“As a 14-year-old boy I remember saying to myself when I am a director I want to make movies that will make other people want to make movies.” – Quentin Tarantino
(SPOILER ALERT)
I watched Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterd’s for the first time when it came out last year, and I didn’t think very highly of it as a Tarantino fan. I, like any other Tarantino fan went in to be ‘smartly entertained’. The buzz around the film was already strong & when you say buzz these days it means what the net is saying. I had read all kinds of reviews & opinions abt the movie – some said it was Tarantino’s best since Pulp Fiction, some said its not as good (really, ‘reviews’ & opinionated pieces in all kinds of media & esp. the internet before the release of a movie is killing the purpose of watching movies. So much is said abt the film before its release that I feel most of the times we miss what the filmmaker is trying to do, and it has started to put me off as a viewer. I hate the fact that I’ve become compulsive with the practice myself. At times it just sucks the excitement out of the movie).
Anyway couple of months back I got Inglourious Basterds on my system & watched it in patches. Few days later I again did the same, and few days later I ended up watching the whole movie & have been watching it every now & then, since. I realize this only now that with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino consciously or sub-consciously didn’t try to be an adventurist like he was in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or the Kill Bill films. Here he doesn’t show his craft, he shows his control over it.
The first sequence between Colonel Hans Landa & LaPadite which came across as plain though engaging in the first viewing is the sequence which I now end up watching almost everytime I’m on my system & my internet is down.I realize that it was its subtlety that I mistook as ‘plain’. Both the actors in the scene are superb. Hans Landa’s intensity is established through the performance of the guy playing LaPadite.Indesribeable!…the scene cud be an indication of how the film is going to unfold to you as a viewer – gradually.
opening sequence
The Bar scene is my second best in the film – throughout the whole scene you want to shoot the Nazi ‘King Kong’ in his balls but before that you want to see how’d he crack the lie of Lt. Hicox who is in town ,in disguise, on a mission to assassinate Hitler. ‘King Kong ’ is Hans Landa with ideology. He is committed to the policies of Third Reich. He is very sharp & unlike Landa he is not very smart & unlike Landa, he has got character. His confidence is just too unsettling for Lt. Hicox who doesn’t know how to handle him. Tarantino makes you feel the tension without injecting background music throughout the scene. But the tension reaches you as if you are in the bar with them.
And then there is the whole sequence at the film theatre. It just shows Tarantino’s passion for cinema. The cold blooded assassination of Tarantino’s Hitler takes place there. Its symbolic in more ways than one.
Violence is always grand in Tarantino movies but the characters unleashing the violence are intentionally calm. And Tarantino’s violence comes coated in some kind of philosophy – mostly it’s the theory of vengeance that drives his protagonists. In Pulp Fiction, Jules justifies his violence by quoting the Bible everytime he goes for a kill – “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger…”, only to derive a new meaning of the same biblical passage at the ‘end’ of the film. The Bride in Kill Bill again justifies her violence based on the philosophy of vengeance (“Revenge is a dish best served cold”). Its the Dogs who don’t really justify their violence but they are dogs & they die like one.
Tarantino couldn’t have asked for a better plot than getting back at Nazis. The Basterds’ violence is justified not just by history but also by dozens movies based on the Holocaust & the violence of the Nazis shown in them. I know many people are put off by the violence in Tarantino movies probably coz its too detailed & in your face and they think its there just for the sake of it. Yes, its there for the sake of entertainment. Tarantino is not a preacher, he is like Jules – he speaks with commitment & then pulls the trigger. And he does that smartly without ideating. Tarantino uses violence as a larger-than-life tool. He knows its for an art form whose prime purpose is to engage through entertainment. There is always an element of humour in his films. That’s why his Hitler, no matter as twisted as always, is comical. Those who take films in any other way miss the ‘pulp’ in it. Expecting ‘sensitive treatment’ from his films is foolish coz you are missing the whole point then – hardcore sensory entertainment. He wants you take films as films . Get inspired only if you are a filmmaker!
Inglourious Basterds fictionalises the violence of the Jews thru the Basterds & shows the Nazis being tortured. There are lots of movies made about the cruelities Jews faced under the Nazis & stories related to the Holocaust. Almost all show the the Nazis torturing the Jews, all show violence of the Nazis but unlike the other Holocaust/Nazi films, the audience here cheers the torture while rooting for the Basterds. Violence is used as a strategy by both the Nazis & the Basterds but the violence of the Basterds seem justified. Aldo Raine is almost Hitler-like in his ways. The baseball bat with which the Bear Jew beats his victims to death could have been a Nazi smashing a Jewish head. The ‘bat’ remains the same, the ‘head’ changes. We dont cheer for the Nazis but we do for the Basterds. This is very interesting. On concept level , its just changing the label & turning the idea on its head.
Colonel Hans Landa, the character which has been played with effortless brilliance by actor Christoph Waltz – makes a Nazi accessible & very watchable probably for the first time, on screen. Tarantino treats him as a human being. I feel the thing that gives films of filmmakers like Tarantino & Scorsese so much of repeat value is their treatment of characters. Their inspection of the human mind irrespective of how those characters are slotted conventionally.
Christoph Waltz - brilliant!
The Last Temptation of the Christ is my favourite Scorsese film. I think its his most raw. Based on a book of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis, the film portrays Jesus Christ unlike in any of the other Jesus Christ movies I have ever seen. It shows him as a complex human being, fighting his desires to achieve what he thinks is his duty towards God. Willem Dafoe as Scorsese’ Jesus Christ is bang on. Its one of my favourite performances of all times. Conventionally, Prophets, God men & especially Jesus Christ are not shown struggling spiritually. How can they? They are supposed to be spiritual, naturally. But in The Last Temptation, Jesus Christ’s main struggle is actually spiritual – ” He used to jump on me like a wild bird and dig His claws into my head”. Jesus struggles against the desires he ‘shudn’t’ succumb to, just like you & me would if we were so spiritually inclined.
Though you don’t really ‘feel’ for Tarantino’s characters. Maybe that’s coz they are always comical in some way. You are just interested in watching them behave the way they do. You don’t care about their story. You just want to see them perform in every circumstance.
That is a tasty burger! - Pulp Fiction(1994)
Colonel Hans Landa is one such creation. He actually doesn’t have an ideology unlike the Nazi in the film who refuses to divulge into any information about the German army on being asked by Aldo Raine & ends up being killed by the Bear Jew. Hans Landa is a man with a taste for finer things in life – he would prefer a glass of dairy milk over some wine, he would tell you to wait for the cream for strudel & ask for the verdict after you have it, his smoking pipe would be bigger than yours. He wants the Congressional medal, property on Nantucket Island. Hans Landa is essentially a bureaucrat in uniform with a mind of a politician, only, he is acutely hypocrite.
Tarantino is known for the lines his characters speak – dialogues. Why these dialogues work so well & become memorable could well be coz they blend so perfectly with the life of the character speaking them, causing sparks in your senses as a viewer – probably a thought that you could connect with but never knew how to express it simply coz you & your life is not as edgy as of the characters in Tarantino films & two, coz you are not a filmmaker.
I’d like to finish with this Ingourious Basterds trailer. I think this is an apt teaser for the film..gives just the right rush…
P.S : (This post was originally published on PassionForCinema on May 4th, 2010 - http://passionforcinema.com/once-upon-a-time-in-tarantino-occupied-cinema/ )
