To Do List

I have woefully neglected this blog for quite some time now, as I've been busy studying and haven't been to the theaters all summer, with the exception of a midnight showing of Harry Potter. To remind myself of all the things I need to get around to seeing, here's a partial list of the films released in 2009 that I still haven't seen. Whew. Better get to work.

Gomorrah
Observe and Report
The Soloist
Star Trek
Wolverine
Drag Me to Hell
Up
Two Lovers
The Girlfriend Experience
Away We Go
Public Enemies
It Might Get Loud
Paper Heart
(500) Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
District 9
Sin Nombre
Julie and Julia
Ponyo

Quite frankly, watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to going to the movies.

Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)

Ok, let’s just get this out of the way now: I’m not a huge Tarantino fan. While I think he’s a remarkably talented filmmaker who has made a number of smart and compelling films, they typically arouse my interests on a purely intellectual level. As I watch, I often find myself appreciating a stunningly composed shot or a wonderfully edited sequence, or pondering one of the many meta-moments that Tarantino presents us with. His film-geekdom permeates every film he makes, as each film weaves a new web of seemingly endless citationality. This is not a bad thing, per se. It’s just that I’ve never been able to get really absorbed in a Tarantino film. I never feel like I’m fully inhabiting the world he has created. His style, fun as it is to watch, doesn’t ever let me react to the film on a physical or emotional level. I am almost never moved, saddened, repulsed, etc. Again, this wouldn’t be a bad thing if Tarantino were aiming for a purely intellectual response. And certainly, he is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker who deliberately tries to engage the viewer on an intellectual level. However, that clearly isn’t the only reaction he’s trying to elicit, as the hordes of Tarantino fans out there can likely attest. And so I constantly feel like I’m missing something in the films. (Incidentally, this may be the reason that the much-overlooked Jackie Brown has long been my favorite of his films, while I find the ever popular Reservoir Dogs practically unwatchable.)

Inglourious Basterds was no different in this regard, although it did grab me in more places than most Tarantino films do. I really only know how to talk about his films as a series of moments, so I’ll just highlight a few key moments—the ones that made me stop and think or marvel at his talent and those that more successfully used his style to draw out some sort of affective response in me.

In the latter respect, the first of the film’s five chapters was stunning. As Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) interviews Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), each shot is framed beautifully and the camera movement accentuates the feel of the Nazis closing in on LaPadite, making the small space of his kitchen seem as claustrophobic as the area under the floorboards where the Dreyfus family is hiding. Here at least the film did succeed in making me react to the action rather than just the style: though I knew what was probably going to happen all along, the cinematography and editing produced a palpable tension.

Similarly, the sequence in which Shoshana/Emmanuelle (Mélanie Laurent) prepares to execute her own version of Operation Kino was truly brilliant. Simple though it was, I love the way the action aligned with the soundtrack—specifically, David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)”—and the variety of close up and overhead shots was used to great effect here. Both of these are deceptively simple moments that stood out as a result of Tarantino’s style: I appreciated their construction but didn’t get lost in it.

Finally, on an intellectual level, I both loved and was incredibly uncomfortable with the scenes of the Nazis watching “Nation’s Pride”—the film within a film. In a film as reflexive about its own medium as Inglourious Basterds is (and, indeed, most of Tarantino’s are), these moments highlighting the act of watching a film are all the more meaningful. In addition to raising interesting questions about the use of film as propaganda, this scene invokes a powerful criticism of the treatment of violence as entertainment. Or does it? The camera repeatedly cuts between the (supposedly) heroic violence on screen and shots of Hitler laughing vigorously, which gave me the disturbing feeling that—as a spectator of Tarantino’s particularly violent film—I was meant to identify with Hitler here. I’ve read a few reviews that treat this scene as Tarantino specifically critiquing war films and their glorification of violence, but given his own reputation for violent films, I’m uncomfortable with that limitation. But how effective is this critique of the ways in which we treat violence as entertainment and glorify it when lodged within a film that makes audiences laugh at Brad Pitt (as Lt. Aldo Raine) carving a swastika into someone’s head? I’m struggling to figure out whether this scene offers a legit criticism of cinematic violence or if it just becomes another superficial, quirky self-reflexive moment. After all, the hero of the film within a film, Fredrick Zoller, appears uncomfortable with the celebration of his own violence, but then immediately seeks out Emmanuelle and reacts violently to her rejection of him. Thus, the violence on screen becomes a kind of foreplay to his sexual aggression and violence. In short, I just can’t tell if the film is critiquing or celebrating our love of violence. Can it do both? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter; I’ve already rambled on too long.

The more I think/write about it, the more I like it, so I want to see it again before settling on this, but here goes…
Rating: 4/5