Inglourious Basterds [sic]

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

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polanski's illegitimate baby

Im sure if you pissed and shat on Hans Landa he would still ask you for American citizenship. That is exactly what's interesting about his psychology. He has no real sense of self-admiration, dignity or morality. His sense of ethics is non existant; he is a fucking mutant of a human. You cannot consider him under-developed or savage due to the fact that he is obviously a learned and well read individual. He questions all the nihilistic conclusions by portraying a kind of post-man. He makes everyone ask, "how the fuck did he arrive at this conclusion? Are we missing something?" Because he isn't bound to any ideology but the urge to survive; and, by making a rational choice of surviving through annihilation of others rather than cooperation and diplomacy, he finds himself outside of the humane bubble as we see it. You can call his deviant mindset psychotic and sociopathic but the fact that he arrived at it through rational deliberation is something so unique it makes us cringe at the idea. That is exactly what's so offensive and brilliant --his depraved psyche obscured by well-mannered and polished demeanor. Tarantino totally got it.
every time you find yourself reading this, think of other great things you could be doing... :)

Derek

I wouldn't say he has no sense of self-admiration, it's probably one of the driving aspects of his character. He relishes the role that he has been given by the Nazi's because he believes himself superior to most other German officers. Smarter than them for undermining their position in the war. And he is visibly upset for a moment when Aldo fails to reciprocate the acknowledgement or respect Landa has given him.

As for the above, I wouldn't say I misread the scenes either. I'd say he definitely shows an arc in the movie that changes from scene to scene. At the beginning of the film, he is in total control of the situation, manipulating it not only for control but for vanity...and at the end he is reduced to a buffon who has to carry his 'mark' for the rest of his life, stripped of his vanity. I don't think double-crossing his country was any problem for him to begin with.
It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

polanski's illegitimate baby

Regarding the absence of self-admiration....I am building on the idea that a person of his wickedness and intellect could not consider himself "better" by any argument. He acts to his advantage not because he thinks he is better but because he recognizes that everyone, himself included, is a worthless piece of shit. His scheme is not of arrogance but of simple self-preservation. The Nazi ideology is just a platform for his atrocities, not a driving force as we find out by the end of the film. This character is different from SS fanatics who ended up shooting themselves by the end of the war. He is more of a Mengele type.
every time you find yourself reading this, think of other great things you could be doing... :)

Derek

That's an interesting perspective, though I don't wholly agree with it.
It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: Derek on February 14, 2010, 06:57:18 PM
I'd say he definitely shows an arc in the movie that changes from scene to scene. At the beginning of the film, he is in total control of the situation, manipulating it not only for control but for vanity...and at the end he is reduced to a buffon who has to carry his 'mark' for the rest of his life, stripped of his vanity. I don't think double-crossing his country was any problem for him to begin with.

The only reduction of his character comes in the last few minutes of the film. Up until that point, he's a character in command. Through out the film, he's known to lash out a little bit, but he's still in control and acting with the same manner of tone. There isn't a scene by scene change or progression. Final circumstances change his position, but that's it.

polanski's illegitimate baby

Quote from: Derek on February 14, 2010, 07:53:21 PM
That's an interesting perspective, though I don't wholly agree with it.

That's cool, im just trying to explain his moral "deficiencies" as something he recognizes and accepts in himself and others, not something he evades by way of haughty Nazi ideology. That is, he doesn't think it's morally right to kill jews cuz he's a nazi but recognizes there is not such thing as "right."  It seems like he completely bypasses ethics and disregards morality as irrelevant and illusory, a kind of human make-believe. It really takes a most cynical nihilist to reason like this and nihilism applies universally so he could not conceive of himself as the "better" of the worthless.
every time you find yourself reading this, think of other great things you could be doing... :)

picolas

post-man. nice. that description actually makes me appreciate his character even more than i already did.

polanski's illegitimate baby

some good ole speculation on the deep motivations and rationale of a fictional nazi colonel lol thats what we do here

btw im pretty sure Mr.Waltz just agreed with me at 4:10... :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0-9HBn5xM&feature=related
every time you find yourself reading this, think of other great things you could be doing... :)

socketlevel

Quote from: Gold Trumpet on February 14, 2010, 08:06:27 PM
Quote from: Derek on February 14, 2010, 06:57:18 PM
I'd say he definitely shows an arc in the movie that changes from scene to scene. At the beginning of the film, he is in total control of the situation, manipulating it not only for control but for vanity...and at the end he is reduced to a buffon who has to carry his 'mark' for the rest of his life, stripped of his vanity. I don't think double-crossing his country was any problem for him to begin with.

The only reduction of his character comes in the last few minutes of the film. Up until that point, he's a character in command. Through out the film, he's known to lash out a little bit, but he's still in control and acting with the same manner of tone. There isn't a scene by scene change or progression. Final circumstances change his position, but that's it.

i think that's what makes it rewarding. it's a reveal, and while i didn't see a slow deconstruction of his character to lead me to the point of understanding his opportunism, it doesn't remotely surprise me at the same time.  it's actually a well drawn character in that regard. if i look back to all of his previous scenes he never once uses hatred of Jews as his motivator, rather he talks about his process and personal quality. he is always selling his professional ability, which is an effective commander. from the first scene to the cinema venue interrogation he never talks pathos.  sometimes people do things that you first think WTF but then go, ya wow i should have seen that coming. while i enjoy the scene by scene breakdown on character, i see the benefit of this as well. not everything has to be guided.

i see him as an apathetic sociopathic opportunist.
the one last hit that spent you...

MacGuffin

Quentin Tarantino on his movie influences: From 'Operation Amsterdam' to 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'
Source: Los Angeles Times

Most writers, musicians and filmmakers are delighted to talk about the biggest influences on their work. After all, for artists, the influences from their youth are usually the subconscious fuel that drives their imagination. And when it comes to cinematic influence peddling, no American filmmaker has spent more time yakking about the movies that made him fall in love with movies than Quentin Tarantino, whose Oscar- nominated "Inglourious Basterds" is crammed with hundreds of references to obscure old films of every shape, stripe and size.

So when I decided to start an informal series of interviews with Oscar-nominated talent about the varied influences on their work, it seemed like a no-brainer that Tarantino should get the first turn in the spotlight, since no filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard has worn their influences more on their sleeve. Since he made his debut with "Reservoir Dogs," Tarantino has populated his work with borrowings and homages to everything from film noir and martial arts films to Japanese animation and spaghetti westerns, not to mention a long-forgotten 1939 B movie that actually kills off Hitler that Tarantino discovered in an old videotape rack at Safeway.

But as it turns out, after all these years of happily giving it up for his favorite filmmakers, Tarantino has become deeply conflicted about discussing the sources of his influences, in large part because Tarantino's honesty has often been used against him by critics and bloggers when they want to belittle his films or blame the filmmaker's endless parade of movie references for the swarm of mindless Harry Knowles-style fanboys who now dominate the online movie scene. In the course of a long conversation the other day, Tarantino managed to go--in a matter of minutes--from saying he "loved having influences" to saying that he was "unbelievably annoyed" with critics who used his reliance on influences as a way of trashing his movies. 

After checking out some of the critical feedback to Tarantino's films, I began to feel his pain. In the course of an otherwise admiring review of "Basterds," Roger Ebert argued that judging from the way Tarantino photographed Melanie Laurent near the end of the film, focusing on her shoes, lips, dress and facial veil, "you can't tell me [that] he hasn't seen the work of the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano." (Cackling with laughter, Tarantino's response was a resounding: "No.")

But the critic that really got under his skin was Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, who in the course of reviewing "Kill Bill" said the movie felt as if Tarantino "were holding us captive on a moldy postgraduate couch somewhere, subjecting us to 90 minutes worth of his favorite movie clips strung together, accompanied by an exhausting running commentary along the lines of 'Isn't this great?' "

To say that Tarantino finds this aggravating would be an understatement. "Here's my problem with this whole influence thing," he told me. "Instead of critics reviewing my movies, now what they're really doing is trying to match wits with me. Every time they review my movies, it's like they want to play chess with the mastermind and show off every reference they can find, even when half of it is all of their own making. It feels like the critics are IMDB-ing everything I do. It just rubs me the wrong way because they end up using it as a stick to beat me down with."

Once he got that off his chest, however, Tarantino was happy to share, in great detail, some of the many key influences on "Inglourious Basterds." "I love having influences because I want people to get excited when they see something in the film or hear me talking about it and then actually go see the movie that inspired me in the first place," he says. "For example, the whole opening scene in 'Basterds' is completely and utterly taken from the first appearance of Angel Eyes [Lee Van Cleef] in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.' That's why it has that whole spaghetti western vibe.

"So I was really using the whole feeling and mood from a scene in another movie, but what happens is that it becomes my scene with my actors and my way of telling the story and I feel like I somehow make it my own."

What are some of the other homages and references in "Inglourious Basterds"? Keep reading:

To hear Tarantino tell it, it was the time he spent watching old World War II movies that gave him the confidence to embark on "Inglourious Basterds." "It wasn't that I needed permission," he explains. "But what really struck me was that these were films made by directors who'd had to flee their country because of Hitler, and yet the movies they made weren't all terror or horror. In fact, while they definitely showed the Nazis and their cruelty, they were adventure films, whether you're talking about 'Hangmen Also Die' or 'Reunion in France' or 'To Be or Not to Be' or 'O.S.S.,' an Alan Ladd film that's like a prequel to 'The Good Shepherd.'

"They were fun and thrilling and exciting and, most amazingly, they had a lot of comedy in them, which really made an impact on me. I mean, for every movie with a sadistic Nazi, there's one with a Nazi who's more of a buffoon or a figure of ridicule."

Tarantino says he loved listening to the dialogue--what he calls the "great '40s turns of phrases"--that permeated the films. "The slang is really cool," he says. "People were always calling each other 'killer dillers,' which I kept trying to work into 'Basterds,' though I never found a place for it. But that's why you watch the movie from a period--you want to hear how people really talked."

Tarantino essentially set up a screening series of relevant films for most of his actors. For Melanie Laurent, who plays Shosanna Dreyfus, Tarantino says: "I wanted her to pretty much watch every movie about people fighting behind enemy lines. The first movie I always had in mind was 'Operation Amsterdam' with Peter Finch and Eva Bartok, even though Shosannah became a very different sort of character in our film."

Tarantino had Mike Myers, who plays Ed Fenech, watch a lot of old '40s films with Alan Napier, who often played opposite George Sanders (and ended up being immortalized as Alfred in the "Batman" TV series). "Mike would watch the movies and then ask me, 'You want me to do that?'--meaning Alan Napier--and I'd say, 'Yeah, do that.' " 

Tarantino envisioned Michael Fassbender, who plays Archie Hicox, as a George Sanders type of smoothie. "So I had him watch all the old 'The Saint' movies with Sanders, just to soak up his highly articulated speech and his woody manner."

For Diane Kruger, who plays Bridget Von Hammersmark, a sultry double agent, Tarantino steeped her in the career of Ilona Massey, a now-forgotten Hungarian singer who was brought to Hollywood when the studios were raiding Hungary and Poland for Marlena Dietrich knockoffs. Tarantino had Kruger watch Massey's "International Lady," a '40s-era spy film, where it turned out that Massey wore pretty much the same outfit Tarantino's costume designer had made up for Kruger.

"That's an example of where I didn't want Diane to just be Dietrich. But with my characters, I really need to know their history, so I had to figure out Bridget's whole filmography. So in my mind, I decided that Universal had come to Bridget--the way the studios had done to Massey--and offered her a contract, but she was savvy enough to know that if she went to Universal and she didn't hit right away, she'd be stuck doing Frankenstein movies, which is exactly like Ilona Massey's real career!"

It begins to feel a little bit like a hall of mirrors but this is how Tarantino's imagination really works, feeding off his fantasies inspired by his favorite old movies. One day, on the "Basterds" set, he was stymied by how to shoot part of the film's pivotal basement tavern scene. "I thought what we'd done was kinda boring, so at the end of the day, I said, 'Let's do the scene like Josef von Sternberg would've done it.' "

It turns out Tarantino had only recently fallen in love with Von Sternberg, in part because Tarantino had never been a Dietrich fan. But after he saw one Von Sternberg film, he couldn't stop. The director's seductive, opulent style began to permeate Tarantino's imagination.

"So there I was on the set, doing this tracking shot, sweeping past all the bottles on the bar, as my characters came in to sit down and everything started popping again," Tarantino says, his voice crackling with enthusiasm. "It was great. It was the kind of luxurious camera move that I imagined Von Sternberg would've done, except now I was behind the camera. I figured, if I'm gonna shoot actresses in an exquisite '40s style, who better to look to for inspiration?"   
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: socketlevel on February 16, 2010, 05:10:02 PM
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on February 14, 2010, 08:06:27 PM
Quote from: Derek on February 14, 2010, 06:57:18 PM
I'd say he definitely shows an arc in the movie that changes from scene to scene. At the beginning of the film, he is in total control of the situation, manipulating it not only for control but for vanity...and at the end he is reduced to a buffon who has to carry his 'mark' for the rest of his life, stripped of his vanity. I don't think double-crossing his country was any problem for him to begin with.

The only reduction of his character comes in the last few minutes of the film. Up until that point, he's a character in command. Through out the film, he's known to lash out a little bit, but he's still in control and acting with the same manner of tone. There isn't a scene by scene change or progression. Final circumstances change his position, but that's it.

i think that's what makes it rewarding. it's a reveal, and while i didn't see a slow deconstruction of his character to lead me to the point of understanding his opportunism, it doesn't remotely surprise me at the same time.  it's actually a well drawn character in that regard. if i look back to all of his previous scenes he never once uses hatred of Jews as his motivator, rather he talks about his process and personal quality. he is always selling his professional ability, which is an effective commander. from the first scene to the cinema venue interrogation he never talks pathos.  sometimes people do things that you first think WTF but then go, ya wow i should have seen that coming. while i enjoy the scene by scene breakdown on character, i see the benefit of this as well. not everything has to be guided.

i see him as an apathetic sociopathic opportunist.

I actually don't see him as that apathetic. When he finds out Kruger's character, he has the chance to change allegiance and side with her because he has uncovered the plot, but he decides to kill her even though her death means nothing because when he does meet up with Pitt's character a little later, he is willing changes sides even though the status quo is the same. Him killing her is a point of national pride for him. It mirrors the Nazi soldier who belittles Kruger's in the bar character because he finds out she was a double agent. He's offended by it, but he himself has made a small pact with the Jewish soldiers to not shoot even though that goes against his protocol as a soldier.

If anything, I think Tarantino wants to show the national pride that exists within these characters even after they have changed sides. It's like when a soldier is in a foxhole, they find God. When a German soldier is in the same place, they can find common sense, but their prejudices will still carry over.

Pubrick

yes i agree wholeheartedly, this is the worst film of the year.
under the paving stones.

Derek

You must be kidding. If this was something along the lines of Jack or Hook, you'd have a point. You didn't like like it. Still, it's no where close to the worst movie of the year, Tarantino still hasn't made a bad one.

You didn't see Transformers?
It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

pete

the thing about P's one-liners is that you can like, hear the timing just by reading it.  that was a good one.  derek don't argue transformers 2, that point is not worth arguing.  just enjoy the one-liner because it was a good one.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

socketlevel

actually GT you bring up a really good point, and that scene is one that i forgot entirely while writing my previous post. i will need to rethink this. off the top of my head maybe he saw what she was doing as an attack on how well he does his job... and by letting her get away she outsmarted him or outplayed him (even if only in his head).  like all the lies she told him in the previous scene about the mountain climbing enraged him, feeling insulted she would try to put that past him. and truthfully, he gains nothing by letting her live considering he's been concocting his own agenda, she's just a liability that would be a loose random factor. but that's a weak assumption I'll give you that, just popped in my head.

on a side note, the mountain climbing lie is fucking awesome. this is another moment tarantino got the tone perfectly, it's a horrible lie a-la cheesy WW2/James bond style films. it's like if you picture a German wearing leeterhozen (spelling) from an Alfred hitchcock movie they'd be mountain climbing. i miss movies that the stars did these kind of outlandishly adventurous activities. tarantino plays with it the same way he plays with the english speaking in the first scene. the viewer first thinks ha ha mountain climbing, but quickly believes that this kind of a lie is passable in this fictional world. but then later when landa laughs hysterically at it, the film (and that character) address how idiotic it is.  i really like that play on genre and expectation.

and that wasn't a one liner. i appreciate P is trying to passionately draw his line in the sand on the film, but there was no wit in it. he meant it in as far as you can take it with a grain of salt that worst shouldn't be taken so literal.
the one last hit that spent you...