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PDF version'Inglourious Basterds' (sic)
Tarantino's films are brilliant and intelligent but a rough ride
Sep. 02, 2009
Brad Pitt stars in a scene from the movie "Inglourious Basterds." (CNS photo/Weinstein Company)
Writer/director Quentin Tarantino's latest film is a masterpiece -- of sorts. It is pure cinema, pure theater, and entertaining. It is also brilliant, beautiful to look at, and intensely violent. I think it is one of Tarantino's most Coen brothers-type movies, though a case could be made for "Pulp Fiction" (1995).
The difference between Tarantino and the Coen brothers is that with Joel and Ethan there is always some kind of really smart joke or ironic twist going on; with Tarantino, there is another dimension. He is always commenting on movies and television using classy in-your-face techniques that entail violence -- lots of it. He creatively repackages everything he has ever experienced through movies and television programs and wraps it tightly in a bizarre story and propels it at the audience. There is no subtlety here.
The place is Nazi-occupied France; the time is World War II. Brad Pitt ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" 2008) plays Lt. Aldo Raine, from Alabama. He gathers a group of Allied Jewish soldiers and charges them with killing 100 Nazis and bringing their scalps to him. Raine's nemesis is Col. Hans Landa (Austrian actor Christoph Waltz) who can speak English, French, Italian and German. Fluently.
In the film's too-long introduction Col. Landa's evil nature and Nazi loyalty is established when he slaughters a Jewish family in hiding. But he allows a girl, Shosanna Dreyfus, to escape - sure that he will catch her later. Four years go by.
Raine's men are now on the hunt. Shosanna (brilliantly played by Melanie Laurent) has grown into a beauty and runs a movie theater left her by relatives. She and her black lover, Marcel (Jacky Ido), who is also the projectionist, plan to kill all the leaders of the Nazi party who are to attend the premiere of a pro-Nazi film. Raine and his men, with the help of a famous actress/secret agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) unknowingly plan the same thing. The two sides come together in a combustible finale -- but that is not the end because I won't give that away.
What is "Inglourious Basterds" about? It is about putting on a really good show. Brad Pitt will probably garner some award nominations, but did you ever notice he hardly ever moves in a film? He kind of just poses? He does pull off the comedic pretty well, however, much like he did in last year's Coen brothers' film "Burn after Reading." Christoph Waltz is an incredible, versatile actor that we detest from beginning to end. Diane Kruger, the actress playing an actress, is good. But the stellar performance comes from the Oscar-worthy Melanie Laurent; her face is the window to her soul.
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Again, what is "Inglourious Basterds" about? As with most cinema, film is the externalization of inner realities. "Basterds" gives audiences the opportunity to fight the Nazis, to wreak revenge, to avenge the atrocities of World War II; to live the hindsight of those who could have done something but didn't, or were defenseless victims. Here, the powerless, the oppressed, are empowered to kill those who are killing them. At times the film felt like a Western to me. Raines and his men were the cowboys out killing Indians (note the Ennio Morricone sound at the beginning; he also scored the music for Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns including the 1966 "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".) If "Inglourious Basterds" sounds like a hodge-podge, it is. And it all happens in a moral universe that had been so violated by the Nazis that ethics become relative. In Tarantino's universes, and in our own television, movie, and video game worlds, violence breeds so much violence that all humanity suffers from the inability to distinguish right from wrong that ensues.
I don't know about you, but when I finish seeing a Tarantino film, I know I have seen something brilliant and intelligent. But I am not sure the rough ride was worth it. I am not that curious about what goes on inside Tarantino's head: he puts it on the screen for all to see. I don't think he trusts the audience enough. Does he know any other ways to tell a story?
Yet, if he is reflecting back to us what he has assimilated from television and movies, this ought to give us pause to reflect on the media makers and story-tellers that we are educating and forming in our pews, living rooms and classrooms today. Will they digest the violence they experience and turn it into art? Tarantino is doing it, but why? Maybe because he can.
Now, the Coen brothers' films are often violent but can be deeply funny, ironic and absurd. These guys interest me. I would love to see an MRI of what goes on in their brains. Remember the likeable loser Dude (Jeff Bridges) in "The Big Lebowski" speaking wistfully about the carpet that the dog peed on and started all the "action"? "That rug really tied the room together."
Nihilism is very chic. And I think I like the Dude more than Lt. Raine. I'd rather laugh than groan.
[A regular contributor to NCR on popular culture, Daughter of St. Paul Sr. Rose Pacatte is the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Los Angeles. She has been a member of the Daughters of St. Paul since 1967.]
easy solution kill your
easy solution
kill your television
rent no movies
go to no films (except Bunuel's Nazarin and Pierpaolo's Gospel According to Saint Matthew or Grand Illusion all without subtitles)
Watch the hummingbirds whose syrup you have prepared four to one, and watch them some more.
That's all the drama, and courage, and and lesson cooperative sharing, you will ever need. (Remind me it's time to refill those half dozen feeders already!)
then as they drift away for the night to roost on yucca stalks, watch the sunset and the stars come.
Who needs movies? No need for the "rough ride!" Why fill your brain with violent images you will review ineluctably within for the rest of your contemplative life?
All that you see becomes a part of your being. Do you really want to be that movie, and use its artificiality, its superficiality, to establish your world view forever?
Watch the hummingbirds, the quail, the dove, for drama, for life. With road runner strutting boldly about, who needs greater violence than that one glance from their unblinking hunter eye? Sure beats that poseur Brad Pitt . . . Even Angielee is tired of him.
Tarantino is a storyteller
Tarantino is a storyteller first and foremost, and he is quite brilliant when it comes to movie-making. The good news is that if "Pulp Fiction" was too violent for you, "Inglourious Basterds" is much less so. Violence, though, seems to be Tarantino's middle name, and there is plenty here to go around.
"Inglourious Basterds" ('IG') is the ultimate revenge fantasy for anyone who has ever been horrified by Hitler and his Nazi regime. That being said, 'IG' is a movie not about WWII, but about WWII movies, among others (if you've ever seen 'Scarface', you'll see it referenced here). Sr. Rose's review is pretty on the mark. I was fascinated by Christopher Waltz, who plays a despicable character, but does it so well I'd like to see him nominated for some awards. While Sr. Rose dismisses Brad Pitt as a 'poser' (I can't disagree) I thoroughly enjoyed Lt. Aldo Raine, despite the violence he inspires from his men. Yes, 'IG' is violent, but so was WWII. So is the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Violence is and has been part of the human condition and watching hummingbirds won't make history disappear (sorry, Frere Charles).
A lot of the enjoyment I got from 'IG' was putting together the story Tarantino was trying to tell. He takes license, but in so doing he speaks the language of our culture...the culture we've inherited through t.v. and movies. We all speak it, those of us whose parents couldn't be bothered to limit the time we spent watching the 'boob tube', and who spent possibly too many Saturday afternoons watching double features down at the local cinema.
you obviously, my dear Lib,
you obviously, my dear Lib, have watched far too many movies and not enough hummingbirds.
kill your television before it kills you, your soul, your mind, your free will, your judgment, your capacity for loving your enemy.
You say you got a lot of enjoyment from this film.
Tell me, what for you is enjoyment? What places joy within you? The Holy Spirit? or trashy movies?
We have not inherited this culture through television and movies without what is most precious and valuable, the ability to touch another human in grace and in love and in comprehensive reality.
There is one place in any house where it is impossible to pray, and that is in front of the television, or any other screen small or large, and that includes EWTN.
Where two or more of you are gathered in His Name, there is Love.
You find a lot of enjoyment in watching other people's bodies get blown apart.
Not far from that to torture of innocents . . .
Frere Charles: No I
Frere Charles: No I absolutely do not "get a lot of enjoyment from watching other people's bodies get blown apart".
Movies are a form of communication and Tarantino is, as I stated above, a storyteller. What I enjoyed was putting together what Tarantino was trying to say in his movie. Like it or not, we live in a violent world and we have a violent history. Accepting this does not equate to enjoying it. You can ask Sr. Rose, I covered my eyes during the most violent moments! Violence is not the answer, stopping violence is.
History and movies and culture exist...how can ignoring them make them go away? I do enjoy peace...I have a garden full of hummingbirds and butterflies and honeybees and ladybugs and bumblebees....I have deliberately planted flowers to attract all these lovely things. But I don't forget that somwhere hundreds of children are starving and beaten and dying in wars, all around the world, everyday. We're all members of the community of man and as such must not ignore one another, but reach out in many ways to communicate and touch each other. Movies are one way.
So, we work and pray for peace, but despite death and destruction all around us and through the grace of God and the Holy Spirit we are able to find joy in hummingbirds and other simple things.
Hey, please, Lib, pay a
Hey, please, Lib, pay a canonical visitation to our small desert hummingbird garden here, with moths and butterflies and quail babies and Asiatic white winged doves and road runners eying it all, anytime, please. I could use the advice and your wisdom, too! To delay the night rabbits I erected cinderblock rectangles recalling Machu Picchu's blessed architecture, and stone walkways to warn of rattlesnakes, but don't get me started on gardentalk, growing tomato in this desert (another gift of Incan origin), and basil, and rosemary, and roses, and lavender, and cactus . . .
and five kilometers south to chapel in Mexico, from where our starving children come each morning to classes. And a few hours east to visit the Cathedral in Ciudad Juarez, where each day and night more people are beaten, and dying.
Who needs the vicarious violence of film and television when we have so much to heal in peace right here? Who can heal the artifical pain of a Hollywood movie?
While living in Nicaragua working for peace, I paused after an illness to wrk as extra in Alex Cox's film of the life of William Walker, filibustero in Granada, Nicaragua, and so how the violence was done in those pre-digital days, popping plenty of squibs and grasping to my "wounds" red gooey liquid flowing from, well, let's just say in this Roman Catholic ambiance, long small balloons . . .
So who needs fake movies when there is much suffering, starvation, sickness and oppression to visit right outside this darkened doorway . . .
Please say Hi, with my deepest respect and gratitude, to Sr. Rose!
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Movies can be excellent story
Movies can be excellent story telling experiences, movies can be imaginative, profound, beautiful, haunting, thought-provoking. They are another medium of art when done with genius and care. They are like paintings and books and plays, and often based on these as well, and can record the beauty of the bees, the butterflies, the wolf, the tiger. They can make people think, can shift view points, they are a story teller's tool.
As for Brad Pitt as poseur I disagree. He struggles to leave a legacy of art, struggles to stay married to a troubled lady, who herself struggles with demons of her childhood (absent, neglectful dad) yet still tries to give back love to the world. Life's journey is intimacy with others, especially humans, it is difficult, challenging and forever fascinating. Jesus teaches us to honor our authenticity with mercy, justice, and compassion, to love and be loved in return is our greatest pursuit and purpose, as George Sand wrote (paraphrasing!).
Sister Rose, Excellent
Sister Rose,
Excellent commentary. I especially like your reflection on the film's violence. As is often the case, I think I have more stomach for violence than you. Or, perhaps, more of a relish for violence as a vehicle for Aristotelian catharsis. I don't like movies like Saw and Hostel, and I am not accompanying Bill and daughter Emily to see Final Destination 4 in 3-D today. Certain kinds of violence have no cathartic effect on me, and so I only experience repugnance when I view them. I haven't figured out the difference yet.
I wrote my own analysis at http://raeblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/inglourious-basterds-quentin-taranti... . When I published it, I thought that maybe first person to make a connection between Quentin Tarantino and Oscar Wilde. Then I discoverd that an Irish Studies scholar, Neil Sammels, has written a whole book about it titled "Pulp fictions: Oscar Wilde and Quentin Tarantino." I want to read the book. But gee did that burst my intellectual pride bubble! :-)
I can't think of any filmmaker today who could have made Inglourious Basterds besides Quentin Tarantino. I loved it for its beautiful set pieces, its audacious contribution to the alternative history fiction genre, and for the discussion it has provoked about the relationship of the "reel world" to the "real world."
But I cannot help but wonder if your showing of "Pulp Fiction" at the National Film Retreat might not have soften me up to again appreciate Tarantino as an artist. I wonder how I would have liked it if we had not viewed and discussed that film. I think it was providential (or serendipitous, if you like) for me that you included in in this year's retreat. Another cause for celebration of our acquaintance-cum-friendship.
Rae
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