By Keith Uhlich
As companion to the Tarantino piece below—and in the hopes of inspiring discussion—I'm here linking to Jonathan Rosenbaum's most recent post lambasting Inglourious Basterds. It's an angry, vital response to a movie I myself am loving more and more as I reflect on it, and it also makes reference to Daniel Mendelsohn's recent Newsweek article entitled "Inglourious Basterds: When Jews Attack", with which it should be read in concert. (Perhaps not so incidentally, Mendelsohn's Holocaust memoir The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million is the project that Jean-Luc Godard—whom Tarantino is frequently juxtaposed with, for good and for ill—is reportedly eyeing as his next directorial effort.)
The line of thinking that Rosenbaum and Mendelsohn articulate has been little expressed in the pre-release hoopla/puffery, at least from the articles I've perused, and is very much worth considering. Also of note: Over at Some Came Running, Glenn Kenny posted a glowing review of IB that one of our frequent commenters and sometime contributors—who goes by the handle "That Fuzzy Bastard"—responded to with pre-viewing reservations comparable to Rosenbaum and Mendelsohn (see that discussion starting here).
How best to describe where I part company with my colleagues? Simply that I don't consider the film a revenge flick in any traditional sense, whatever the mass media persona known as "QT" may spout in his carnival barker's desire to get butts in seats. For me, always: Tarantino's public face says one thing, his movies say another. Basterds is, to my mind, about the sheer impossibility of revenge, how it razes and perverts everyone who succumbs to it or who find themselves in its path. If audiences cheer the film with the mass fervor that Rosenbaum and Mendelsohn predict (and I think that's a pretty dubious proposition), they've missed the point. The Tarantino "cool" (never flawless) is the conduit to something deeper, disturbing, moving and profound.
My review of the film for Time Out New York will be published in this week's issue, and I'll link it here when it's available online. I also hope, in the coming weeks, to write at greater length about Basterds for the House, so keep an eye out.
Keith Uhlich is editor of The House Next Door.
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15 comments:
Rosenbaum has had it in for Tarantino since the early 90s, but at the same time I really appreciated his brief thoughts and the Newsweek article he pointed to. That's more or less what I fear the movie could be, but after Vol. 2 I can't imagine Tarantino making a movie that just relishes in revenge.
We'll see. I personally can't wait.
Oddly, the Newsweek opening is the first thing that's made me actually sort of want to see I.B. The thing that bugs me isn't so much what it says about the Holocaust as what it says about the war on terror---I think most war movies are about the war that's going on during their making, not the war they're ostensibly about (see M*A*S*H, Catch-22, or the Olivier Henry V), and I.B. so far sounds like a movie that'll make Andrew McCarthy swoon.
I'm bothered by the Newsweek/Rosenbaum argument. I haven't seen Inglorious Basterds, but I'm not clear on why this particular case (having Jews kill Nazis and presumably Hitler) is so repugnant.
Maybe when I see it, I'll realize that Tarantino isn't actually empowering the unempowered (as he claims) but engaging in some bizarre form of Holocaust denial (as they claim). I weary of attacks which suggest that a film's inclusion of questionable material amounts to an endorsement of it. The concept reminds me of Park Chan-wook's Lady Vengeance, whose finale was simultaneously praised artistically while condemned morally.
I'm also bothered that Rosenbaum/Mendelsohn seem to suggest that this particular revenge fantasy is "worse" than others. Every time we're supposed to cheer a death sequence (in horror, war, western, what have you), is it not just as perverse as cheering for a Jew breaking out of history to kill a Nazi? I think most of us are mature enough to understand that murder isn't commendable, and I expect the basterds will feel less like real people than superheroes.
My thoughts are pretty disjointed, but then, so is Mendelsohn's argument. I'm interested to see how the film itself affects my initial response.
I apologize in advance because I've noted this before in a different HOUSE thread, but after reading the Newsweek piece, I couldn't help myself. :)
I must point out the The Dirty Dozen (which the article references more than once) ends with a scene showing Reisman "gasing" a number of German generals and their female "companions" (who are clearly civilians) after locking them in an underground bomb shelter. Marvin as Reisman's saying "They gotta breath don't they" gets huge laughs.
On some level, this can certainly be seen as an act of revenge for the Holocaust by Reisman (who, in the novel, is actually half Jewish).
I haven't seen it yet, but I gather that the payback is presented at more of a fever pitch in IB. Nonetheless, Newsweek is off the mark for suggesting that it's somehow a new concept.
Just saying...
man, I can't wait to ready your review in TIME OUT, though I dread most of the dreck writing in there these days. I hope you don't have to write those dreadful pun photo captions.
Even so, puns aren't nearly as bad as critics who feel they have to stick up for some outmoded moral compass (as in god forbid Jews start killing Nazis in real life).
The review is up now, Erich. See the text above. It's the start of something more than it is fully fleshed out. Too much to address in 300 wds. Hopefully more to come.
And I do write some of those pun captions, but I'm a big boy. I can take the criticism. :-)
Even so, I try to avoid reviews if I know for sure I'm going to see a movie (then read everything right after), but I read yours - good show! It helps lower my expectations and reminds me to look out for UFA references, which sounds like the only way I'd be able to get through it.
I actually guessed your caption would be "A Knife to Remember" but "Knife to Meet you" is close enough.
The question now remains, is Tarantino in it, and if not, is casting Eli Roth just as bad?
"The Tarantino "cool" (never flawless) is the conduit to something deeper, disturbing, moving and profound."
Beautifully put.
Haven't yet seen IB so I can't contribute much to the discussion, but I'm looking forward to the movie and also to more of your take on it, Keith.
Haven't seen the film yet either -- I'm planning on going tomorrow night. But I've always objected to the idea that the Holocaust must be treated with special care when depicted in works of pop culture, or that the most hideous aspects of it should not be portrayed at all. These sorts of objections arose when "Schindler's List" came out, then again with "Apt Pupil" and "Life is Beautiful."
Any historical event should be fair game for any artist to use for whatever reason he sees fit. The reaction from audiences, critics and other artists will ultimately determine whether the depiction is interesting and has some kind of creative or sociological merit. That's not the same thing as saying it's defensible or reputable, of course -- but worrying too much about the latter shackles the imagination of filmmakers, and can have a chilling effect which, if scrupulously observed, can erase the Holocaust from the public consciousness in every context save straightforward and "tasteful" depictions of the type seen in recent Oscar-winning documentaries and middlebrow feature films.
If the same admonitions were heeded in regard to other blots on human history -- "be sensitive and scrupulous or don't go there at all," or something like that -- some of the most fascinating movies would never have existed. Blaxploitation melodramas and comedies such as "Blazing Saddles" often indulged in payback fantasies against white racists (including slave owners in certain westerns), and I don't see how the art form, or the world, would be a better place if the filmmakers had been more cautious in their handling of loaded material. "The Night Porter" is a sick fantasy on Nazi themes, but I'm glad it exists; the mere act of arguing about it does more to get viewers thinking about Nazism and the Holocaust and its representations than any number of straightforward History Channel documentaries that seek to inspire nothing more than a morally superior "tsk, tsk, wasn't that awful!" reaction.
Granted, a good deal of the time, when filmmakers take a gutter approach to upsetting historical subjects, the result is crap, not interesting as art or anything else. But Hoberman, a critic I usually admire, has been making this particular point for years (with regard to movies mentioned higher up in this comment) and I am still not entirely sure what he'd like filmmakers to do differently, or why they should do it differently. Nor am I clear on why the Holocaust and Nazism should be treated with special care, compared to other grotesque events which, to their survivors and descendants, are just as upsetting, and in theory just as ethically fraught.
I hate to open up a can of worms without having seen the film yet, but this particular issue bugs me, and I'd be curious what other people think of it (particularly those who, like Keith, have seen Tarantino's new movie).
I enjoyed Basterds more than I expected, probably because the Basterds got so little screen time, relative to others (although any and all frames spent on Eli Roth or scenery in his vicinity were an expense of spirit in a waste of shame).
In retrospect, I think the Jews-as-vengeance-taking-asskickers PR was another in what is beginning to seem like a series of Tarantino's juvenile, childish cover stories for telling, or trying to tell, other stories (Landa's and Shoshanna's). Maybe I've underestimated him because of all the pointless nonsense with which he surrounds his movies (the counterparts to his twitchy, handwaving body language in interviews).
I found myself conflicted by the movie. Tarantino is great with dialogue and setting up some tense scenes such as the opening one. But I think the criticisms in the Newsweek article help articulate my unease.
Keith, you express doubts that an audience will cheer at the sadistic acts that the Basterds engage in yet that's precisely what happened at the screening I went to yesterday. The audience was laughing and clapping, in particular, in the scenes involving a soldier clubbing a Nazi to death with a bat and later Brad Pitt's character slashing the forehead of a Nazi.
To me, Pitt's character seems to be another side of the same coin as Landa: both are sadists who like to torture the enemy.
I actually found Shoshanna to be the most compelling character and while she's responsible for some carnage as well, her motivatation seems more real and less cartoonish than the Basterds.
worrying too much about the latter shackles the imagination of filmmakers, and can have a chilling effect which, if scrupulously observed, can erase the Holocaust from the public consciousness in every context save straightforward and "tasteful" depictions of the type seen in recent Oscar-winning documentaries and middlebrow feature films.
This is quite right. Mendelsohn doesn't actually praise the status quo, but let's be frank about what it is -- the Holocaust as Oscar factory. One of my favorite early pieces of film criticism was the lively Village Voice roundtable (pdf) on Schindler's List, when Art Spiegelman pointed out how perverse it was to tell a story about the Holocaust in which none of the Jewish characters die. (That roundtable has an angry edge to it, but for the most part I think it stays more to the critical side and less to the censorious or handwringing.)
I've been trying to work out what I think of the Mendelsohn. It's a bit precious -- Hollywood has a lot more to answer re the Holocaust than one blood-n-guts thriller. (See "perverse" above.) I appreciated his eye for detail, however; he was horrified at the comparison between Aldo Raine's swastika-carvings in Nazi foreheads and the historical Nazis carving stars of David on rabbi's chests. I found it added an additional frisson to QT's high-wire act.
I also had a few moments when I wondered about the cheers in the audience. But I was cheering too, and I took an attitude of generosity towards the people in the theatre with me. If I'm capable of a complicated opinion of violence, history, pleasure and cinema, why wouldn't they be too?
Every film about war - shows war.I do not think that a main idea of this movie was about Holocaust, it rather is a recital about frightful war. I with impatience wait continuation of review and the movie is really great! :) especially Brad Pitt :)
OF COURSE audiences are going to cheer the killing. And why shouldn't they?
The packed house at BAM on Friday night certainly cheered and laughed at the killing. Because, I believe, they got QT's joke: after a lifetime of painful WWII movies like "Sophie's Choice" and "The Pianist," FINALLY HERE is a movie that cuts through what is proper and correct and just gives
us what we've always wanted to see: Nazi's getting they're brains bashed in.
Is that so wrong?
Mendelsohn and Rosenbaum are entirely irrelevant since they attack the cover story of IB (clearly it's what QT was planning: to drive the meek away from the core sympathies in the film), and they seem to understand the film only as a plot, not a form (a visual form). They zeroed in on the staples: swaztikas and blood and cried foul, missing the expert complexities sifting in the storytelling. Inglourious Basterds is very very taut from its visuals to its repeating nouns to its game-architecture. here:
http://www.mstrmnd.com/log/1394
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