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Inglorious Basterds
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Inglorious Basterds

litkey
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Posted 09/19/09 - 02:48 AM: Subject: Inglorious Basterds	#1
Tarantino has written a movie where the Jews are brutal killers, and the Nazi's are incompetent, one might even say retarded. There is also a Hitler that is viewed as weak, and a joseph goebels who cries, and a martin borman who is a fat buffoon. The brutality is reversed, there are hardly ANY violent scenes where the Nazi'a act in an inhuman way - the brutality comes from the Jews; AND when it comes to supporting ideology the main Nazi LANDER is willing to give up the 3rd Reich, in exchange for his freedom, money, and land. The theme of the movie is a tail of Jewish revenge, however how much can we say this is a propaganda movie? -especially IF we were living in a land where people did not know history. I understand we can just say the film is nothing but Entertainment, however I believe there is MORE to it that this, however I am not so sure WHAT. Why did Tarantino write this story?
That's what tyrants get! - John Wilkes Booth “This is an impressive crowd: the Have's and Have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.” -Bush Something cannot come from nothing.

Saint Michael
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Posted 09/19/09 - 03:12 AM:	#2
litkey wrote: I understand we can just say the film is nothing but Entertainment, however I believe there is MORE to it that this, however I am not so sure WHAT. Why did Tarantino write this story? To show the Nazi regime as cowardly perhaps? But is that not so for all dictators? Are not all dictators cowardly at heart?

litkey
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Posted 09/19/09 - 06:33 AM:	#3
No I certainly don't think they are cowardly at heart. Often the tyrant is a control freak, and wants the world in his or her image - and will be ruthless in achieving this. The movie is interesting on the propaganda front, as at the climax of the movie we see the Nazi high comand all inside a cinema, viewing a film about the "Pride of Nation" - and this part is true, there were many propaganda films born in Nazi Germany, to augment power, to stigmatize the Jews, to bring other nations onside etc., : Propaganda. However, running parallel to this climatic scene, is the propaganda of the film: the Nazi killing Jews, the signs of America being powerful: a bassball bat, the dialects, the "intelligent" British, basically the West and the Jews doing a "good" thing: killing Hitler. Ofcourse it is a great thing to want to go back and kill Hitler, but doing it on the big screen, in such a way? IT slightly (only slightly) reminds me of "the untouchables" - a gross depiction of Al Capone: there was no truth about it, only Hollywood B.S. Terrible. Some interesting views please??
That's what tyrants get! - John Wilkes Booth “This is an impressive crowd: the Have's and Have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.” -Bush Something cannot come from nothing.

MarchHare
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Posted 09/19/09 - 06:48 AM:	#4
Saint Michael wrote: To show the Nazi regime as cowardly perhaps? But is that not so for all dictators? Are not all dictators cowardly at heart? Josip Tito was many bad things, but he was not a coward. Mao Zedong was not a coward. Even Hitler was a war hero. "Cowardly" is a much abused term. Politicians even sometimes describe suicide-terrorists as cowardly. Someone who blows themselves up to kill others in the pursuit of a cause is a terrible person: they are uncompassionate, unjust, foolish etc., but they are not cowardly. No-one who responds to fear in that way is a coward, but simply not-being-a-coward is not a sufficient condition for being a good person.
Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. The correct response to a question isn't always to try to give the question's answer.

Hamandcheese
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Posted 09/19/09 - 07:00 AM:	#5
I've read lots of criticisms of Tarantino trying to deconstruct the reasons and deeper meaning behind his films. The people who attempt this usually end up more confused coming out of analysis than when they went in. I consider these attempts to be in vain; I just don't think Tarantino puts really deep meaning into his movies. His favourite movie since 1992 is Battle Royale - the movie he says he most wishes he had directed. Some have tried to find deeper meaning in that flick, but in the end its a movie about Japanese school students trapped on an island, forced to fight to the death in a sadistic government experiment. It's pure fantasy action. Further, what meaning that is in Tarantino's movies is usually pretty shallow. They're full of movie references and homages, and his Grindhouse collab with Rodriguez was based on an inside joke. Now, don't get me wrong. I love Tarantino. I think his writing and directing are sublime, and Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs are arguably very philosophical movies if only by accident. Inglorious Basterds is similar, in that it raises huge questions about ethics but with no real attempt at answering them. In that sense his movies are a bit like a cock fight. The ethics are questionable, but the people involved are just in it for the intense visceral experience. Andy Warhol's pop-art didn't have much thought behind it either, but it unintentionally raised questions about what counts as art. Tarantino is similar. He's all aesthetics and no morality, but in the process he gets people talking more about the latter than the former. It is in that sense that I call him the 'pop-nihilist'.
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nelvan
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Posted 09/20/09 - 08:51 PM:	#6
Pop-nihilist, I like the term though it is redundant since all pop is nihilistic. At best, pop is a means, not the end but when it comes to Tarantino pop, it is both means and an end. I have not seen Inglorious Bastards but I would like to criticize Tarantino since I believe he is overrated. Specifically, I hate the dialogue between characters written by Tarantino (I suppose he writes it) that people love so much. It is generic dialogue that leads to nowhere and has nothing to do with the movie. I suppose the dialogue is used to contrast the violence or to keep us entertained between violent scenes since the story lacks any point. The dialogue reminds me of the movie Clerks or Chasing Amy, which I find annoying because it seems rehearsed as if the characters know what they will say before they say it, as if the characters are trying to outsmart one another and are not in relaxed improvised natural conversation like the rest of us have in the real world. The dialogue in Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm is much better simply because it is funny, though there is no point to it as well. I recommend people watch real cult movies like Spaghetti Westerns, Kung Fu movies from Shaw Brothers Studio, and Horror films from England's Hammer Film Production to name a few.

oldandrew
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2 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 09/21/09 - 11:47 AM:	#7
litkey wrote: Tarantino has written a movie where the Jews are brutal killers, and the Nazi's are incompetent, one might even say retarded. There is also a Hitler that is viewed as weak, and a joseph goebels who cries, and a martin borman who is a fat buffoon. The brutality is reversed, there are hardly ANY violent scenes where the Nazi'a act in an inhuman way - the brutality comes from the Jews; AND when it comes to supporting ideology the main Nazi LANDER is willing to give up the 3rd Reich, in exchange for his freedom, money, and land. The theme of the movie is a tail of Jewish revenge, however how much can we say this is a propaganda movie? -especially IF we were living in a land where people did not know history. I understand we can just say the film is nothing but Entertainment, however I believe there is MORE to it that this, however I am not so sure WHAT. Why did Tarantino write this story? Two points. The film begins with a long, dramatic and very memorable scene resulting in the murder of a Jewish family, so I disagree with the suggestion that there are no scenes of Nazi brutality. As to the message of the film, to me it was a simple one: killing Nazis is a good thing in itself and Nazism is inherently unforgiveable. The message is hammered home pretty hard, so it baffles me that so many people seem to have missed it. I can only assume that we are perhaps too liberal-minded for such a message these days and we'd sooner see all war as unnacceptable rather than suggest that some people actually deserve a violent end. I also disagree about the "revenge" angle. Shosanna does not focus on the man who killed her family, she tries to kill the Nazi high command. Killing Nazis is not about revenge, it is a good in itself. I think the film is clearest in this regard when dealing with the character of Stiglitz. There is no suggestion he has any personal history that drove him to kill Nazis, he just does it because he thinks it should be done, and "the basterds" admire this attitude.

ManiacJack
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Posted 09/21/09 - 07:32 PM:	#8
The movie was all a buildup to the final scene- the glorious gore of inscribing a swastika on a NAZIs forehead. The rest was made up, mostly as a joke [outside the aforementioned first scene]. Was it Pro-NAZI philosophically? Well, I hear that mothers told their soldier children in WWII to be decent germans and, upon seeing their first american, surrender-- because we treated them like humans, like all our prisoners. ...Cue today's BS...
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Lava Lamp
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Posted 09/22/09 - 04:21 AM:	#9
I saw a documentary on the History Channel that described Hitler's various hideouts from the time he took power in 1933 until his death in 1945; the film also covered most, if not all, of the assassination attempts made against Hitler during this time period. I think the work was entitled "Hitler's Bodyguards," but I could be wrong. Interestingly, the film pointed out that the Allies actually avoided bombing the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's hideout in what then was eastern Germany. The Allied High Command had decided to preserve Hitler since his command of the Wehrmacht was proving so disastrous for the Germans. If Quentin Tarantino was going to make use of the Holocaust in a World War II movie about Jewish-American death squads behind enemy lines in occupied France, he could have mentioned something about all the thousands of European Jews who were denied entry visas into the United States in the thirties and forties when the Third Reich was scoring its early successes. Most of them had to stay in Europe as the Nazis took over. Some honesty about Jim Crow all across America in this time period also would have been appreciated. American life was heavily segregated with its own apartheid system.

mutemaler
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Posted 09/22/09 - 12:01 PM:	#10
litkey wrote: ...I understand we can just say the film is nothing but Entertainment, however I believe there is MORE to it that this, however I am not so sure WHAT. Why did Tarantino write this story? So you're saying you don't like his story, and you like your story better?

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