Inglourious Basterds [sic]

Started by brockly, May 20, 2003, 06:05:39 AM

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polkablues

Inglourious Basterds?  More like Inglourious Ratnerds.

My house, my rules, my coffee

Gamblour.

WWPTAD?

Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Pas

My oh my, why would anyone past 16 years old like this?

Is there a single moment in this film not intended to be ''fucking awesome''? Definitely one of the higher rank in the ''movies assholes dig'' canon.

A couple really funny moments though, especially when they talk about this super-killing-machine Bear Jew and we hear him knocking stuff with his bat you're like : ''oh oh! This one's gonna be one motherfucker!'' and you're pretty excited and then... big moment, close up on the nazi face, back and forth to the door, face, door, face.... and appears before you the magnificient ELI ROTH with his lady-eyes and funny hair! Even my girlfriend who has no sense of sarcasm/irony whatsoever burst out laughing and looked at me and said : ''he's the bear jew? he has lady-eyes!" (I stole that from her after)

Almost every dialogue past the opening is pure masturbation. I fail to see how anyone can endure Brad Pitt in this one.

One of my friends sums it up : ''Have you seen Inglorious Basterds? Fuccckkkkkkkk what are you doing??? It's the best ever ever there's everything you could want in a movie!''

Good praise. His favorite movie ever before that was Superbad tho...

Pas


Alexandro

MEH.

So if you like it you're either a sheep or a liar.

i think by 1966 the mainstream already had discovered the tools  of the new wave, so i'm guessing whoever made that was 14 in 1994, and liked mainstream movies.


children with angels

^^^ True dat.

That's just a mildly clever way of presenting a review that would be garbled, unnuanced, and unconvincing in any other format.
"Should I bring my own chains?"
"We always do..."

http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/
http://thelesserfeat.blogspot.com/

polkablues

I fear Inglourious Basterds is going to go the way of Fight Club, where people decide to dismiss it because they take its perceived message at face value.  They are both movies that assholes love, which leads to there being a contingent of people who look at the reasons the assholes love them and assume that the assholes got it right, that there's no deeper interpretation of the films than that.  So Fight Club gets reduced to "male chauvinistic screed" and Basterds gets reduced to "Jewish revenge fantasy".  Meanwhile, I watch those movies and see "indictment of chauvinism" and "Jewish revenge parody".  I feel like the assholes and I are watching entirely different films.
My house, my rules, my coffee


pete

this is a minor but annoying backlash of Tarantino films - haters who think they can silence him just because they can quote the movies he's referencing - whether or not they're even true.

I don't think this is a "parody" of "jew revenge fantasy" though.  just because a movie has a sense of humor about something (which is war films as opposed to WW2) doesn't mean it's against its subject.  same thing- just because Fight Club might not affirm what the meatheads believe doesn't mean it's an indictment of meatheads.  that would make it too obvious. 
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

polkablues

I don't mean a parody necessarily in the comedic sense, but more in the way it exaggerates and subverts the Jewish revenge fantasy trope.  This is not your Munich-esque tale of noble, morally-conflicted Jews assassinating shadowy evildoers.  Like the flow-chart mentions, the Basterds really were portrayed as one-dimensional buffoons in contrast to the wickedly intelligent Nazis.  This doesn't seem to me like the sort of character choice a director would make unless he was intentionally playing with the ridiculousness of his film's basic premise.  In some ways, I would compare it to Funny Games, in the way that it treats manipulation of the audience's response to the film as a formal element of the film.  But while Funny Games showed us acts of staggering inhumanity and then cross-examined why we were being entertained by them, Basterds pats us on the back and encourages us to revel in it, which to me is what makes the film so much more disquieting, but also what makes it so much easier for people to misinterpret it.  When Pitt carves the swastika into the Nazi's head and 75% of the audience cheers, Tarantino has proven how powerfully propaganda can operate.  It scares the crap out of me, and that's what I think is so great about the movie.

And I contend that Fight Club absolutely is an indictment of meatheadism.  I certainly wouldn't be so reductive as to say that's all it is, but I would argue that it's the primary level upon which the film succeeds.
My house, my rules, my coffee

picolas

i want to hear more of your interpretation. i really think tarantino wants the audience to cheer in that moment.

Stefen

Oh, it's transformed into a total meathead movie. They love this shit. But in a way can't the same be said of most of Tarantino's movies?  Pulp and JB are the only two who really can't be called meatheaded, but in the case of the former, you could argue it is and I'd listen.

Tarantino has always been a guy full of meathead ideas. Anytime he hooks up with Rodriguez, it's nothing but head cheese. From Dusk Till Dawn was almost too cool for even meatheads, but unlike Robert, QT actually has interests in other movies that aren't so badass. His movies are always a constant struggle between varsity football and av club. That's what's so fun about them, I suppose.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Pas

Quote from: polkablues on December 16, 2009, 07:41:51 PM
a contingent of people who look at the reasons the assholes love them and assume that the assholes got it right, that there's no deeper interpretation of the films than that.

Quote from: picolas on December 17, 2009, 04:51:10 AM
i want to hear more of your interpretation. i really think tarantino wants the audience to cheer in that moment.

That's what I also think Picolas. I don't reckon Taranatino is trying to use the cheering of the meathead crowd to make ''intellectuals'' realize some point about propaganda or whatever. I think he justs made stuff ''so fucking cool'' so audiences would cheer . Every dialogue line or action of the movie seems to just exist to be ''so fucking cool''.

Unlike Funny Games, I am quite certain there is no criticism/piece of study of the entertainment-by-violence area of psychology (or something like that) here.

But hell, even if you don't want to argue about the meaning of this and that, the acting is terrible, the dialogue is mostly terrible (couple scenes excepted) and the pacing is horrible. It's mostly boring and masturbatory. It seems in love with itself.

children with angels

It's pretty obvious that the film is on some level calling into question the violent propaganda of hatred that the narrative enacts, given that the movie's big set-piece is the wish-fulfilling killing of countless Nazis while they watch a movie depicting the wish-fulfilling killing of countless allies. There's potentially a question surrounding whether Tarantino is just trying to cover his back, or have his cake and eat it, but the film is certainly far from naive about the troubling implications of its revenge narrative.
"Should I bring my own chains?"
"We always do..."

http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/
http://thelesserfeat.blogspot.com/