On Violence

(In a break from our usual programming, On Violence is talking Academy Awards all week. Today everyone trashes on "Inglorious Basterds." Tomorrow we'll close up with a "The Hurt Locker" review and and link drop.)

Eric C's Second Take on Inglorious Basterds

I ended my last post on Inglorious Basterds asking you not to think too hard about the film. Quentin Tarantino disagrees. Not because he makes "important" films--he's never really tried to do that--but because Quentin Tarantino loves sub-textual film criticism, as he mentioned in an interview with Terry Gross. Fortunately, I do too.

So what's Inglorious Basterds about, beneath the surface? Propaganda and the German film industry. Goebbels is a supporting character, and the film's climax revolves around a propaganda film premiere. This propaganda film-within-a-film, which depicts a German sniper shooting hundreds of Americans from a bell tower, is over-the-top, absurd and unstomachingly jingoistic. Of course, that's also a pretty accurate description of Inglorious Basterds.

And that's the rub, isn't it? Despite being critical of propaganda, Inglorious Basterds is itself propaganda. Nazis, as I wrote before, are the easiest villains in the world to caricature. In his introduction to The Moon is Down, Donald V. Coers describes the common stereotypes of Germans in wartime propaganda, "heel clicking Huns...depraved, monocled intellectuals...thundering seig heils" or as Tarantino said, "if you want to see jack-booting Nazis in movies, you've got to watch American movies made at that time."

Or you could just watch Inglorious Basterds today. Hans Landa embodies a depraved intellectual. Goebbels is a pervert. Hitler acts like a moronic child. The heroic Nazi sniper is also a sexual predator.

Unlike propaganda by Germans or Americans in the 30's and 40's, Inglorious Basterds' impact is negligible; the war ended sixty years ago. It's more disturbing when Marcus Luttrell writes the jingoistic soon-to-be-filmed Lone Survivor today, or when Turkish filmmakers make the rabidly anti-American In the Valley of Wolves Iraq, the most popular film in Turkish cinema history. Current propaganda spreads hate and fear; Inglorious Basterds spreads a nostalgic hate and fear.

Doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

Matty P's Take On Inglorious Basterds

Two soldiers face one another; one a Nazi and one an American. One man obstinately allows himself to be bludgeoned to death rather than betray his allies. With defiant dignity, he kneels awaiting a gruesome death at the hands of his captors, displaying a solemn honor at dying for the sake of his country and his comrades. Yet this man who loses his life is not meant to be a hero. He is the villain because he is a Nazi.

For me, this scene from Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds epitomizes my disconnect with the movie. An action movie about Jewish vengeance against the Nazi regime, the protagonists lack the moral fortitude of the Nazi that they kill. The heroes, the people the audience are meant to be cheering, descend to the very same moral depths as the Nazis they despise. It's been mentioned here at On V and elsewhere that the heroes commit acts of violence which mirror historical atrocities committed by Nazi soldiers and guards (namely, carving swastikas in the foreheads of the enemy). They also fire into crowds, beat men to death with baseball bats, and appear to be the worst covert ops insertion team in history as none bothered to learn German.

My problem isn't with using the Nazi party as antagonists. The best Indiana Jones movies pit the archeology professor against the Third Reich. As a large portion of my family is of German Jewish decent, I enjoy watching the staunch monocled Nazi stereotype outwitted by a plucky hero. My outrage stems from portrayals of American soldiers who appear more vicious and morally vapid than their Nazi counterparts.

Michael C on Ambushes and Inglorious Basterds

I have many issues with Inglorious Basterds, but I don't have enough room to cover them all. Instead, I will write about how Quentin Tarantino filmed sucky ambushes.

When we finally catch up with the Basterds in France, they are standing around two survivors of a slaughtered German platoon. The Basterds take their time interrogating the prisoners; they torture both, murder one, and then release the surviving Soldier, all this in the same place where they ambushed the German patrol.

In real life, an ambush is tactical mission that allows a smaller element to disrupt the operations of a larger force. It has two things going for it: surprise and speed. Surprise when you initiate the ambush, and speed as you destroy enemy forces and then exfiltrate. The longer you hang around on the objective (where you conducted the ambush), the sooner you will be discovered and killed.

Tarantino's Basterds break a fundamental rule of warfare in pursuit of his Nazi-violence-porn fantasy.

Is it that important that I tear apart one tactical mistake in Inglorious Basterds? It is. Inglorious Basterds butchered the past to fulfill some dumb fantasy. It doesn't deserve a Best Picture nomination.

(I also could barely sit through it and Eric C left in the middle to chase tail. It was that boring.)

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