Vengeful Jews and 'Inglourious Basterds'
I finally got a chance to see "Inglourious Basterds" last night, and am now catching up on some of the discussion that's taking place among Jewish bloggers, in particular, about what to make of this blood-soaked Quentin Tarantino fantasia in which a group of Jewish American soldiers, led by Brad Pitt (whose character is not Jewish), make their way across a German-occupied World War II France giddily and gruesomely scalping and branding Nazis. The film seems to represent a few trends in depictions of the Holocaust in popular culture -- both the increasing interest in real or fictional Jews who fought back, and an increasing willingness to at least flirt with the comic in films that deal with one of history's great tragedies. Any deviation from documentary-style depictions of the Holocaust sparks debate among those worried about trivialization, and "Inglourious Basterds," which is only loosely related to reality, is no exception. A few analyses that have caught my eye as I try to sort through my own reactions this morning:
In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, who calls himself "a veteran REM-state Mengele-killer,'' profiles Tarantino, and comes away skeptical of his film's message:
I have a high tolerance for violence in Tarantino’s compelling fantasy demimonde. But Inglourious Basterds is the first Tarantino movie to reference real historical events. Which might be why I find his anti-Nazi excesses—there’s a concept—disconcerting. Or it might be because I don’t actually have revenge dreams anymore. They stopped sometime after I left the army, if I remember correctly. Given the chance, of course, I would still shoot Mengele in the face. That would be a moral necessity. But I wouldn’t carve a swastika into his forehead. That just doesn’t sound like the Jewish thing to do.
In Tablet magazine, Liel Leibovitz is particularly critical, comparing Tarantino's film to the Nazi propaganda it mocks, calling both, "empty cinematic spools of sound and fury, signifying nothing":
Tarantino’s film is a bit of shallow propaganda, promoting not some totalitarian ideology but a worldview in which cool trumps consequence, nothing is real, and everything is permitted. If there’s any justice in the world, it’s a vision viewers everywhere will vehemently reject.
Charlie Bertsch, writing at Jewcy, has a lengthy essay about the film, which starts with a survey of the criticism, observing, "In taking on World War II and, implicitly, the Holocaust, Inglourious Basterds invites a degree of moral scrutiny that Tarantino’s choice of genres previously helped him avoid. The fact that he continues to project the image of an insouciant amateur movie fan rather than a disciplined director, even when handling such historically delicate material, compounds the trouble." An excerpt:
Inglourious Basterds has still provoked the same misgivings as Tarantino’s previous directorial efforts. Some worry that its depiction of violence is excessive, others that the humor that leavens that violence might deaden viewers’ moral sensitivity. But because this is a story in which Jews take revenge on their oppressors, other concerns have come to the fore. The most heated objections to the film have come from those who worry that it makes viewers identify with characters in troubling ways. Interestingly, this charge has been levied from opposing ideological camps. Whether supporters of Israel or the sort of progressive intellectuals who relentlessly point out its failings, critics have argued that the film makes revenge too sweet.There is nothing in the narrative to imply that the Germans in the film, most of them high-ranking Nazis, deserve sympathy for their plight. Nevertheless, the unorthodox practices of the primarily American commando unit known as the “Inglourious Basterds” – scalping their kills and carving a swastika on the foreheads of any survivors – have troubled those who believe that the distinction between “us” and “them” must encompass methodology as well as ideology.
Meanwhile, at Politics Daily, David Gibson puts the film in the context of other manifestations of Jewish toughness, both real and imagined. He notes the role of Jewish sports heroes in countering images of nebbishiness, but also notes that Jewish toughness, particularly in the form of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, has also become a source of criticism:
The modern renaissance in Jewish grit can be traced to the birth of Israel in 1948, which was founded in hostile territory by a people that had been nearly exterminated a few years earlier. The legend grew with the success Jews had in creating a land of milk and honey out of the desert, and it was sealed in the popular imagination by the astonishing military victory of the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, as well as the 1976 Entebbe raid that rescued hostages off an Air France plane hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. That era was celebrated in the 2005 Steven Spielberg movie "Munich," a well-regarded film about the Mossad's patient campaign to assassinate the terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.Some would also note that Jews earned their stripes in the tough arena of sports -- witness baseball greats Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax -- as well as crime. Journalist Rich Cohen titled his history of past Jewish organized crime figures "Tough Jews," pointing out that guys like Bugsy Siegel (played by Warren Beatty in the movie) and Meyer Lansky were regarded by many Jews as providing a rare and enviable tough-guy image. (A site called J-Grit.com has lists of what it says are legendary tough Jews from modern times, including rogues as well as heroes.)
In some respects, however, Jewish -- or at least Israeli -- prowess has taken a hit since the resurgent Palestinian intifada of 2002. That was followed by episodes like the 2006 battle in Lebanon against Hezbollah that was widely viewed as a failure for Israel, and the 2007 invasion of Gaza that left the Israeli army looking like the oppressor in the eyes of many. Recent books have even openly critiqued the "Jewish lobby" in America.
Finally, out of curiosity, I took a look at how the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' film office is viewing the film. They have recommended it only for a "limited adult audience" because of "problematic content many adults would find troubling." The reviewer, acknowledging that the film raises "complex moral issues,'' then wades into a complex issue himself, suggesting that perhaps killing rank-and-file Nazis is not justifiable:
"Inglourious Basterds" (Weinstein/Universal) is a provocative World War II fantasy requiring careful moral assessment from viewers well-educated in Catholic teaching and able to withstand its occasional episodes of graphic bloodletting. In between those incidents, writer-director Quentin Tarantino weaves a suspenseful, though somewhat lurid, alternate history of a tragic epoch....As the direct perpetrators of an inhuman tyranny, Goebbels and his ilk would have made fair targets, since they bore personal guilt for the regime's bloody crimes, and their lives were obstacles to the restoration of the common good.
But the American band's systematic brutality toward low-ranking enemy soldiers, especially prisoners, is far less easily justified, and can only be accepted within a genre far removed from reality and on the supposition that all Teutonic combatants were, to some degree at least, Holocaust enablers.
(Photo, by Francois Duhamel/TWC via Bloomberg, shows actors Eli Roth and Brad Pitt in the film "Inglourious Basterds.")
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Best film I have seen in a while!
Three words: IT'S NOT REAL.
Inglourious Basterds is based on real facts and true documented stories.
The story makes so bogus history I just can't get up any interest to see the film.
It is a truly provocative, enthralling and captivating movie. It represnets the thoughts, dreams and fantasies of the Holocaust victims. A totally engrossing movie, even though the reality of the movie, is not tenable.
While certainly meant to be provocative it still is just a movie. Moral issues are raised but not really dealt with and it seems Tarantino wants to grab our attention and show us his bravura movie skills and and sense of movie history. I thoroughly enjoyed the film on a number of levels but morally it probably could have done more. That's not a knock - it's still just a movie, well made and very entertaining.
Just what America needs a film full of Jews on a hate spree while their Israeli brethren do about the same to the Palestinians. Lovely for the back seat LCD in your German made Mercedes. Oh and the Catholic Church chiming in just wonderful, considering they supported the Germans as best they could.
Religions stink up the place.
BORINGGGG
typical hollywood crap, a script not worth the toilet paper it was written on
Yeah, these intellectuals need to realize that sometimes a movie is just a movie. And IB is a damn good one.
Jewish resistance to nazi atrocities was few and far between. There seems to be an insatiable appetite among some American Jews to get revenge on the Nazis thru Hollywood movies. Although the movies claim that the events were based on true events, most of the events depicted in these nazi revenge type movies really didnt happen in WWII. Its fiction.
There are lots of comments claiming that this is "just a movie." We live in one of the most violent societies on earth. Is there a connection in what we consume for entertainment and how we treat one another?
CK, maybe if we Jews weren't so persecuted for over 2,000 years, we wouldn't be so vengeful. If you and six million like you were hauled of to gas chambers and ovens, hunted down and systematically murdered, you'd want your persecutors hunted down and killed too. Or do you just have a problem with Jews fighting back? Are you a coward? Do you have such a pathetic life that you need to vent and we Jews are your target group of choice? Or are you just a typical Muslim or neo-Nazi? One thing is certain-you have issues.
Home Alone and Home Alone II were better.
CK and Heather - the media systematically ignores the Jews in Israel and America who continue to protest the settlements and treatment of Palestinians. There are Jewish lawyers representing Palestinians. There are many many rallies and protests by Jews against the whole thing. There was one a few years ago on Brookline, by orthodox Jews.
Both of you see way too many movies. Jews do not hate all Germans, nor do they blame everybody for years of persecution. Lots of people have been persecuted steadily. Grow up already. My own grandparents lost everything in the Holocaust and experienced a lot of misery. Yet they returned to Austria a lot - they had good friends there after all.
Hey Heather, everyone is against you!! it's true!!!
John wrote
"There are lots of comments claiming that this is "just a movie." We live in one of the most violent societies on earth. Is there a connection in what we consume for entertainment and how we treat one another?"
Amen, John. I wish I understood the obsession with violence, and why we consider it humorous. This question is very much in mind as I read more about the five MIDDLE SCHOOL-AGED kids in Lynn who decided it was a good idea to take bricks and effectively stone a man sleeping out in the open, causing him severe injuries. What kind of society produces kids who think this is a good idea? Why, one that laughs at and trivializes depictions of brutal violence as "just a movie." And before you start pointing at the parents and the socioeconomics of a town like Lynn, ask yourself what kind of society we are building that fills in the gaps when the parents/family support/eceonomic privileges/etc... aren't there? There may be fewer incidents like this in wealthy towns, but that may be only because the well-to-do families there are able to devote enough attention to their kids to counteract the harms of their media exposure (in most cases...but see 2007's tragic stabbing at Lincoln-Sudbury). In other words, instead of raising kids who aspire to elevating humanity's level of kindness, tolerance and civility, they're just barely managing to get them back to a level of baseline expectations...
#3
"Inglourious Basterds is based on real facts and true documented stories."
This is why I have a problem with 'artists' like QT. These events never happened. Period. Yet there are idiots out there who believe everything they see.
Imagine a film like this, or Pulp Fiction, Resvr Dogs, or other QT films 40 years ago. No one would show it, and if shown, people would leave the theater in disgust. This guy's stuff is way too violent, classless, and celebratory of that violence, and viewers are getting scary desensitized to it.
The Dirty Dozen would've kicked the Basterds' butts in a fight. One tough look from Charles Bronson or Lee Marvin and Brad Pitt would pee his pants and run back to Angelina.
Hi John and SettleDownNow,
Stop blaming "the media" for your bad parenting. Raise your children and teach them morals. That way your television won't magically turn them into little monsters that bash people with bricks.
If Quentin Tarantino and Trey Parker have such a powerful influence over your children you are doing something horribly wrong.
Why does no one call out this unsettling quote: "That era was celebrated in the 2005 Steven Spielberg movie "Munich," a well-regarded film about the Mossad's patient campaign to assassinate the terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics."
Anyone who watched Munich and called it a 'celebration' needs their head examined. The movie was a critique of how revenge, even when rooted in the noblest of purpose, can go horribly astray. When you take orders from faceless authorities who tell you who to kill, you're not taking revenge, you're taking orders. Munich showed that those who took revenge were no better than the terrorists who perpetrated the original atrocity.
But maybe some folks would rather 'celebrate" mercenary serial killers than call them what they were.
To Steve B,you wrote that the Jewish resistance to the nazi atrocities were few and far between. I take offense with that assessment. First, given the fact the Jews were outnumbered and out armed, just surviving was a form of resistance in itself.
Secondly, both of my parents were jewish resistance fighters. My father escaped camps and lived in the woods with his group.He fought the "Nazis, Germans, and Poles who hunted him down like dogs. My father was shoot 5 times and poisoned but still fought and killed the enemy. My mother lived as a "Christian" and secretly helped Jews and the underground to fight the germans and the Nazis. My parents, Jewish resistance fighters helped save Krakow from being blown up. My mother testified at the war crime hearings in Germany.My father was willing to tell his stories, but my mother had a hard time reliving the horrors. There was resistance out there but many emotionally could not tell the tale
And his next movie will be about previously raped altar boys castrating priests?
Fortunately, I spare myself the insult of watching his swill.
Cyree -
You obviously didn't read what I wrote. Instead, you jumped at what seemed to be the first opportunity to bash parents. And I can understand that reaction -- because its the typical selfish modern American attitude. God-fobid you have to think for a moment about the effects of your "enjoyment" on others. So long as you have access to whatever you want -- porn, violence, etc... -- you don't care whether those same things are accessible to kids because, after all, they're someone else's responsibility. And, for that matter, you apparently don't care about their effects on adults. And so it happens... a society falls apart because its members stop thinking or caring about the effects of their words, actions, etc... on anyone else. As it happens, Cyree, my kids DON'T get exposed to this stuff -- but only because I work hard to ensure they don't. Many families of more limited means and greater economic pressures do not have as much time to spend ensuring their kids are always provided with a wholesome environment. Unlike you, I'm not so smug as to believe that the relative privilege I live in is enjoyed by everyone else in the world... But what do you care? So long as you can have your fill of violent rubbish, to hell with the rest of the world, right? Seems you've already become one of the people I worry about.
I could be wrong, but on the whole, it seems that tough Jews in Europe were extremely hard to find during the Nazi era. So I'd say the movie is fictional. But the Jews who slaughter the Palestinians are not tough either. They are simply armed with overwhelming U.S. supplied firepower. Hard to to think of a Jew in an American Abrams M1A1 Tank blasting a stone-throwing Palestinian teenager to smitherines, or driving over a Palestinian home filled with women and children, as "tough."
One of the best movies of the year, so far. But, anyone saying that the film is "based on true events" (which Tarantino never claims) shouldn't be watching it. It's a Spaghetti Western set in Nazi occupied France. It's a film, and a damn good one at that.
"Just what America needs a film full of Jews on a hate spree while their Israeli brethren do about the same to the Palestinians."
You're comparing Nazi soldiers to Palestinian civilians? That's awfully bigoted against Palestinians.
It's only a film. I saw it based on the reviews which gave it 3 1/2 stars averaging out the 4 star maximum over 5 different newpaper theater critics. The description was pretty much on target. I found it entertaining, extremely violent, and a fantasy. Nobody forced me to to to the ticket counter and shell out the price of admission. Most of us go to movies as a "healthy" escape from reality, and leave the reality at the theater as you leave. As with everything else in life this film has its protractors and detractors. I saw it, enjoyed it, it kept my interest. End of discussion. It neither added to or diminished my life one iota.
The film to think of as a counterbalance to "Inglorious Basterds" is not "Munich" (I agree with Andrew's comments about the moral snares documented in "Munich," see #21 above), but "Defiance," a film based in historical fact. The moral choices in "Defiance" concern not only a compulsion for revenge--and there are violent and horrifying examples of that in "Defiance"--but also the difficult moral choices that are imposed when one's own, or a group's survival hangs in the balance. Look at the moments of revenge taking in "Defiance." It is not gleeful, it's not sport, and it's certainly not liberating. It is portrayed as something raw and viscerally human. This adds a heft to the portrayal of revenge violence in "Defiance" that is missing from "Inglorious Basterds." Peel away the shock of the violence portrayed in "IB" and what you see is something highly ritualized by an auteur filmmaker. Violence that is form over substance--Kabuki like-and, ironically, bloodless.
GWatcher, just admit you hate jews and stop trying to rationalize it with your own fantasies.
It's a movie... it is fiction...
... then again, so is religion, so I guess it does make sense that you would discuss this in your column michael.
Ah, yes, always find a way to bash Israel. Perhaps you should look closer to see who is abusing Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims around the world and you will find that Egypt has closed off Gaza as much as Israel has, that Hamas uses their civilians as shields and Muslims attack Muslims on a daily basis. Those are all OK apparently b/c it is not PC to object to these. Why does the world only care about occupied territory when it involves a Jewish state but not when it involves anyone else? Think Kashmir, Western Sahara, Tibet, Taiwan and on and on. When Israel is attacked without provocation again in the future, you will all sit there and wait to criticize Israel when they protect their citizens, Jew and Arab alike. As for those who minize the pain that Jews experienced in the Holocaust and earlier at the hands of their gentile neighbors, you need to read more about the powerlessness experienced and read a bit about the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
Thanks John and A realistic Jew, for telling how liberals really feel. BTW, did you guys know that Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch's military expert, is an avid Nazi memorabilia collector? Looks like the line between left-wingers and right-wingers is beginning to blur.
QT should make the film: "The Sopranowitz'"
well done, great actors, good entertainment, enjoyed every minute, breathtaking David Bowie song in the middle - excellent joice! It should be possible once in a while just to enjoy without great brain-wanking.
I love it when people outside of an ethnic group like to tell members of said ethnic group what their emotional response to a depiction of a major historical event regarding their history, regardless of it's intent or status as fiction, should be.
Now, in my house, we grew up taking WWII very seriously. My father's side of the family are Eastern European Jews, and my mother's father was in the OSS, doing God knows what. I don't know what he did, so I cannot presume to defend anything he may or may not have done during the war. I do know however what it was like for my grandparents to be ripped from their homes, have their families and friends killed, narrowly escaping to America for being Jews.
Now, I'm an atheist myself. I too have some serious issues with organized religion. However, I recognize that just because having a religion is not something I am interested in, this does not make those who hold deep adherence to religion beneath me, and it does not allow me to disregard their feelings when they feel that their heritage (coincidentally being my heritage- hey, we all came from somewhere...) has been disrespected for the sake of entertainment.
"It's just a movie" is a deadening syndrome. Films - compounded entities made up of economics, politics, identity, sociology, and so on - are dynamic, complicated phenomena no matter how shallow or profound they can be. Disregarding such a thing only shows further evidence of a culture of impunity and collective amnesia.
In the case of "Basterds", "cool trumping consequence" sounds about right and sums up its essence. No doubt Tarantino's an expert at scene-building and direction - not to mention atmosphere and the soundtrack's narrative role - but it doesn't add to anything substantial. "Tarantino’s hyper-violent narrative reveals merely that he still daydreams like a teen-ager." (David Denby's NEW YORKER review)
Jews who could fought like the devil. My father was captured in the first days of the war by the Nazis, then escaped. He was assisted in crossing the Buk river into Soviet territory ... by a childhood Volksdeutsch friend, his sparring partner, who had become an SS officer. Fainlly comfortable in a gulag on the white sea, he escaped and walked to Turkey. He weighed 70 lbs and was nearly dead, then when healthy, sent to Tobruk where he joined the Polish brigade of the British 8th Army. He fought at the second battle of Tobruk, then was in the horror of Monte Casino. Later, he arrived at Sword Beach during D-Day - another slaughter. Taken back to England, he paratrooped into Arnhem. Taken again back to England, he paratrooped again, this time into the action at the Battle of the Bulge ... his last battle of the war.
I once asked him why he had escaped, when he was comfortable as might be possible as an Engineer working for the Russians in a gulag, His answer was simple and to the point: "This was no way to kill Germans."
Jews who could fought, fought with nearly no resources, and died fighting. Their spirit was not crushed. A friend of my father escaped the Warsaw ghetto and fought out the war in the resistance, in the forests, in the cold. It is the story told in Defiance, and it is a vital piece of history.
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