I know I mentioned this in the top movies of 2009 thread, but this was easily one of the best movies, in terms of sheer entertainment, that I have seen in years!
Errbody should go see it, I'll most likely be seeing it for the 2nd time this weekend with some friends who have not yet had the pleasure.
Inglorious Basterds
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Drew
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
What's the ratio of action/violence to black comedy?
I've heard some rumblings that this is the best cinematic experience of the year thus far, but I don't easily buy into hype.
I've heard some rumblings that this is the best cinematic experience of the year thus far, but I don't easily buy into hype.
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
answer: NO. Tarintino has never gone wrong, even though he's be making this movie for a decade - i was patient.
I have backed up that this is the best movie this year. TWICE,.. and I would go see it right now again.
I also highly recommend going and seeing this movie to save the Weinstein company. This is what is fueling their refinancing; this and Hallowe'en II.
the film print of inglourious basterds showing has one minute of film that is not on the cannes print, and is missing five scenes cut from the original print. I expect and DEMAND a compleat dvd edition! It is clearly his best work since Pulp Fiction, and perhaps his true masterpiece, if you really GET what he is doing by making a film about film as a weapon.
The French protagonist is exactly like french cinema. The Americans are exactly like americans. While the Germans, through the entire film demonstrate their entire contribution. it is very well done. and ironically comes across as one of the spaghetti westerns of the italians.
Ironically, it works so well. if you like old westerns, like man with no name - you will love it.
also, this movie is part of tarintino's universe, and many of the characters in it have ties to other movies. For example, Lee Donowitz in Tarintino's True Romance - who was the director of "Coming home in a body bag" and wanted to buy Clarence's cocaine - is the son of Donnie Donowitz "The Bear Jew" who bashes Nazis to death with a baseball bat. other characters are homages to characters in his other films, as well as other thigns of which he is a fan, including his own native tebnessee being the home of Aldo.
I have backed up that this is the best movie this year. TWICE,.. and I would go see it right now again.
I also highly recommend going and seeing this movie to save the Weinstein company. This is what is fueling their refinancing; this and Hallowe'en II.
the film print of inglourious basterds showing has one minute of film that is not on the cannes print, and is missing five scenes cut from the original print. I expect and DEMAND a compleat dvd edition! It is clearly his best work since Pulp Fiction, and perhaps his true masterpiece, if you really GET what he is doing by making a film about film as a weapon.
The French protagonist is exactly like french cinema. The Americans are exactly like americans. While the Germans, through the entire film demonstrate their entire contribution. it is very well done. and ironically comes across as one of the spaghetti westerns of the italians.
Ironically, it works so well. if you like old westerns, like man with no name - you will love it.
also, this movie is part of tarintino's universe, and many of the characters in it have ties to other movies. For example, Lee Donowitz in Tarintino's True Romance - who was the director of "Coming home in a body bag" and wanted to buy Clarence's cocaine - is the son of Donnie Donowitz "The Bear Jew" who bashes Nazis to death with a baseball bat. other characters are homages to characters in his other films, as well as other thigns of which he is a fan, including his own native tebnessee being the home of Aldo.
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Skinny Bastard
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
...and if they missed it.... now they can DL it...Drew wrote:...Errbody should go see it...
http://www.ayhja.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 26&start=0
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
I suppose pretty much everything I'm about to say could be explained away with: "Lighten up! It's just a movie!" However, I feel I ought to say it anyway.
When the Basterds brutally kill almost all the enemy soldiers they come across and carve a swastika into the forehead of every one they let live, when they set fire to a public building and machine-gun everyone who tries to escape being burned alive, what's left to differentiate the good guys from the bad guys? The fact that they were on the side which later won the war?
When Aldo Raine describes the Basterds' mission and says "We're gonna be dropped into France dressed as civilians", the typical moviegoer likely thinks to himself: "Ah, cunning -- they'll be able to blend in with the locals and move about more clandestinely." That's an understandable supposition, and it's basically correct. But the typical moviegoer fails to understand that when a soldier dresses as a civilian, that doesn't mean he gets to go around killing enemy soldiers more or less with impunity (not even real-life SOE/OSS personnel did that) because he can blend in with the local populace, it means that the enemy will hunt him down like a dog and that if the enemy captures him, he more likely than not will be executed.
An actual instance of such during the Second World War: During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans launched Operation Greif (Gryphon) in which English-speaking German soldiers dressed as American soldiers infiltrated behind US lines to capture vital bridges and to sow confusion in the Allied rear areas. This was in violation of Article 29 of the Hague Convention of 1907, of which Otto Skorzeny (the officer leading Operation Greif) was well aware. All eighteen of Skorzeny's men who were captured were executed as spies whether or not they had even participated in combat. (A side effect of Greif that many regular German soldiers who were wearing articles of American combat clothing were summarily shot as spies when captured. The German lightweight smocks and flimsy wool-rayon blend tunics were notoriously insufficient at keeping out the cold. The US soldiers' clothing was warmer and thus offered too great a temptation for many German soldiers.)
However, since (In modern war movies) the assumption is that being captured is as good as receiving a death sentence, the fate of the German operatives in the Battle of the Bulge is no worse than what the Basterds would expect, were they to be captured. It's not unreasonable to reckon that the Basterds, as US Army soldiers, were also aware of the Hague Convention's proscriptions against disguised soldiers operating behind enemy lines. Besides, real soldiers hate guerillas, because they feel guerillas have an unfair advantage on account of their ability to blend in with the local population and to (literally, in some instances) sneak up and shoot them in the back.
But not only do the Basterds willfilly operate as guerillas with a view to killing as many enemy soldiers as possible, they multilate those they kill (by scalping them) as well as those they don't kill (by carving swastikas into their foreheads). (The implied rationale -- as when Raine states: "And the Germans will be sickened by us, and the Germans will talk about us, and the Germans will fear us!" -- is that the fear their ruthless brutality will inspire in the Germans will give the Basterds a psychological edge. While this would be true to a certain extent, it also would have the effect of inspiring the Germans to work all the more at hunting the Basterds down like dogs and killing them.)
The movie takes place in occupied France some time shortly before the D-Day landings at Normandy. The typical moviegoer's mental image of occupied France is likely one of the French cowering in fear of the Nazi occupiers and watching in relative helplessness as the invaders steal their food, beat up their men, rape their women, and drag any and all Jewish individuals back to Germany. Non-propagandistic accounts of German soldiers (aside from the ones assigned to units tasked with searching out Jews in their jurisdiction) show that -- while there were instances of brutality against civilians in France, as in pretty much all occupied countries -- any given individual soldier as likely as not never did anything more cruel than being brusque to a local shopkeeper who seemed uncooperative. The justification for the Basterds' ruthlessness and brutality is based on the assumption that any given German soldier (and therefore every German soldier) they encounter had been a willing participant in (or at least an accessory to) torturing/killing civilians and/or slaughtering Jews and/or sowing terror among the local populace.
On the other hand, the fact is that the Germans killed tens of millions of innocent people in the Holocaust and in regions occupied by the German Army, so no matter how brutal and ruthless the Basterds are, their actions pale in comparison to those of the Germans. Also, there's the reasoning that as soon as the bad guys commit atrocity, the good guys have the green light to do likewise to them. But when the good guys commit atrocity too (even if it can be rationalized that to commit atrocity against atrocity-mongers is no atrocity), what is left to distinguish them from (i.e., elevate them above) the bad guys?
Lastly, this movie perpetuates most of all the falsehood that killing captured enemy personnel is okay. Sure, it's morally wrong, but more than that, it's militarily stupid. Killing POWs (even freshly captured ones) only makes the enemy more inclined to do likewise. As for the Germans -- the ultimate bad guys of WW2 -- the assumption is that one might as well kill surrendered German soldiers, since the Germans would do likewise to any Allied troops who surrendered. This assumption is not only false (there were many instances of German soldiers, even Waffen-SS troops, treating POWs humanely), it is stupid. Any soldier who reckoned "the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut" and killed a surrendered German soldier didn't make things any easier (by contributing to a decrease in the enemy's numbers) for his fellow soldiers, he actually made things worse by making any Germans who found out it all the more inclined to likewise refuse to take prisoners themselves. Imagine how a surrendered GI would have felt if one of the German soldiers with their rifles levelled at him and his fellow GIs had said: "Oh, by the way, we have decided to kill you and your squadmates because we found out that a few days ago a group of American soldiers massacred one of our units that had surrendered to them."
In the scene where Donny Donowitz stands before the captured German sergeant, pokes the black-enameled cruciform medal on his tunic, and says "You get that for killin' Jews?" and the German replies "Bravery", he speaks factually. In the German Army (including the Waffen-SS) there was no decoration awarded for killing, let alone killing members of a certain ethnicity. The black-enameled cruciform medal in question is the Iron Cross 1st Class, which was awarded for bravery in combat. The typical moviegoer likely reckons (and the movie makes little effort to discourage this assumption) that the German refuses to inform the Basterds about the disposition of nearby German forces out of spite or hatred or some such. Soldiers in general fear letting down their comrades more than they fear death or wounding, so the German in this scene was simply acting as a veteran sergeant -- regardless of nationality -- would act when faced with the choice between being bludgeoned to death or betraying his fellow soldiers.
So, in my view, as someone who has extensively studied war (and the Second World War in particular), Inglorious Basterds is basically a sixty-years-after-the-fact Allied propaganda film. To me, it's comparable to if the Germans had won the war and then had supported Uwe Boll's making a film that lauded the actions of Sonderkommando Dirlewanger and made the men thereof seem like courageous war heroes.
That said, it was almost inevitable that eventually a movie like this would be made. For one thing, the modern American moviegoing audience is much too cynical to be sufficiently entertained by good guys who act like good guys. No, these are the days of heroes who fight fire with fire, who give the bad guys a taste of their own medicine and do so "with furious anger". Long gone are the days of war movies like those featuring John Wayne. Also, the current generation needs to be reminded (as if it weren't enough that people worldwide continue to harbor suspicion that any given German is a closet anti-Semite or Nazi) that the Nazis were evil and that the Allied waging of WW2 was fully justified. Without this continually renewed justification, the lauding of "the Greatest Generation" would lose its significance. So it was effectively necessary for Inglorious Basterds (or a film like it) to be made, especially after last year's Valkyrie and the critically acclaimed German-made Das Boot. The American sense of right victory cannot afford to be diminished by the public beginning to view the Germans as worthy of anything less than total-war defeat.
As I said, though, my foregoing arguments could be answered by a mere "Relax! It's just a movie!" A valid point; and in that respect, there's not really anything to get worked up about. But I refuse entertainment which is divorced from reality and which promotes what I don't believe in. I don't believe in 'being evil to the evildoer is no evil', and I don't believe in killing POWs, let alone also multilating them.
When the Basterds brutally kill almost all the enemy soldiers they come across and carve a swastika into the forehead of every one they let live, when they set fire to a public building and machine-gun everyone who tries to escape being burned alive, what's left to differentiate the good guys from the bad guys? The fact that they were on the side which later won the war?
When Aldo Raine describes the Basterds' mission and says "We're gonna be dropped into France dressed as civilians", the typical moviegoer likely thinks to himself: "Ah, cunning -- they'll be able to blend in with the locals and move about more clandestinely." That's an understandable supposition, and it's basically correct. But the typical moviegoer fails to understand that when a soldier dresses as a civilian, that doesn't mean he gets to go around killing enemy soldiers more or less with impunity (not even real-life SOE/OSS personnel did that) because he can blend in with the local populace, it means that the enemy will hunt him down like a dog and that if the enemy captures him, he more likely than not will be executed.
An actual instance of such during the Second World War: During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans launched Operation Greif (Gryphon) in which English-speaking German soldiers dressed as American soldiers infiltrated behind US lines to capture vital bridges and to sow confusion in the Allied rear areas. This was in violation of Article 29 of the Hague Convention of 1907, of which Otto Skorzeny (the officer leading Operation Greif) was well aware. All eighteen of Skorzeny's men who were captured were executed as spies whether or not they had even participated in combat. (A side effect of Greif that many regular German soldiers who were wearing articles of American combat clothing were summarily shot as spies when captured. The German lightweight smocks and flimsy wool-rayon blend tunics were notoriously insufficient at keeping out the cold. The US soldiers' clothing was warmer and thus offered too great a temptation for many German soldiers.)
However, since (In modern war movies) the assumption is that being captured is as good as receiving a death sentence, the fate of the German operatives in the Battle of the Bulge is no worse than what the Basterds would expect, were they to be captured. It's not unreasonable to reckon that the Basterds, as US Army soldiers, were also aware of the Hague Convention's proscriptions against disguised soldiers operating behind enemy lines. Besides, real soldiers hate guerillas, because they feel guerillas have an unfair advantage on account of their ability to blend in with the local population and to (literally, in some instances) sneak up and shoot them in the back.
But not only do the Basterds willfilly operate as guerillas with a view to killing as many enemy soldiers as possible, they multilate those they kill (by scalping them) as well as those they don't kill (by carving swastikas into their foreheads). (The implied rationale -- as when Raine states: "And the Germans will be sickened by us, and the Germans will talk about us, and the Germans will fear us!" -- is that the fear their ruthless brutality will inspire in the Germans will give the Basterds a psychological edge. While this would be true to a certain extent, it also would have the effect of inspiring the Germans to work all the more at hunting the Basterds down like dogs and killing them.)
The movie takes place in occupied France some time shortly before the D-Day landings at Normandy. The typical moviegoer's mental image of occupied France is likely one of the French cowering in fear of the Nazi occupiers and watching in relative helplessness as the invaders steal their food, beat up their men, rape their women, and drag any and all Jewish individuals back to Germany. Non-propagandistic accounts of German soldiers (aside from the ones assigned to units tasked with searching out Jews in their jurisdiction) show that -- while there were instances of brutality against civilians in France, as in pretty much all occupied countries -- any given individual soldier as likely as not never did anything more cruel than being brusque to a local shopkeeper who seemed uncooperative. The justification for the Basterds' ruthlessness and brutality is based on the assumption that any given German soldier (and therefore every German soldier) they encounter had been a willing participant in (or at least an accessory to) torturing/killing civilians and/or slaughtering Jews and/or sowing terror among the local populace.
On the other hand, the fact is that the Germans killed tens of millions of innocent people in the Holocaust and in regions occupied by the German Army, so no matter how brutal and ruthless the Basterds are, their actions pale in comparison to those of the Germans. Also, there's the reasoning that as soon as the bad guys commit atrocity, the good guys have the green light to do likewise to them. But when the good guys commit atrocity too (even if it can be rationalized that to commit atrocity against atrocity-mongers is no atrocity), what is left to distinguish them from (i.e., elevate them above) the bad guys?
Lastly, this movie perpetuates most of all the falsehood that killing captured enemy personnel is okay. Sure, it's morally wrong, but more than that, it's militarily stupid. Killing POWs (even freshly captured ones) only makes the enemy more inclined to do likewise. As for the Germans -- the ultimate bad guys of WW2 -- the assumption is that one might as well kill surrendered German soldiers, since the Germans would do likewise to any Allied troops who surrendered. This assumption is not only false (there were many instances of German soldiers, even Waffen-SS troops, treating POWs humanely), it is stupid. Any soldier who reckoned "the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut" and killed a surrendered German soldier didn't make things any easier (by contributing to a decrease in the enemy's numbers) for his fellow soldiers, he actually made things worse by making any Germans who found out it all the more inclined to likewise refuse to take prisoners themselves. Imagine how a surrendered GI would have felt if one of the German soldiers with their rifles levelled at him and his fellow GIs had said: "Oh, by the way, we have decided to kill you and your squadmates because we found out that a few days ago a group of American soldiers massacred one of our units that had surrendered to them."
In the scene where Donny Donowitz stands before the captured German sergeant, pokes the black-enameled cruciform medal on his tunic, and says "You get that for killin' Jews?" and the German replies "Bravery", he speaks factually. In the German Army (including the Waffen-SS) there was no decoration awarded for killing, let alone killing members of a certain ethnicity. The black-enameled cruciform medal in question is the Iron Cross 1st Class, which was awarded for bravery in combat. The typical moviegoer likely reckons (and the movie makes little effort to discourage this assumption) that the German refuses to inform the Basterds about the disposition of nearby German forces out of spite or hatred or some such. Soldiers in general fear letting down their comrades more than they fear death or wounding, so the German in this scene was simply acting as a veteran sergeant -- regardless of nationality -- would act when faced with the choice between being bludgeoned to death or betraying his fellow soldiers.
So, in my view, as someone who has extensively studied war (and the Second World War in particular), Inglorious Basterds is basically a sixty-years-after-the-fact Allied propaganda film. To me, it's comparable to if the Germans had won the war and then had supported Uwe Boll's making a film that lauded the actions of Sonderkommando Dirlewanger and made the men thereof seem like courageous war heroes.
That said, it was almost inevitable that eventually a movie like this would be made. For one thing, the modern American moviegoing audience is much too cynical to be sufficiently entertained by good guys who act like good guys. No, these are the days of heroes who fight fire with fire, who give the bad guys a taste of their own medicine and do so "with furious anger". Long gone are the days of war movies like those featuring John Wayne. Also, the current generation needs to be reminded (as if it weren't enough that people worldwide continue to harbor suspicion that any given German is a closet anti-Semite or Nazi) that the Nazis were evil and that the Allied waging of WW2 was fully justified. Without this continually renewed justification, the lauding of "the Greatest Generation" would lose its significance. So it was effectively necessary for Inglorious Basterds (or a film like it) to be made, especially after last year's Valkyrie and the critically acclaimed German-made Das Boot. The American sense of right victory cannot afford to be diminished by the public beginning to view the Germans as worthy of anything less than total-war defeat.
As I said, though, my foregoing arguments could be answered by a mere "Relax! It's just a movie!" A valid point; and in that respect, there's not really anything to get worked up about. But I refuse entertainment which is divorced from reality and which promotes what I don't believe in. I don't believe in 'being evil to the evildoer is no evil', and I don't believe in killing POWs, let alone also multilating them.
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jdog
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
Talk about over analyzing...
If any links are down, please send me a PM!
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AYHJA
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raum
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
I don't think it is just a movie. I think it is a view into Tarintino's universe. Of course it won't match military history. He is not teaching WWII history. He is not even talking about Nazi's. This is all about film, from the view of a filmaker.
thanks for the exhaustive critique, but i think you may also want to realize that there is something besides it being a accurate war movie OR "just a movie." It is a deep message, but not about a war sentiment. It is wrapped around a story that perfectly captures the elements of his favorite aspects of film, specifically the Spaghetti Western genre. And that story is the tale of what tarintino did to film. Aldo Baines is Tarantino. It is not a propaganda film either. Not in the least.
As for the Nazis in France being all nice and polite; Oradour, Maille, and several other villages might disagree.
"LIMOGES, France, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - Nazi war criminal Heinz Barth, who has died aged 86, showed no regret for his part in the wartime massacre of 642 men, women and children in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, survivors charged on Tuesday.
Heinz Barth, a former SS platoon leader, was jailed for life by an East German court in 1983 for his part in a string of atrocities during World War II, including the slaughter at Oradour that in France came to symbolise the worst of Nazi barbarity.
He was released from prison in 1997 on health grounds, sparking an outcry, and spent the last years of his life in Gransee near Berlin, where his death was announced late Monday.
"In 1983, during his trial in East Berlin, he voiced no regret," recalled Robert Hebras, 82, one of six people who survived the massacre at Oradour, near Limoges in central France. "His sole regret was the fact there were survivors left to testify."
"He never spoke a word of regret. 'It was war,' that's all he said," agreed Jean-Marcel Darthout, 83, the only other living survivor.
Oradour was destroyed on June 10, 1944, four days after the Normandy landings which marked the start of the liberation of France and Europe from Nazi occupation.
A detachment of SS troops heading north to reinforce German defences halted in the village and, for reasons that have never been made clear, ordered its 642 inhabitants, including some 200 children, to assemble in the town square.
Women and children were then herded into the town church which was pumped full of toxic gas and set on fire. The men were machine-gunned and burned alive in a barn. The entire village was then torched."
thanks for the exhaustive critique, but i think you may also want to realize that there is something besides it being a accurate war movie OR "just a movie." It is a deep message, but not about a war sentiment. It is wrapped around a story that perfectly captures the elements of his favorite aspects of film, specifically the Spaghetti Western genre. And that story is the tale of what tarintino did to film. Aldo Baines is Tarantino. It is not a propaganda film either. Not in the least.
As for the Nazis in France being all nice and polite; Oradour, Maille, and several other villages might disagree.
"LIMOGES, France, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - Nazi war criminal Heinz Barth, who has died aged 86, showed no regret for his part in the wartime massacre of 642 men, women and children in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, survivors charged on Tuesday.
Heinz Barth, a former SS platoon leader, was jailed for life by an East German court in 1983 for his part in a string of atrocities during World War II, including the slaughter at Oradour that in France came to symbolise the worst of Nazi barbarity.
He was released from prison in 1997 on health grounds, sparking an outcry, and spent the last years of his life in Gransee near Berlin, where his death was announced late Monday.
"In 1983, during his trial in East Berlin, he voiced no regret," recalled Robert Hebras, 82, one of six people who survived the massacre at Oradour, near Limoges in central France. "His sole regret was the fact there were survivors left to testify."
"He never spoke a word of regret. 'It was war,' that's all he said," agreed Jean-Marcel Darthout, 83, the only other living survivor.
Oradour was destroyed on June 10, 1944, four days after the Normandy landings which marked the start of the liberation of France and Europe from Nazi occupation.
A detachment of SS troops heading north to reinforce German defences halted in the village and, for reasons that have never been made clear, ordered its 642 inhabitants, including some 200 children, to assemble in the town square.
Women and children were then herded into the town church which was pumped full of toxic gas and set on fire. The men were machine-gunned and burned alive in a barn. The entire village was then torched."
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Drew
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Re: Inglorious Basterds
Yeah I never really viewed it as a film that was supposed to be even remotely accurate towards WWII history. To me, it seemed much more about the film industry than about the war or the atrocities of war. That being said however, if someone is going to view it as a war movie (and I'm sure millions upon millions of people did just that) that was supposed to be historically accurate, I'm thankful that you broke it down like that. And hell, even if its about the film industry, you do have some good points concerning the praise given to the good guys who act like bad guys towards the bad guys....and as long as that person is represented as an American, 9 times out of 10, American viewers will eat it all up and see nothing wrong with it.
Is that more of a deplorable form of gore that media members overuse to appeal to the American masses, or a problem with the fact that many Americans seek this bloodthirsty righteousness depicted in historical events? Who do you think is more at fault D?
Is that more of a deplorable form of gore that media members overuse to appeal to the American masses, or a problem with the fact that many Americans seek this bloodthirsty righteousness depicted in historical events? Who do you think is more at fault D?
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