Comic book Holocaust
The movie "Inglorious basterds," directed by Quentin Tarantino, is a comic book treatment of WWII France under the Nazis. It uses the Holocaust as a means to entertain and make points.
The machine gunning of a family of Jews hiding in a cellar is used as a story prop, the daughter named Shoshana escapes and they let her go (!) then a statement comes on the screen saying don't worry she'll appear later in our story.
Then we are introduced to the supposedly "inglorious basterds," a group of 8 American Jewish soldiers and their southern Colonel, who are to be dropped behind enemy lines in France, with orders to kill Nazis. But, although the parallel to "The dirty dozen" is clear (Tarantino likes to make cinematic gestures) the soldiers themselves are not introduced individually and so we make no connection with them. Since the Colonel is part Apache Indian, he insists that all the Germans they kill are scalped, so that the German soldiers will fear them.
There are several criticisms of this movie, first the scenes in which there are conversations between the Nazis and the "good guys" are too long, the interview between the Nazi "Jew hunter" and the French farmer is too slow, and the scene in which a group of Nazis and a group of British and Americans dressed as Nazis interact seems interminable. By the way, most of the dialog (about 90%) is in French and German, so don't go expecting English dialog, and in Israeli theaters the translation is in Hebrew, so I missed some of the details.
The best role and the best acting in this movie is by the actor playing the "Jew hunter," what a pity. The epic scene in which the leading Nazis, Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Bormann, get fried in a movie theater fire is ridiculous, and the gratuitous violence, even against Nazis, is unpleasant to watch. Would Hitler have only two guards, would he travel to Paris for a movie premiere? It's good that Jews killed Nazis, for real and in the movies, but this movie is neither to be taken seriously nor comically.
The machine gunning of a family of Jews hiding in a cellar is used as a story prop, the daughter named Shoshana escapes and they let her go (!) then a statement comes on the screen saying don't worry she'll appear later in our story.
Then we are introduced to the supposedly "inglorious basterds," a group of 8 American Jewish soldiers and their southern Colonel, who are to be dropped behind enemy lines in France, with orders to kill Nazis. But, although the parallel to "The dirty dozen" is clear (Tarantino likes to make cinematic gestures) the soldiers themselves are not introduced individually and so we make no connection with them. Since the Colonel is part Apache Indian, he insists that all the Germans they kill are scalped, so that the German soldiers will fear them.
There are several criticisms of this movie, first the scenes in which there are conversations between the Nazis and the "good guys" are too long, the interview between the Nazi "Jew hunter" and the French farmer is too slow, and the scene in which a group of Nazis and a group of British and Americans dressed as Nazis interact seems interminable. By the way, most of the dialog (about 90%) is in French and German, so don't go expecting English dialog, and in Israeli theaters the translation is in Hebrew, so I missed some of the details.
The best role and the best acting in this movie is by the actor playing the "Jew hunter," what a pity. The epic scene in which the leading Nazis, Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Bormann, get fried in a movie theater fire is ridiculous, and the gratuitous violence, even against Nazis, is unpleasant to watch. Would Hitler have only two guards, would he travel to Paris for a movie premiere? It's good that Jews killed Nazis, for real and in the movies, but this movie is neither to be taken seriously nor comically.
posted by Jack Cohen at 9:45 AM
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