Thirith on 24/9/2009 at 20:41
Quote Posted by scarykitties
It certainly seems so to me, but I've heard of people giving standing ovations, cheering for them, etc. because it's "Nat-zees" that they're killing. Maybe it's the director being so clever as to point out the cruelty in casual people who cheer for the ruthless slaughter of even well-known bad people, twisting the finger back at the audience to say, "see how these evil people laugh at the destruction of lives? Well, you're just as bad."
Never, *ever* judge a movie by the idiocy of its audiences. Simple as that. Obviously Tarantino could have made it easier for even the least perceptive person in the audience to see what the Basterds are, but IMO what he's done is infinitely more interesting because it's more ambivalent and more complex.
Muzman on 4/7/2011 at 22:58
I saw this the other day, finally. Thought I'd procrastinate some by posting about it a little.
Really really boring. And pointless. And just devoid of entertainment value, in the main anyway. And self indulgent in the most interestingly Tarantino way. Kinda interesting for one of the most popular films of that year that also has very little in gunfire and explosions.
When we normally think of self indulgence usually people point to over long scenes that don't help the story and characters etc all that much. Tarantino's thing is pretty much exactly that so you can't really tell him to stop the thing that made him famous. And he's good at it too, we see that here. Where it's self indulgent is that he's convinced himself that he's so good at this particular feature he doesn't actually need to include the rest of the movie any more, or he can at least pare it back to almost nothing. Just have half a dozen really long scenes and a bit with a theatre fire at the end and that's pretty much the movie. You could get away with that easily with the right director and genre. QT is potentially the right director. Almost consistently refuses to work in the right genre.
So yeah, that's basically it. I saw a string of long scenes that never managed to amount to me giving a shit by the end. A couple of these scenes in particular are very good. There's not really any bad acting or anything. But nothing really gets established. We watch these long and sometimes enjoyable scenes and there's these cutaways to 'oh it's really about these guys, remember', who are dangerous, we're told. Legendary! Terrifying! Despite being idiots who do fuck all. He seems like he's trying to do a great suspenseful build up to this collision of plots and circumstances, as he often has, but it just didn't work. (and they're going to blow up what? with how much dynamite?) The Basterds themselves are a great empty hole in the film except for the homicidal ex-nazi guy (and his cool Escape from Castle Wolfenstein. Apparently one of the early ideas was for a whole team of deserters on a murderous rampage. That would have been cool). They're completely anonymous except for Pitt and his accent. I would say he's weighed down by it but it does yield the only real joke in the movie. Otherwise they didn't need to be there at all. (and why the hell does it suddenly turn into the Matrix for five minutes at the end and two guys I don't care about have to secret agent their way into the toilet or whatever it was. I just don't get it. It has no bearing on the fact the place is going to blow up or burn down and no one's sure what's going on. I think we're supposed to be excited because they're going to get Hitler or something. Why on earth would I care about that? He's dead for one. And he's not even particularly evil in this movie. Oh but he's Hitler right? Lame lame lame)
I'm struggling to describe the vapidness of the film accurately. It's like he was saying "Oh you know how WW2 went by now. Play those old movies in your head and then let me layer these interesting bits into the mix" and then cruising on 'Everyone wants to see Nazis die'
Landa was good, of course, but everyone says that. So was the actress. The jewish girl was pretty boring I thought. Not sure if it was her or the part. So we've got Landa, the actress and the deserter maniac guy. The Germans are by far the most interesting things in the movie.
I'm not against irregular narratives, or mythologising WW2 in weird ways. But if you're going to do it, it seems you had better go all out. Robot suit Hitler and his army of trained apes from the dark side of the moon showing up at the end would have been fine with me (incidentally, Captain America looks really cool). Otherwise if you want a tweaked World War 2 pastiche with a point, watch (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389557/) Black Book
One good thing about it; here's a successful film that's got to be majority in a foreign language and subtitled despite Americans never going to see such things apparently. So that's interesting.
SubJeff on 4/7/2011 at 23:29
Really?
You didn't find any of it tense? There are at least 4 scenes in the film that I thought oozed atmosphere because of the tension, and that tension was enhanced by the dialogue being natural, convincing and well worked out. In particular the scene in the bar with the SS major and the card game was one of the most charged I've seen in recent years.
Shoshana was great too. Great poise, enchanting, single minded, ruthless and just a little bit icy. The bit after the strudel when she finally cracks was a great little counterpoint the rest of her scenes, and it reminded us of her vulnerability and the pain she was still suffering.
I think it just wasn't what you expected and tbh I wasn't interested in watching it at all when it came out. I watched it because it was the only thing I had at the time and one of the things I wasn't looking forward to was the revisionist history but in the end it didn't matter.
It also seems to me that you missed the point of a lot of it. This quote in particular " o 'oh it's really about these guys, remember' " suggests that you had too much of the reviews/hype swimming in your mind because they all harped on about Brad Pitt's crew. It wasn't really about them, it was about the whole over arching plot. In many ways it was about Landa's journey from sparing one girl to finally getting embroiled with complications that surrounded her kamikaze plan.
Quote:
and why the hell does it suddenly turn into the Matrix for five minutes at the end and two guys I don't care about have to secret agent their way into the toilet or whatever it was. I just don't get it.
It has no bearing on the fact the place is going to blow up or burn down and no one's sure what's going on. I just don't know if I can take your review seriously if you don't get why they snuck into Hilter's box to drop off a bomb. They didn't know it was going to burn down, did they? Their mission was to get a bomb near Hilter and his posse.
And if you didn't lol at the bit with Churchill...
Muzman on 5/7/2011 at 00:01
To reiterate briefly; There were several great scenes which in themselves were very well done and interesting. Together they amounted to nothing I gave a damn about.
Why was the bit with Churchill funny?
Also it is about the Basterds. They're are as pivotal to the film as Shoshanna. I barely read a review or plot synopsis. If it's a bait and switch they still have to be made important and, for whatever reason, that failed. QT is trying to have it both ways; he's trying to tug the heart strings with real world events and turn it up to QT levels of quirky excess at the same time and it fails at both. It'll take some more analysis to figure out why. Maybe tommorow.
Scots Taffer on 5/7/2011 at 00:58
Agreed, Muz. I found it relatively inert for the most part. Some bits worked but the whole thing did not hang together for me.
The bar sequence was great, but from what I recall now (and the film has rapidly receded in my memory) that's just Tarantino doing what he does best - it meant very little in context of the overall plot or whatever. The absurdity of the theatre climax was sort of fun in an anarchical sense but I got very little out of it otherwise.
I've got the script to Django Unchained to read at some stage.
SubJeff on 6/7/2011 at 00:22
Jesus Christ on a Nebelwerfer Powered Bike. Does EVERYTHING have to "advance the plot"? This is a general groan, not just about your statement Scots. QT is guilty of having blabbing scenes with dialogue he thinks/hopes you'll find "cool". It's been his MO for ages and is probably borne out Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction's scripts being so demonstrably quotable. Sometimes it really works and doesn't have to be shoehorned into some notion of "how da film shuld be, yo". Yeah, in recent times he's over egged this aspect and bored us.
But in this film I can forgive him because those scenes had much more depth to them than Vince telling amusing tales about Dutch MacDonald's.
And I really wonder what the fuckity fuck is going on when someone can watch this film and not think that the bar scene, which results in all the German speaking agents being killed and thus forcing Pitt and co to attend the premier, has done nothing to move the plot along. Not only does it get PittCo in that ridiculous situation, it also reveals Hammersmark to Landa.
Did we all watch the same film?
Christ.
Quote Posted by Muzman
Why was the bit with Churchill funny?
Because they were sooooo English. It was ridiculously, pompously camp and perhaps I'm particularly taken by parodies of that type of upper class nit but imho the script was a winner and so was the delivery.
Down with Hitler?
All the way down sir. The British Officer Corps; Protecting your nation and having a ripping good time too, what.
Muzman on 6/7/2011 at 03:04
Heh, well I thought that scene was fairly realistic and so not overtly funny at all. The meta movie stuff is cute but other than that fairly unremarkable. There's some truth in life there. I couldn't say exactly how much, but it certainly is, perhaps more importantly for a Qt film, true to cinema. Check out A Bridge Too Far or the Colditz Story and so on. The British Army is always full of such jovial chaps.
Anyway, the tavern scene did set up the finalé quite nicely. And then the whole thing dribbles to a fairly perfunctory close. There's a couple of good bits along the way. But I just couldn't really believe how little suspense there was. For instance; The reason that getting into Hitler's box was so jarring is it's put in like an action beat, but there's no reason for it at all, narratively speaking.
I hate to get all Robert McKee but excitement won't be created unless something is at stake. It doesn't matter if it's hitler and they are jewish brutes at all. By this point Landa, the only real menace in the film btw, has already been completely diffused and is negotiating his surrender. There are no obstacles to Marcel setting the fire. The new reel is already running. Suddenly the dynamite guys get a little locknload sequence and slo-mo action so they cannnnnnn...... be in the box when the fire starts? I don't know.
That's like cart-before-horse student filmmaking: We wanted an action sequence and we needed these characters over here. No reason for it. It's just there.
It kinda exemplified the whole thing for me as I watched it fall apart. It happens at a couple of points in the movie; things seem to coalesce and go places and then shortly after it's just stuff and I don't care anymore.
There's even some interesting bits to the film that are worthwhile like not letting the nazis hide in plain sight after the war, Landa trying to get away like he was just doing a job and he'll change with the wind, the meta gag about Jews "winning through movies". But I can't even begin to get into that or the supposed grey moral dimension (which I really don't think is there to the degree some people are saying) until I care.
There's so many gaps that seem to be crying out for a more traditional director. Or maybe more QT is the answer. The suspense doesn't work except on a scene by scene basis, so cut it up. Rearrange time. (although Jackie Brown was linear and suspenseful so he can actually do it) He's even coy about his music cues and other riffing. That's why it throws you off when title cards and Samuel L Jackson show up. It's like *slap* "oh, that's right. He does this sort of thing as well"
It needs to go one way or the other. Somehow it's like he's cowed by World War 2. He wants to do justice to all his urges and goals and the reality at the same time, and he can't.
nicked on 6/7/2011 at 06:18
It's Quentin Tarantino? What did people really expect? A serious war movie? I watched it as the schlocky Jewish revenge fantasy it's designed as and quite enjoyed it. And as for tension, the opening in the farmhouse got massively tense as I recall.
SubJeff on 6/7/2011 at 11:02
Quote Posted by Muzman
Heh, well I thought that scene was fairly realistic and so not overtly funny at all. The meta movie stuff is cute but other than that fairly unremarkable. There's some truth in life there.
They are in a massive room. It's empty apart from a huge map, a piano, a little table and a globe. A globe which has a bar in it. Before they start their quintessential British what ho conversation it's bizarre. What's not to like? Meh, different strokes.
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That's like cart-before-horse student filmmaking: We wanted an action sequence and we needed these characters over here. No reason for it. It's just there.
Their mission was to get the people in Hitler's box, it's not hard. They were to shoot or bomb them. They didn't know that Landa had dropped a bomb in there already, nor that the fire was about to start, and as far as they knew Pitt still had the third bomb.
I agree that by that point Landa has ceased being a menace, but his turning tail suddenly changes things (or so he thinks) and we're just watching the consequences of the entire set up. I don't know what else QT could have done with it at that point anyway.
Thirith on 6/7/2011 at 11:21
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Their mission was to get the people in Hitler's box, it's not hard. They were to shoot or bomb them. They didn't know that Landa had dropped a bomb in there already, nor that the fire was about to start, and as far as they knew Pitt still had the third bomb.
To my mind, part of the whole movie is that while we think the Basterds are the protagonists, it's actually Shoshanna who is the real protagonist. We're basically shown two films at the same time - the one we're expecting to watch, where the Basterds are a Dirty Dozen-type band of heroes (but aren't really - they're monstrous and fairly incompetent at anything other than violence), and the surprising one, where the Jewish girl from the beginning is the one that holds it all together. The action with the Basterds at the cinema is a counterpoint to Shoshanna's story, not the main event.
