven, especially once its goes in closer.
OK, I admit it. I just skimmed the above. Frankly, it sounded like a dissection of a movie made for precisely this kind of audience: people who review movies for a living, and those who would like to.
Tarantino seems to know exactly the kind of movie that this audience finds fascinating. In his own way, he's put one in this audience's wheelhouse as effectively as Michael Bay did for a much different audience with "Transformers II." Both audiences have in common a love of fantasy; Tarantino's differs in not only admiring ambiguity but in being fond of admiring itself for admiring ambiguity. It also spends a lot more time than Bay's audience does watching movies (or at least it watches more of them).
A final thing about the audience Tarantino has made this move for -- the people in it can be counted on to react with fury and indignation to any suggestion that they have anything in common with the audience that loved "Transformers II."
You make a lot of good points Jim, but I feel you're avoiding the significant moral issues of the film.
It is not that interesting what Tarantino intended or did not intend with his film and the various ambiguous scenes you talk about. What is interesting is what is actually there, and what is there is quite problematic. And I'm not just talking about the burning cinema finale, although as has been pointed out Tarantino is quite clearly comparing our enjoyment of it to the enjoyment Hitler got from "The Nation's Pride" (which by the way should be evidence enough for the claim that the finale is to be met with mixed feelings). For the record I did not find it to be cathartic or kinetically thrilling. I admit I enjoyed the whole film up to that point but when that scene happened it was like being slapped in the face as I realized how very morally messed up the film is.
Throughout the whole film the Basterds talk about "Nazis" as having no humanity and deserving nothing but torture and death. "Nazis" becomes a synonym for "evil monster" which supposedly justifies the heinous acts of the Basterds. But critically the movie shows the Basterds equating "Nazis" with every single German soldier/officer during WW2 and any woman that might be associated with such people. I will take it for granted that we are all educated people here and understand that this is an outrageously clueless equation. Yet this is what the Basterds think and they scalp and torture and kill everyone they can. Clearly this should be reason enough to make the film morally ambiguous. Surely such morally decrepit characters must be seen in mixed light?
You claim 'not really'. And a whole lot of moviegoers will agree. And for good reason too, because Tarantino succeeds in making the story extremely exciting, entertaining and funny. Because it is then ingrained in us that "Nazi = evil" we quickly come to support the Basterds. Therein lies the moral issue I have with the film. The people who recognize that "Nazis aka monsters" as a blanket term for pretty much any German during WW2 is a morally reprehensible notion will probably recognize the ambiguities of the film. But a whole lot of people actually do have those notions and Inglourious Basterds will happily reaffirm those views for them.
That's why you can't just dismiss moral issues by saying "it's not really about WW2". Because it IS about WW2 no matter how you choose to view it. And as such the film provides affirms a morally reprehensible and historically ignorant view of WW2. It is now more than 60 years since WW2; when will the German people be given a break? I think Tarantino has made a film which succeeds brilliantly in being entertainment, but in doing so he has shown he is clueless about moral implications.
JE: Thank you for a provocative and interesting reading of the movie. I think we are seeing very similar things in it (particularly with regard to the relative portrayals of the "good guys" and the "bad guys"), but we're putting different emphases on them. One of them, of course, is in how we choose to interpret the word "about" (as in my first sentence). I'm seeing it above all as a genre movie, like QT's previous films. To me, the way the movie plays, its primary reality is in movie-genre rather than any historical WW II. Consider other movie examples: Is the von Sternberg/Dietrich masterpiece "The Scarlet Empress" (1935) about Catherine the Great? Well, yes, but that's probably the least of the things it's about, since it's another movie about artifice and myth and performance. (Coincidentally, perhaps, QT has spoken in interviews of "coming late" to Sternberg [the "von" is an affectation], and only recently getting into his work, and his fantastic[al] autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry..
Regarding the film's morality, we may essentially see the same things, but you are coming at it from a different angle than I am. I'm responding, in part, to those who say that the film intends for its audience to experience moral qualms about the Basterds' methods, Operation Kino and Shoshanna's revenge. I'm saying that, although there's room for some ambiguity, I don't think the film intends to seriously question these things. As I understand your reading, you would agree: that part of what makes the film "morally reprehensible" is just that -- that it treats all Germans as Nazis and Nazis as inhuman (not unlike the way Landa compares Jews with rats, perhaps?). I don't think Tarantino is much interested in cinema that engages with complex moral issues, but you are absolutely right to interpret what you see on the screen. Is QT -- or the movie -- "clueless" about its moral implications? That's surely a discussion worth having. I'm not denying it because, as I've said previously, I don't think the movie offers (or intends to offer) any coherent moral views. And I can certainly see why some might have moral/aesthetic objections to that.
Thanks for the response Jim, you understood my reading perfectly. I can certainly appreciate your angle to the film, but I just really feel Tarantino didn't think things through too well. My feelings were only amplified after having some discussions on a forum I frequent where several people seemed absolutely fine with the idea of in essence portraying every German as a Nazi monster.
By the way, I was so glad when I discovered all your articles here about IB! I was very dissapointed that Ebert chose to completely ignore any moral questions in his review (which was surprising to me given his previous track record with films such as A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club, both of which he criticised for their moral implications). Finding these articles saved the day!
I do not think Tarantino has anything to say about the morality of the Basterds vis-a-vis the Nazis or vice versa, at least insofar as the "righteousness" of their causes goes. However, I think there is a broad moral "judgment" so to speak rendered on EVERYONE in the film, inasmuch as Tarantino seems to be saying, well, they're all bastards.
Not that I believe he thinks this is "wrong;" on the contrary, it's a character device to lend a consistent tone to the whole enterprise -- i.e., these are selfish, greedy, shallow people. And he has employed this trope in his previous work. Think of the characters of Reservoir Dogs, especially the two most likeable/"moral" conmen, Mr. Orange and Mr. White. Mr. Orange, we discover, is a cop planted among Joe's men -- but this doesn't make him the hero of the film; in fact, he's been antagonized by that point as we've spent so much time with the dogs ("reservoir" dogs...) that we've come to like them and even root for them to a certain extent. Mr. Orange's seemingly noble action in actuality undercuts his favorability, making him seem selfish and, well, a bastard. Mr. White, on the other hand, seems to be a nice guy (although nominally a heel). However, he also betrays this trust by shooting Mr. Orange at the end, even after he apologizes and pleas for his understanding.
In IB, everyone's a bastard. The Nazis are the obvious case, although Landa is a particularly selfish bastard, as witnessed by his face-saving measures at the conclusion of the film. The Basterds are clearly basterds, even Aldo Raine, who, although he seems to appear like an above-the-crowd Zeus-like character (in Greek mythology, the gods were truly bastards, with Zeus at the head of the pack, but with some "moral" impugnity blessed by his position) at the end betrays Landa's trust and carves a Nazi sign into his forehead (interestingly, this is the first time Tarantino shows him perpetrating actual violence). This is significant because by this point in the film, Landa is clearly a fan favorite, and such an action makes him seem duplicitous, vengeful, and low.
The rest may not seem as obvious, but they fit right into the bastard mold: Van Hammersmark shoots the young new father in the bar after he barters for her life; Zoller seems to be a "nice" Nazi, but turns vicious in the projector booth (even seemingly threatining rape, as you said); Shoshanna herself shoots Zoller in cold blood, betraying both Zoller's and the audience's expectations; even the French farmer betrays the location of the Dreyfus family -- granted, under duress, but it is still a selfish move nonetheless.
What does this all have to say about Morality? That it's a bastardly world? That private interest trumps all other considerations? Nothing but sound and fury? To me, it's just a generic device, a Tarantino staple -- all his films feature low lives in one form or another. They all carve their own paths and look out for themselves. For Tarantino it's a bastard's world, but not because experience has taught him that -- it's because it makes for good movies.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the fascinating dissection of a movie that I found simultaneously exhilarating (some individual scenes are Tarantino's best) and a little frustrating. On a positive note, I'm surprised that you found the movie's ace card, Christoph Waltz, a little underwhelming. Is it because his performance had been so hyped? From where I sit, Tarantino has never written a more complex character, but it's to Waltz's credit that no actor has ever managed to wrap himself around the delicious complexity of Tarantino's language so effectively. I was floored whenever he was on screen, and a little impatient for him to return whenever he wasn't.
As much as I think Kill Bill vo. 1 is Tarantino's masterpiece, I don't think he's ever done anything as start-to-finish wonderful as the conversation between Landa and Shoshanna over dessert. Notice the visual rhyme here: Landa is sitting in the same position with respect to Shoshanna that he was sitting in the opening sequence with respect to LaPadite, an alignment reinforced by the choice of camera position. It's wickedly tense.
But I have to disagree with plenty of the arguments advanced for the ambivalence of the ending. First, there's a bit of have-cake-and-eat-it-too about the question of historical verisimilitude: we can distance ourselves from the reality of WWII by claiming it's just cinematic wish fulfillment, but at the same time our dislike of the Nazi soldiers requires our associations with that history. It's not quite the same as what Speilberg does in the Indiana Jones films, because Speilberg goes out of his way to detach them from anything like historical reality: try to imagine Indiana Jones walking into Auschwitz, and you'll see what I mean. But this isn't the case with IB, where the historical reality is fundamental to setting up the audience's expectations.
But okay, it's fantasy, and we can detach ourselves somewhat. Now I'd propose a thought experiment, and ask if the arguments about fiction and stylization and moral detachment apply to the opening sequence's massacre of the Jewish family. It's certainly highly stylized, we see none of the faces of the victims as they're being slaughtered - and from a narrative perspective it serves as the opening bookend violence to the conclusion's. And I suppose we could watch both events with the same entertained detachment - as "skillful art-house exploitation", but ... maybe I'm just fulfilling Jason Bellamy's assertion about personal attitudes, but I know that first massacre made me sick to my stomach.
I dunno, what do you think?
JE: I don't find Waltz or Landa underwhelming at all. QT reportedly almost cancelled the movie until he finally found the actor who could play this character -- and be convincing in German, French, English and Italian. It's a terrific character and a wonderful performance, but I felt he'd already received so much attention (and the best actor award at Cannes) that I just didn't have much to add, which left me free to concentrate on other aspects of the movie that I felt hadn't received the scrutiny they deserved. I think what you're saying about Chapter One is absolutely built into the way the movie works: It gets more and more abstract and fantastical (and ahistorically fictional) as it goes along, creating its own reality. It starts out very simply (two men in a room; family hiding beneath the floor) in a scene that could have actually happened, and culminates in a big cinema set-piece with multiple levels of action and a big fiery explosion set to movie -- finally blowing up history with fiction.
The bit that I find most haunting about my theater-going experience in regard to this film is: Hitler's reaction, during the "Nation's Pride", is what the masses were sold through Universal's ads. THAT'S what they wanted.
Universal sold a film to the public that did not deliver on promises to the masses.
That said....
I LOVE how many asses-in-seats this film has made on the second weekend.
Art in America has been possible for quite some time.
Did you listen to Adam and Matty at Filmspotting this week? Your responses are primarily the same.
JE: I'm not familiar with Filmspotting. I'll check it out.
"..."Nazis aka monsters" as a blanket term for pretty much any German during WW2 is a morally reprehensible notion.... But a whole lot of people actually do have those notions and Inglourious Basterds will happily reaffirm those views for them.... It is now more than 60 years since WW2; when will the German people be given a break?"
Kristian (Sept 3, 1:46 pm), seriously, I do believe the quite proud German people of today have nothing to worry about. And clearly, there will be no rebirth of Nazism there. Quite frankly, I am glad both Germany and Japan have shed militaristic, with extreme prejudice, notions of conquests. I hope you can take away a wider perspective that there could be quite a number of Japanese people who believe the Americans should still be reviled for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moral relativism perhaps? Let's just say in the face of evil, I am not prepared to back down. Meanwhile, let's just make peace and get along. It is truly the better path.
"Inglourious Basterds" is not ambiguous. It is about killing Nazis, who by a freak of history, happened to be Germans during WW2.
Jim, in a comment to an earlier IB post, you wrote: "Landa is also a terrific character, but I knew Waltz had won a prize at Cannes so I was expecting more from him (especially since his character has so much more screen time than Pitt's)." I'm confused how that jibes with: "I don't find Waltz or Landa underwhelming at all."
JE: I can see how you might interpret it that way, but that's not what I meant to say. My previous sentence was about being surprised at how funny Pitt was. I hadn't heard much at all about Pitt's performance, but I'd heard lots about Waltz's. So, I'm not at all saying I was underwhelmed by Waltz, just saying that because of the Cannes honors and advance publicity I had higher expectations for him (and he met/exceeded them -- "That's a bingo!") than I did for Pitt, who has a smaller part even though he's the biggest marquee name and gets top billing. In other words, I was prepared to be dazzled by Waltz (and I was), but Pitt's performance came as an unexpected delight.
Okay, I get it. You expected more from Waltz than you did from Pitt, not more from Waltz than he delivered. I must say, I had been confused ever since you first wrote that, wondering how someone could love IB but be underwhelmed by Waltz. Thanks for clarifying.
Earlier I mentioned that Tarantino always has his characters explain why they commited an act of violence, which makes his portrayals of violence not immoral, and thus, just violence for the sake of violence (funny, Eli Roth could learn something from him. I'd like to mention something about the ending of the movie in light of this observation.
As I said, Tarantino's characters always explain why they commit an act of violence--Brad Pitt at the beginning says "Nazi's don't have no humanity", Shoshanna--as the cinema burns down--gives her motives right there on the big screen for her victims to know WHY she did it (and for us, I believe; the morality aspect). Okay, as far as Landa: throughout most of the movie Tarantino doesn't really explain WHY Landa commits the acts of violence he does; we just know that he cruelly enjoys it. This leaves a moral void throughout the entire film because we never know why we are witnessing the things he does. Later on it is revealed that he is on the good side. Tarantino is playing with our moral indignation more here. We are left with this thought, "Even if he is on the good side, what he did was STILL wrong." Then Brad Pitt carves the Swastika, killing him. Earlier Brad Pitt gave his reason for violence that he is killin Nazi's because they have no humanity, and with Landa it is no exception. But we still are feeling that moral indignation because Landa still hasn't given us an adequate reason for why he did what he did. So, with the ending of the movie, I think Tarantino is making us supply our own reason for why he enjoyed doing it so much. He did the same kind of thing in "Pulp Fiction" where we are left to decide for ourselves what was in the briefcase. At the end of the movie we are left feeling that it was immoral of Tarantino not to explain why Landa did what he did, but we get the sense that he felt it was unspeakable, which makes it moral of him not to tell us, and in doing that he redirects are moral indignation from the external to the internal. We are left to ponder or kind of meditate at the end, "Why in the world is there such senseless violence?" This is an appropriate question to be asking ourselves at the end of a ww2 movie.
Brilliant essay, Jim. I always enjoy reading your insight into films, and this is no exception.
My pitiful two cents: Tarantino is a huge admirer of P.T. Anderson and There Will Be Blood. Could Landa's milk-drinking in IB be a reference/homage to Plainview's I drink your milkshake! line in TWBB? The parallels seem intriguing ...
In response to ColinS (September 4, 2009 10:20 AM): ""Inglourious Basterds" is not ambiguous. It is about killing Nazis, who by a freak of history, happened to be Germans during WW2."
I think you're dismissing it too easily. A big part of the film which Tarantino very deliberately plays up is the power of cinema to change history itself. Tarantino seems very much to believe in the idea of film having great influence, and I agree whole heartedly. Film, especially the accumulation of several films over a long period, can have a big influence on people's attitudes. It thus strikes me as particularly irresponsible of Tarantino to seemingly completely ignore the place his own film has in history and our culture. As a director whose every film is guaranteed to attract millions he simply cannot cast aside any moral considerations and make what he want with a clear conscience.
The idea that all Germans were Nazis and all Nazis were evil is an idea which started getting pumped into our western world immediately during and after the war. History is written by the victor it is said, and that was certainly the case here. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the countless war movies produced (primarily in America) which all picked up where the war propaganda left off. The vast majority of these films used as a premise the above idea and it is no exaggeration I think to say that these ideas became part of a lot of peoples attitudes. The treatment of 'bastard' German children resulting from affairs between soldiers and women of occupied countries is just one example of the terrible outcome such attitudes can produce. Although in more recent years war movies have produced far more balanced portrayals (most recently perhaps Eastwoods excellent Flags/Letters films), Tarantinos film falls into the long line of historically biased films.
I think having a clear understanding of history is imperative, especially with something as momentous as WW2. The atrocities commited in that war (not just by the Nazis) are hard to fathom today, but I firmly believe it is our moral duty to try and put them in perspective and understand them. If we do not how can we be assured it will not happen again? Inglourious Basterds gives nourishment to a historically ignorant view of the war which can only serve to strengthen detrimental attitudes. And don't have any doubts as to the possible backlash of such culturally nurtured attitudes. These days we're experiencing anti-islamic propaganda of a quite similar nature. The result was the justification of war. The fact that WW2 is a while ago now shouldn't be used as an excuse to indulge in something quite wilfully ignorant.
"A big part of the film which Tarantino very deliberately plays up is the power of cinema to change history itself."
That's a bit ambiguous Kristien (Sept 4, 3:12pm)
I'll be more specific. It is the power of film to destroy evil (as represented by the Nazi High Command and enabling hoi polloi.) Also, this movie is not attempting to give a history lesson by design and intent, not "willfully ignorant." I think you have drawn in line in the sand here.
I agree with you, in some ways, "Inglourious Basterds" IS a "propaganda" film. But I believe the presentation is in an artistic sense not jingoistic. The American (Tarantino was quite specific in making the Jewish soldiers Americans, not Jews in Europe) “Basterds” were quite cruel in their “gorilla mission” actions; that cannot be good for America’s image for sure. However, I doubt you can say the defeat of Germany in WW2 was a bad thing.
Yes, we can still try to understand the human sides of the Nazis, but I hope we can still conclude their ideas perpetuated were and are wrong. Evil is as evil does. On the other hand, there were lots of Maximilians and Sabines who with their parents had no heart felt alliance with Nazism. They were force to tow the line, or be shot (Landa, "you will be shot for this") and seal their fate in a morally perfect state of death.
I sincerely believe it is not the responsibility of all filmmakers to show all sides in a film to please all in the political spectrum. Even documentaries have focused points of views (as much as and the vast majority of documentarians say they don’t.) Surely, in our societies we should and must teach, in our schools (primary, secondary, and universities) how to break down the stereotypes. The cinema is a primary space for fantasy, though not exclusively.
Forget what I said about "Inglourious Basterds" (except the part about explaining the violence being moral). It's not a good idea to try to figure out what the movie is about weeks later after you saw it, which was done with only an hour of sleep that morning, but still seeing the 7 o'clock showing. I realize now that the ending was about street justice, and that's pretty much it, as far as the plot, I mean (I'm not really sure what it all "means" but it's been and continues to be really enjoyable to see the discussion here and in Roger's review--and in general about movies).
Mr. Emerson. Thank you for sharing your insight on IG. I just saw the film today and I am blown away by it. I cannot stop thinking about it and like you keep recalling the magnitude of themes QT presented. (One keeps on sticking is the proliferation of propaganda and how QT is mocking Riefenstahl by producing his own propaganda.)
But, I am curious to hear your interpetation of the American slavery references sprinkled throughout the script. I counted three references, all by the Nazism which included Goebbels referring to the 1936 Olympics (plus Aldo Raine's lynching scar). It appeared that QT was pointing out the not so subtle similarities between Nazi Germany and America's own racial past.
Once again, any insight you have would be a pleasure to read.
Thanks,
Rabi
JE: Seems to me "IB"'s Aryan supremacists are still smarting from the Berlin Olympics, where they were embarrassed by Jesse Owens winning four gold medals. So much for the Nazi propaganda about the universal racial superiority of Aryans . In the movie, Goebbels charges Americans with using the descendants of slaves to assert athletic dominance. It's a little odd to have white supremacist Germans condemning slavery, given the ethnic cleansing policies of the Third Reich, but QT's characters seem to be doing it defensively -- as if it somehow justifies what the Nazis are doing to the Jews. ("Well, the Americans were slave traders, so...") In fact, people of African descent were segregated -- some in concentration camps -- under the Nazis. In "Mein Kampf," Hitler saw blacks as part of the Jewish menace, writing that "the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardization." So, for the Nazis, Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Slavs, gypsies, the disabled, communists, Jehovah's Witnesses... all threatened to poison the gene pool of the Aryan Master Race. Meanwhile, in the heavily segregated United States, the 13th-15th Amendments to the Constitution, passed after the Civil War, had promised equal rights to ethnic minorities that wouldn't begin to be uniformly enforced until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965...
In response to ColinS:
Let me ask you one question then. If Inglourious Basterds had subtly been promoting the Nazi agenda, glorifying the Nazis rather than the Basterds and attempting to induce us to cheer for the Nazis instead of the Basterds, would you still not consider it a problem?
My initial feeling aobut the movie was that, scene by scene, it was extremely good, but I couldn't see how it added up. And I still don't. But I've just seen it for the thrid time, and some things seemed to jump out more.
First, the introduction of the Basterds is jarring, and Aldo Raine seems to have walked in from a Three Stooges movie. (Brad Pitt is very good at that, of course.) Suddenly you seem to be dealing with psychotic children, and their actions don't really seem an answer to what we've just seen in the first scene, but more something they do for its own sake. It's partly because it's a style break; the Basterds seem to come from another movie. I don't know whether that was intentional or not.
In any case, we see one interrogation scene (Landa) followed directly by another (Raines), and they're pretty parallel, except that Raines is having dumber, more overtly sadistic fun. If you wanted to justify what the Basterds are doing, this would be a very strange way to do it.
But then, what role do the Basterds play in their own movie? If you cut them out entirely, you could tell the same story anyway. They seem to be left over from an earlier draft. It's really Shoshanna's movie, and mainly the Basterds give you a way of keeping more balls in the air, which is particularly needed when Shoshanna dies. But then it's a spaghetti Western kind of plot, and that's about having a lot of different characters with traumatic histories, some of them psychotic, going on separate tracks. (Starting with the theme from "The Alamo," and going on to "Once upon a time ...", reminds us of spaghetti Westerns right away.)
What's striking is that the movie seems to have characters who are children, and characters who are adults. Shoshanna is an adult; Bridget von Hammersmark is an adult. They know how to balance difficult situations and not act impulsively, and when they do act, it's to get something done. Shoshanna has adult motivations, and a lot of them, while Raines is a cartoon.
As for the scene in the theater, I don't see any ambivalence at all. The movie's built up a situation with Zoller, who's a young sniper who's had the faith that he's acted in a just cause, although what he did in serving that faith was to kill nearly 300 people. Now Tarantino's pulling the trigger, by putting Zoller into a theater and letting him see the corruption of his leaders in their response to a movie of the killing. It isn't, I think, that Tarantino is commenting on our response to cinematic violence. The movie's quite okay with the idea that the Nazis need killing, the end.
Shoshanna's the moral center of the movie, if it has one. She kills the Nazis because it needs to be done, and she does take vengeful pleasure from it, as does the movie. But she and her lover differ from Raines and Landa in that they have other motivations than that. Her lover acts out of, well, love. Shoshanna does what she needs to, but she doesn't allow herself to be completely defined by her aggressors. She allows herself to see Zoller as a human being, which Raines could not have done. She does not simply see her lover as a means to an end. And the killing she does is targeted, not done out of cruelty or sheer rage. She isn't just killing Germans at random.
One remaining question. Twice Landa lets Shoshanna escape. (It's pretty evident in the restaurant scene that he knows who she is, and he comes close to closing the trap, but pulls back at the last minute.) Why?
Speaking of that restaurant scene, Tarantino quotes Hitchcock again here, in addition to the "Saboteur" quote he uses earlier -- instead of having someone put out a cigarette in a friend egg, it's whipped cream. Wouldn't be surprised if Tarantino had Hitchcock in mind a lot, given the way he was building up his scenes.
Kristian, I don't think there is anything good (being the opposite of evil) Nazism can promote, even subtly. But if a smart filmmaker could show Nazis as real heroes in a film, it could be an interesting movie. Look, there are tons of movies that have exposed America's racist past (more subtly today for sure), and morally bankrupt decisions made regarding capitalism, media propaganda, native American genocide, warped religion, gangsters, etc... so we can take a punch on the chin, and then some. Now, the very second our Nazi heroes will begin speaking of their profound Aryan mission for the Third Reich, they will lose 99% (my humble guess, and wish)of the audiences. We have come to accept that Nazi ideology is an evil idea for an ever widening enlightened majority on our planet. In the end, our Nazis heroes will still be seen as evil. They have earned it from our concensus moral view of history.
Note: I have never seen "Fatherland."
JE: For a satirical take on this, see Monty Python's "Life of Brian" and "What have the Romans ever done for us?" To borrow a popular saying about Hitler's Fascist-dictator ally in Italy: "Mussolini made the trains run on time."
Your very thorough and perceptive analysis doesn't change my dissatisfaction with the movie. IB is not so much a movie about World War II, as it is a movie about mediocre World War II movies, in which Tarrantino lovingly recapitulates every cliche -- the bad Churchill and Hitler immitations, the hyper-intelligent Gestapo man, the giveaway non-European gesture come to mind -- hammered home by a deliberately overdone score.
It reminded me of my childhood in the 1950s in two respects. First, of course, the revenge fantasy isn't all that different from the World War II we played as 8 year old boys. Second, the overall sensibility reminds me of the men's pulp magazines -- True, Saga, Argosy, Real Men -- that I would furtively leaf through at the barber shop. The lurid covers always promised sex and gory, heroic adventure, with hot Nazi babes spilling out of SS uniforms. The insides never delivered. Neither does Tarrantino.
IB does contain one actual idea, though -- resentment of West Germany. Even the greatest and most complete victory in history wound up as a rather sordid compromise. We hung a few hundred Nazis and imprisoned some thousands, but we let most Germans work their passage because we needed a stable, prosperous Germany as a Cold War ally. Speer spent 20 years in Spandau; his principal subordinates had long, successful careers. The Soviets did pretty much the same thing in their chunk of Germany. In Tarrantino's wish world, all the Germans whom we let live would have been branded on the forehead with swastikas, so that no one could forget what each had individually done.
The point of the American slavery references is the same as using Winnitou in the drinking game. German nationalists envied the British Empire and resented the fact that all of the good, exploitable non-European world had been grabbed up and settled or colonized before Germany was unified. Hitler's program was to conquer for Germany a great, slave empire in Eastern Europe, with the Slavs providing servile labor in perpetuity and the Jews going the way of the Indians and the Aborigines. As far as the Germans were concerned, this was no more than the Anglo-Saxons had done for themselves in North America, Australia, India and Africa; the only difference was that the racially inferior subject people out East were white skinned instead of dark.
In response to ColinS:
You said "I don't think there is anything good (being the opposite of evil) Nazism can promote, even subtly".
I am claiming that IB promotes not even subtly the idea that in WW2 every German wearing a uniform and pretty much any German full stop was an inhuman monster who deserved nothing less than torture and death (and scalping). Surely you don't think that's a good thing for a film to promote?
Because that's what this is really about. You keep talking about Nazis being evil and so on, and I don't disagree that the concept "Nazi" is bad and shouldn't be promoted. But that's not what this is about. It's about the association of that demonic concept with every German wearing a uniform, an association I hope you can agree is ignorant, morally bad, even dangerous.
The problem is of course that this association has been drilled into the winners of the war not only during the war but more relevantly in countless war movies afterwards, of which I count IB as one. That's why I asked you how you would feel if the film reversed it. I shouldn't have used the word "Nazi" really, so let me rephrase it: if the basterds had been Nazis hunting down and scalping Western Allies, thinking they had no humanity etc., and the film wanted us to cheer for them and consider their acts just and righteous , would you still defend the film saying it's just a fantasy?
I don't think many people would to be honest, and that's a hypocrisy I find quite worrying.
The most impressive things in Basterds are the tension scenes that Tarantino does so well (ie: nerve-squeezing conversations followed by lots shootin'). That opening sequence was so unsettling I was biting the nails of the stranger next to me in the theater. Basically any scene that featured the "Jew Hunter" made my intestines twist like taffy. Damn, that actor was just so fucking great. Never have I seen an actor so harmless is physical stature be so frightfully menacing in demeanor. Best performance by an actor this year IMHO.
Can't say I was head-over-heels in love with the rest of the movie.
It was entertaining as fuck, but in the same way a hot fudge sundae is a treat to the body. It's as yummy as can be, but I'm not getting a hellovalot of nutrients from it. Sure, there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm getting a tad tired of Tarantino feeding me the same hot fudge sundaes.
If you can suspend probability and common sense for 2.5 hours, you're in good shape with this movie. I mean, the final chapter at the French movie theater seemed as if it were written by a junior high school student. Hitler protected by only two guards?? Absolutely no nazis on guard at ANY of the theater exists?? And for the record, there's nothing more reprehensible than people giving sloppy script writing a pass by saying "'Probability?? It's a freakin' movie!'". That's a lazy cop-out. Use your noggin Quentin! Have at least a dozen guards shielding Hitler and show the two Basterds spraying them with bullets. Have at least a couple guards at each exist but come up with a way for Shoshanna's boyfriend to lock those doors without their knowledge.
And it seems as if Brad Pitt gets more mediocre as he gets older. He just came across as a one-dimensional stereotype that seemed too stupid to figure out how to tie his own boot laces. I was hoping to see a second layer to this character that suggested he knew his shit backwards and forwards. It was like he studied a character from a comic book with absolutely no suggestion of a past other than that scar on his neck. It was as if Bill Clinton were playing the part with nothing more than an moronic grin and a happy-go-lucky Huckleberry Hound Dog accent. Him and his basterds made the film seem like Hogan's Heroes The Movie which ain't bad except the Basterds were supposed to be notorious and feared. I thought he stood around and did nothing in Benjamin Buttons too. What happened to the firecracker actor from 9 Monkeys and Kalifornia?? He's too young for his DeNiro days to be behind him!
I would love to see Tarantino make a smart movie that has some semblance of plausability. Ressevouir Dogs, Jackie Brown and True Romance were screenplays that dealt with a nice ration of intelligent plot turns and character development. Seems like Tarantino just wanted to concentrate on explosive individual scenes with his last three movies. And it also sucks that he enjoys reminding his audience that they're watching a piece of Tarantino kitsche art as opposed to a good story about WWII. The modern day vernacular, the new wave Bowie song, the funky 1970s font throughout the movie, Sam Jackson with his hip, cool narration...I guess I didn't find those things as charming as Tarantino does. He and Tim Burton need to start using their great cinematic gifts for something completely beyond their comfortable realm.
All of my elitist, pompous, amateur film criticisms aside, you'll never NOT see me running for anything Tarantino has to offer.
Kristian, the ordinary German soldier, bureaucrat, industrialist etc. got off pretty lightly after World War II because we needed our part of Germany as an ally against the USSR. The tacit understanding between say 1947 and 1989 was that we would consider most Germans to have been apolitical professionals, except for a Nazi minority, and the Germans in turn wouldn't complain about how they had suffered in the war. That was the Cold War bargain, and it broke down when the Wall fell. The Germans now get to dwell on the horrors of bombing, rape by the Red Army etc., and we get to lament the bargain that was made.
At Nuremberg Speer said that he had to take responsibility for the war because he would certainly have taken credit if Germany had won. That's true of that entire generation of good, patriotic Germans. They did their considerable best to win. If Hitler had prevailed, they would have enjoyed their slave empire in the East without a qualm and considered the extermination of the Jews to be a historic accomplishment. That's what they were all working and fighting for, and that's why IB projects rage at the entire German people.
K.S. says:
"I am claiming that IB promotes not even subtly the idea that in WW2 every German wearing a uniform and pretty much any German full stop was an inhuman monster who deserved nothing less than torture and death (and scalping)"
Really? You felt no sympathy for Wilhelm in the basement cafe? Saw no bravery and nobility in Rachtmen facing down death?
I think this film had a more subtle, balanced and humanistic portrayal of the "bad guys" than, let's say, Dances With Wolves (certainly for the Pawnees, and probably for the whites).
I am a bit confused about Kristian's comments about how IB paints the Nazis as evil monsters. One might draw the conclusion that they are because 1. Aldo says so and 2. because that is the common assumption held especially in the US. How the movie actually portrays the Nazis in the film overall (aside from the famous ones) is overall more human and intelligent than the Americans. If anything IB might actually make someone who is a fan of war films actually contemplate why they would mindless cheer on the "good guys vs the bad guys" whoever that might be in whatever war. The point is that part of the reason we are hardwired to think so is because of most films unrealistic portrayal of war in general. The majority of World War 2 films that I have seen are just as historic inaccurate and dishonest as IB, but they are done in ways which are acceptable. The small details are changed maybe but history reminds cemented in time. But more damaging is the manipulation of emotion and their reductionist logic. During WW2 the government actually warned Hollywood against painting "the enemy" in these black in white terms as to simply and obscure the reasons behind the war. This didn't work of course but it is important to note that even now many years later our opinion of what history is and what it means is colored by how these films portray it.
QT knows this and this is what makes IB so interesting. Pretty much all the cliches are present but spun on their head to give them different context and meaning. Take the scene with the introduction of the "Bear Jew" and his bat. This scene is in countless war movies. The brave soldier will not betray is country and his fellow soldiers to the enemy. He chooses to give his life for the cause. Usually this person is one of the "good guys" and we tear up and applaud his bravery. IB twists it around however making him a Nazi. But the scene still plays out the same, complete with the blaring dramatic music. Some might still justify the brutality in this case though after all it is against just a Nazi. QT is simply interested in the logic and language of film and not the real history of the situation. No one would call one of the Americans a fanatic for sticking so hard to his beliefs nor would they call racist a soldier who belittles his accuses by calling them "krauts", "japs" or usually worse. On the other hand Tarantino doesn't say we should sympathies with the Nazi either. He doesn't say anything. He just introduces ideas from within is deconstruction and reconstruction of the "war film".
JE: Very nicely said. I think many accounts of this scene leave out the most important element -- that Rachtman's "good soldier" bravery is contrasted with the frightened, crying private who immediately divulges the information Rachtman refuses to provide (and gives his life for), is marked with the swastika scar and delivered to a hysterical Hitler as a warning sign. Rachtman behaves honorably, according to his military code, until he realizes he has nothing to lose. Fredrick Zoller does something similar, behaving modestly around Shoshanna until (in his final moments in the booth) he explodes with vicious anger when he realizes she isn't going to surrender to his will. Rachtman and Zoller initially display a kind of strength (not of character, but of self-discipline) that collapses into weakness when they lose their tempers.
Lots of responses suddenly, I'll try to respond to the main things.
@Jack Cerf: I find your claims rather absurd. Even at his peak Hitler never amassed 50% or more votes in the many democratic elections held before he became a dictator. Not even when he sent thugs out to the election stalls did he reach 50% votes, so to claim that if Hitler had won the whole German population would have been happy with the extermination of the Jews doesn't seem that convincing to me. Probably a lot of people who weren't diehard Nazis got swept up in the war and did their best to help win out of some sense of patriotic duty, and more still did perhaps turn a blind eye knowingly, but the concept of branding an entire generation as inherently evil in some sense is plain dangerous, even if you only restrict to actual soldiers.
@ Jim and Bud: You both raise similar points so I'll respond as one.
Bud, I completely agree with your statements about the films colouring our perception of the war. That is a point I have been making throughout here, and is the main reason why I found IB to be so morally irresponsible. The following you said is especially true I feel:
"The small details are changed maybe but history reminds cemented in time. But more damaging is the manipulation of emotion and their reductionist logic"
But this is exactly what IB does: manipulation of emotion. I agree that there is room to see ambiguities in the portrayals of Nazis and the justness of the Basterds and so on, but as Jim argued in this very article, at the end of the day the film boils down to a revenge movie which supports the Basterds. The ambiguities are often lost because Tarantino makes the film so damn entertaining and funny that we are almost forced to be excited on behalf of the Basterds and laugh with them and cheer for them. Now maybe the audience at your cinema was different, but where I saw it there was a lot of young people watching and the majority of the crowd laughed and cheered and clapped in support of the Basterds the whole movie. Even when Rachtman makes his display of bravery, the ambiguity was mostly lost as soon as the Bear Jew makes his entry: any musings on the character of Rachtman are lost in laughs and cheers for his being beaten to death. It's the same throughout the film pretty much.
The film induces us to support the Basterds, to essentially consider their motives and morality acceptable, and ultimately that's what a lot of people will get out of the film. Maybe Tarantino really wanted to flip things kindof on their heads, and introduce ambiguity and a more balanced portrayal, but I would argue that most of that is lost due to the fact that the film is made so entertaining. At the end of the day I think most people will not walk away from the film thinking it showed a particularly nuanced view of the German soldier in WW2 (Zoller was held up as a possible exception the whole film but in the end even he was exposed as someone entirely unsympathetic). I think for most people it will just be another entertaining war movie in the long line of movies which portray the war in black and white terms.
Black and white terms = propaganda. Hitler never had a propaganda machine like Hollywood, USA. All movies are a form of mass mind control. These movies are turning us all into Israelis.
JE: Thank you for adding your unequivocal perspective, Glenn.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,545660,00.html
http://bit.ly/BqIzO
Thanks everyone for an entertaining and instructive debate. What no-one seems to have talked about yet though, is how the Basterds will get the Glory for ending the war by blowing up the cinema. In the film's own terms, posterity must say that America won the war! Even the biggest bastard of all, Landa, will get false recognition, even if he has to hide his swastika scar for the rest of his life.
Only the Nazi elite will know of Shosanna's revenge (ok, we get to peep in). I couldn't help wishing those Basterds had all been eliminated before her brave, artistic and perfect revenge was played out. I saw the film last night in a sold-out showing and was disturbed by the amount of audience cheering and laughter that accompanied the Basterds' acts of scalping, beating and decimating. People are strange! The Basterds' shooting of the trapped audience was overkill for me, though I must admit I would have had no objection to them being burnt alive by Shosanna and Marcel. Perhaps that makes me strange too?
Thanks for your review, Jim.
I just saw the film last night, and it was sold-out as well. I've been thinking about it a lot, and what Tarantino was trying to accomplish. The play with identity, the film about film, the theme of projection, righteous retribution and good and evil are all pure genius. I think he wanted us to feel both exhilarated with revenge when all of the Nazis were killed in the theater, but I also think Tarantino wanted to show us that we ourselves can be just like the blood-lusting Nazis in the theater watching the propaganda film about killing Americans. Interesting... this is why I felt so weird at the end of the movie, and now afterword.
When Aldo carves the swastika on Landa's forehead, telling us this is his masterpiece, we see it from Landa's eyes as if he is carving it on our own foreheads - and it is so graphically portrayed that we can't help but feel it. I don't just think this is Tarantino telling us that he thinks this is his best film. I think Tarantino was telling us that we - as humanity - have both good and evil inside of us, and we project our own evil onto others, just like a propaganda film, while denying it in ourselves.
Throughout the film we witness horrific violence, yet Tarantino weaves this together with the mundane, with human dialogue...banter while scalping!!! I think it is meant to be uncomfortable. Who do we identify with? The Bear Jew is hardly intimidating as a dewey-eyed baseball lover from Brooklyn, yet his projected reputation is meant to strike fear in the Nazis. I think all of this was intentional, even down to the bad acting. Landa - who is amazing - is actually charming and sinister at the same time. Like so many of Tarantino's homages, he seems to get his namesake from Diego de Landa, the Spanish priest who took it upon himself to slaughter, butcher, and punish the Maya in the 16th Century, burning all of their books in an auto-da-fé, attempting to convert the Maya to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico. The Holocaust is sadly not the first of its kind - all done in the name of ideology and "goodness", and projection onto others as the "evil" or "bestial" ones.
There were many interesting ironies in the film. It was the Americans who were scalping, when this used to be the hallmark of "savagery", carried out by Native Americans defending their land from the invading "Americans" (Europeans). It was an SS officer who reflects back to us the history of African Slavery in America, with the King Kong metaphor. And it was the Jews who were using suicide bombs in the theater, and Landa even said something like, "one could even call it terrorism", or call it heroic... This seems to force us to take a look at what Muslim suicide bombers are doing in the name of fighting the state of Israel - whose formation following the Holocaust as a nation of the oppressed ironically has, at times, become a nation of oppressors themselves, as Einstein himself feared (he turned down an invitation to enter into Israeli politics because of it).
I think Tarantino enjoyed showing us the Nazis and Hitler getting slaughtered and he wanted us to love it. That was one of the most incredible scenes I have ever seen - with Soshanna's face in the smoke just like the angels of death that melted and exploded the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was cathartic to say the least, and not just because I am a Jew. I think most of the audience was forced to feel the thrill of this burning, karmic retribution. But Tarantino also gives us an opportunity to think about why we love it. We are also symbolically the victims of this virtual Holocaust of theater-goers, as well as its perpetrators, reveling in watching us all burn, trapped in the theater.
We see Zoller looking at himself shooting all of the Americans in his own propaganda film, and we identify with his discomfort and even think that he is worthy of compassion, and that he feels compassion as well. But then when he forces himself on Soshanna, he identifies with the power of the beast in the film and becomes that beast again, seemingly forgetting that it made him sick to see himself that way. When he moans after he is shot, we again feel compassion towards him, as Soshanna also tentatively does. But this is snatched from us again as he shoots her, and they are both dead. There is a schizophrenia here that Tarantino intentionally wants us to feel. What are we supposed to feel? Who do we identify with? Are we always only going to identify with what we see as good, with the victimized, and deny that we also have a beast in us, capable of forgetting what we just saw about ourselves when we walk away from this film? I think Soshanna and Zoller were the two most complex, human characters in the film. They kill one another, to set the stage for the climactic conflagration. We are left only with the two-dimensional projections in their films, which lack the complexity of the humans that made them. I suppose we have to symbolically kill the compassionate side of ourselves and our humanity in order to allow ourselves to revel in the human barbeque that takes place. Tarantino sets all of this up for us, and we are his victims as well as his cheerleaders. This is a truly amazing metaphor, expertly carried out.
I think Tarantino fully realizes that many people will probably not get it, and walk away satisfied that the Nazis are dead. But I think he also intended this film to act as a mirror. Many will feel uncomfortable and ambivalent about it, and think about it afterword, and it is then up to us how to reconcile this paradoxical view of ourselves and our identity as humans. I think this is one of the hallmarks of a great work of art. It asks profound questions, reflects parts of ourselves, and it is our job to do the work of integrating this new (and very old) vision of humanity and recognizing ourselves in it. Perhaps if we can recognize ourselves in all of our humanity, then we don't have to keep repeating this same tragic story by slaughtering those who we perceive to be less human.
Amazing film.
One comment: When Landa asks for milk he is probably thinking of the Gilbert and Sullivan song which has lyrics "...Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream..." It would fit his theatrical personality to make such a hidden reference. The quote also appears in Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" which I'm sure Tarantino has read.
Great film, with a whole series of remarkable scenes.