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This post is going to have massive amounts of spoilers. So if you haven't seen the movie and don't want it spoiled... don't read further.
Here I am at 2:30am... I know I am going to be up until 3am writing this.
I have work in the morning, but I cant sleep. Its all because of Quentin Tarantino.
I went to this movie expecting a standard Tarantino blood fest. I left disturbed, somewhat shaken, and feeling a bit insane.
Inglourious Basterds is either a standard hyper violent war film, or its the most brilliant movie ever made.
Its Tarantino's ultimate joke.
Let me set a scenario for you and see if you understand what I am saying.
Imagine that you are in a theater watching this movie. Part way through the theater scene in the movie, the film cuts to a german that says "You will see the face of death!", the screen lights on fire, you rush to the back of the theater and the doors are locked. Would the irony be lost on you?
Nazis are the acceptable butt of every joke. Who doesn't hate nazis? Yet Tarantino uses Nazis to appeal to our brutal humanity.
In the opening scene, the discussion with the french farmer... the conversation comes up... Why do you hate rats? Isn't a squirrel just as likely to bite or spread disease? You don't know why you hate them, you just do.
I found myself playing these words in my head as people scrambled over each other to avoid flames and gunfire, exactly like rats in the penultimate scene.
Why are Nazis so evil? Why is it so easy to hate them and view them as acceptable objects of mutilation?
Is it not because they treated their fellow man as though he were a rat, an animal worthy of abuse, an object of extermination?
Then consider one of the main characters Aldo Raine. An apache. Didn't the US government exterminate the indians as part of manifest destiny?
Remember the scene in the bar. One of the basterds has a momentarily flash of whipping abuse. Random. He writes King Kong on his card and passes it right.
The clever major quickly narrows the answer down to "the nergos plight in coming to America, or King Kong".
It was this line that stunned and silenced me.
In this very same scene a man, probably not SS... just some german infantry of low rank, dies on the same night he is born. Why? Wrong place, wrong time, during a war.
In the movie theater, we see two people who might have been in love in another life shoot each other to death. The movie on screen "A Nation's Pride" flaunting a war hero who killed 300 men. Yet isn't it the United States "national pride" that compelled us to continually release war movies depicting larger than life heros for more than 50 years?
In the theater crazed Basterds gun down a mob already trapped in flames. Exterminating them like rats, with complete abandon to their own well being.
Its the closing scene that keeps me awake tonight.
Is Hans Landa truly a horrible Nazi murderer worthy of death? In the opening scene, he refuses to shoot even with a clear shot.... although it seems he is enjoying his job. In the scene in the restaurant where he encounters the same girl, he gives hints and clues that he knows her identity, and yet he holds his tongue.
In the end, he ends the war itself. And yet in the final scene the audience cheers as his forehead is carved in.
Have Aldo and his compatriots been any less barbaric throughout this movie? Is he not after the extermination of a people? Is he not marking those he lets go with stars, prominently displayed to strike fear into the rest?
And why the mark? Because Nazis in the future may be able to take their uniforms off.
And herein lies the joke as I see it. We take our uniform off. Our hate and acceptance of malice is never put on trial. It is easy to hide and recant. We would love to believe that in past times, we would spare apache and free slaves.
But here on the exit scene, the audience has the view of Aldo with his knife. The perspective is given of Hans. The audience is the man on the ground with the carved in forehead. And Tarantino speaks in "I do believe this is my master piece"
And therein lies the joke. He mocks his own audience. He leaves it to future generations to see the irony, to also laugh and talk about how they would not be so prejudice.
Or maybe I am just looking too much into this and I am crazy. Finished 3:05 am time for bed
 
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I never really thought about any of this while watching the movie. I am not sure how much of what you just described is intentional, but the fact that it exists and that such parallels can be drawn certainly counts for something when describing the depth of this movie.
That being said I didn't overly enjoy it personally.
[Edit: The movie, not the blog lol]
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Zurich15357 Posts
I read this a second time I still don't understand. What exactly is your point? A possible parallel between the killing of the jews and the killing of the north american indians? I am really confused.
As for the forehead carving that is a pretty obvious play on the practice of "Persilscheine" in the US occupied zone after the war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#American_zone
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god damn, that was painful to read, why do u type like that.
Anyway, yeah inglorious bastards, is hardly 'the greatest film ever made' all his other films are better. its about jews killing nazi's its a joke. get over it seriously. i mean its not even THAT good of a film. why the fuss.
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United States43350 Posts
I agree with op about the subtext of the movie. I thought it was more a commentary on the audience than a gorefest about WW2.
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Some great observations about the movie. I also felt a bit mocked(?) by the film, particularly during the "Nation's Pride" segments. Very entertaining film however.
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United States43350 Posts
zatics link did lead me to the word quisling though. I will definitely use that.
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I'm a bit confused by the OP. It seems you have a lot of thoughts and your just trying to write them down quickly because you're tired. Perhaps come back and edit it a bit?..
On September 14 2009 20:34 KP_CollectoR wrote:
Some great observations about the movie. I also felt a bit mocked(?) by the film, particularly during the "Nation's Pride" segments. Very entertaining film however.
There were a lot of German propaganda films made in the 30s and 40s and isn't 'Nations Pride' Tarantino's example of them?
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On September 14 2009 20:48 Roxen000 wrote:I'm a bit confused by the OP. It seems you have a lot of thoughts and your just trying to write them down quickly because you're tired. Perhaps come back and edit it a bit?.. Show nested quote +On September 14 2009 20:34 KP_CollectoR wrote:
Some great observations about the movie. I also felt a bit mocked(?) by the film, particularly during the "Nation's Pride" segments. Very entertaining film however. There were a lot of German propaganda films made in the 30s and 40s and isn't 'Nations Pride' Tarantino's example of them?
I'm referring to the concept of us as an audience watching a movie about an audience watching a movie, if that makes sense. I'm not commenting at all about propaganda, Germans, or the 1930s and 40s.
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i like the observations. i didn't think about most of the things you mentioned at the time that i watched the movie, and just thought it was a movie about jews having revenge, but the points are definitely worth noting indeed.
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fun fact: all godwin's law says is that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the more likely nazis/hitler will be brought up as a part of it...somehow most of the internet has added their own meaning to it like "whoever brings up nazis first loses" but that's not what it originally meant
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Bosnia-Herzegovina57 Posts
I think it was a horrible film with no action. and trust me, I could follow along, its just boring. + Show Spoiler + The only good part was possibly bear jew killing that nazi
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Weird movie. Its almost as though the Jews/Americans are the bad guys in this film: blood thirsty animalistic and terrorist like (think of the suicide bomber). The Nazis by contrast are honorable and eloquent in their speeches. Did the fact that Trantino portrayed this as an obviously anti-Nazi killing film made him think he can get away with this? Is this him being contrarian or just misjudging this strange take for a "coolness" factor?
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Interesting but kind of weird summary
like this part:
The clever major quickly narrows the answer down to "the nergos plight in coming to America, or King Kong".
It was this line that stunned and silenced me.
Would have been nice if you would have actually explained what it was about that sentence that stunned you, all you are doing is recite a movie quote and then go on to the next topic.
And like zatic, I'm not entirely sure what your point is. (Maybe it's cause we are germans who are lousy at english) - is it that you think that Tarantino is trying to say that under different circumstances everyone could be as hateful, that if we had been born a few hundred years ago, we'd also be racist etc. or what is it?
I do agree with you that "I do believe this is my masterpiece" might be a joke and might be more like Tarantino saying it than Pitt saying it but I don't really get how anything you said before in the article leads up to this end.
Anyways, was a good read, and a good movie, this was really the Tarantino movie I enjoyed the most, although all the Tarantino fans will probably strongly disagree with me on this one.
edit: lol check out what I found right after posting this:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/inglouriousbasterds/
The making of "nation's pride" :p
ha, Goebbels: "This is a masterpiece"
P.S. everyone try not to be such dicks ^^
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god damn, that was painful to read, why do u type like that.
Because it was 2:30am and I was in a hurry. I will clean it up when I get a minute
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So i want to see this movie, final recommendations? should or shouldnt i go?
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On September 15 2009 00:33 GreEny K wrote:
So i want to see this movie, final recommendations? should or shouldnt i go?
go watch it, really a movie you wanna watch in the cinema imo, but make sure you watch the original, not the synchronised version.
(large parts of the movie are in German anyways..)
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Very thought provoking blog. I never really thought of those things when I was watching the movie. It's funny how our memory can be very selective of what is morally right and wrong.
The white settlers that came to Australia in the 18th century took the land from the Aborigines and treated them like second class citizens, but the idea of torturing or mutilating the settlers does not seem 'right'. Yet it does for the Nazis. Why? Sure the settlers didn't exactly demonstrate a history as despicable and shameful as the Nazis, but what they did was still morally wrong. I think that the Nazis have become inhuman to us, a group not worthy of human rights, which is why we can comfortably watch them being beaten to death by baseball bats, getting disfigured and burning to death in a cinema.
Tarantino is asking us for a little compassion, yet we give him none. The smitten man that has hopelessly fallen into an unrequited love, the newly crowned father and the man that won the war. None of these things matter, they're all a bunch of Nazis.
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This blog post is a gem. Very awesome observations.
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I just laughed a ton when they, if you haven't seen the movie don't read, + Show Spoiler +shot Hitler in the face. I was like WOAH! They KILLED Hitler. NOBODY kills Hitler.
Good blog post though. I just went to see the movie as a comedy. Not really for anything else. But then again, maybe that's why the Germans were laughing at seeing Americans get killed in the "Nation's Pride" movie. Maybe they thought of it as a comedy as well...
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