#1 - Inglourious Basterds. Part I: Defense
"Comedy is tragedy plus time." - Woody Allen*
* Though I believe Mark Twain said, "Humor is tragedy plus time," well before Allen ever wrote that.
Hmmmm.
Hmmmmmm.
I'm going to acknowledge that Inglourious Basterds [sic] could be argued by some to be the worst (worst as in most tasteless, damaging, offensive) movie of the year. The reasons for such a claim are no secret: writer/director Quentin Tarantino made a violent, comedic, factually-inaccurate, possibly exploitative movie about one of the most infamous, darkest, and serious chapters in all of human history. This much is pretty clear.
In the film, we have the Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) led Inglourious Basterds, a special group of soldiers created for the sole purpose of haunting* and killing Nazis. The Basterds strike fear into the cold, stone hearts of the Nazis and derive pleasure from terrorizing them. This is a group that is so utterly convinced of the complete and unforgivable wickedness of the Nazis that they view them as subhuman and undeserving of sympathy and respect.
* Not a typo, though I guess they do "hunt" them as well.
This is the crux of the entire film.
Tarantino chooses to view Hitler and the Nazis as, quite simply, less than human. Like his character Aldo, he refuses to give respect to the Nazis. They are evil, awful people that deserve only death and embarrassment. Tarantino says as much in Aldo's opening monologue, detailing the founding principles of the Basterds:
"I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin' aeroplane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be destroyed. [...] We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with."
This is the human instinct. This is why the death penalty exists. This is an extension of revenge. Now, I don't agree with all this--the death penalty, for example, is idiotic-- but I will still watch and possibly enjoy a film that explores the nature of this atavistic reaction and the concept of: Nazis are bad, bad people deserve bad things, therefore, Nazis deserve bad things.
To be clear, Basterds is not a Holocaust film, it is a WWII film. None of it takes place in Germany (save for a few quick, non-Holocaust related flashbacks) and except for the opening scene (which is tastefully and terrifyingly done) no Jewish civilians are ever killed on screen, and even in this scene we don't actually see them die, we only see machine guns fired into the floor. Were Basterds Tarantino's take on the Holocaust, I might have a very different opinion, but it isn't; it's what Tarantino thinks of the world's most famous bad guys.
In an interview that my fav sportswriter Bill Simmons did with South Park co-creator Matt Stone, Stone talked about their similar take on Osama Bin Laden after 9/11 (which, in reference to our opening equation, obviously had a smaller tragedy, but a lot less time). Though I didn't really like this episode much when I saw it, I think it's pertinent to the discussion of Basterds:
"What better, more empowering thing than to take this Hitler or Tojo or something that's just so frightening, or Osama Bin Laden was in September, you know, October 2001, and just...fart in his face and make fun of him? [...] You have to get a psychological edge. [...] Let's go turn him into a cartoon character and, you know, beat him up." [emphasis added]
And I think there's something to this. There is something to the idea of looking at an enemy and just giving a giant middle-finger or farting in his face or saying, "We do not respect you. We will not legitimize you. You don't deserve anything more than to be laughed at." And this is what Tarantino does, at least to some extent.
Because of, in reality, the Nazi's ruthlessness and effectiveness and body count, it's difficult to succeed doing only this, so Tarantino even goes a step farther and places his narrative in a sort of parallel reality. His highly stylized, sleek, sharp filmmaking already doesn't strive for exact realism, but Tarantino makes no bones about rewriting history in his film. He doesn't ignore the Holocaust and Nazi success so much as he revises it. It is a fantasy in which virtually all the evil people get what they deserve: a fitting, poetic, ironic death (more on this in Part 2).
Some have criticized the Basterds for this lack of subtlety and moral depth, but I wonder, harkening back to the earlier points, do the Nazis really deserve to be humanized? Should we see why they're so wicked? How they were forced into their cruel roles? The moral depth of Basterds lies in how we view the Basterds, who are unmistakably sadistic in their own right. As much as many of us might hate the idea of Nazis, we couldn't bring ourselves anywhere close to inflicting the close-quartered pain we see in the film. Even our "good" characters in Basterds do things that (at least in times of non-war) are wrong and barbaric. But this too is the nature of war in that it can bring out our best and most heroic in some ways, but also our worst. Basically, do we have to turn into that which we hate to defeat it? The answer in real life is probably yes and no. In Basterds, it's probably just yes.
This criticism of Basterds also requires examining the context in which it exists. People can point out other films that better portray the complexities of the Holocaust & WWII, but (a.) are those films really so different?; and (b.) does Basterds have to try and do what other films have already done?
If one wants to compare Basterds to the (a.) other popular films of the last few decades, it's probably not any worse than Life is Beautiful, which, lest you forget, is mostly a lighthearted comedy (though it does get serious toward to end) about a father and a son in a concentration camp. As the title suggests, there are some "beautiful," heartfelt aspects to the story, but is that any less exploitative or, perhaps, disrespectful than Basterds? Granted, "cool" and "violent" are words that don't come up to describe Life is Beautiful, but, again, Basterds is a WW2 film and and LIB is a Holocaust one. Though, if you want to talk violence, the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan is more gruesome than all of Basterds. Or, to move more into the pop realm, the villains in Raiders of the Lost Ark are Nazis too. Why? As Indy says two movies later, "Nazis. I hate these guys." Yeah. We all do. How about the funniest moment in The Producers in which we laugh at a performance of "Springtime for Hitler"? Hogan's Heroes anyone? Tarantino is far from the first person to take, shall we say, advantage, of WWII and the Nazis.
Even Schindler's List, considered by most to not only one of the greatest WWII/Holocaust movies ever but one of the greatest movies ever period, does that not exploit the real life suffering of the Jews in some sense? To make such a film, that makes money, wins awards, and is at least generally consumed for entertainment...can that film be given a completely free pass?
Though to condemn Schindler's List probably means that no movie should ever be made about the Holocaust, as it is just too horrible and catastrophic to be dealt with. This is, of course, probably not the right path to take, as we must learn from history and keep such tragedies in our collective consciousness. Which (b.) in that so many films have been made about WWII/Holocaust that it's almost its own genre, it's not fair to ask each filmmaker (since we have established that such subject matter is fair game) to approach the process in the same way. Therefore, since Schindler's List and films of that ilk still exist, isn't it reasonable that Tarantino, one of the most distinct filmmakers around, should examine what hasn't already been done? Basterds is, if nothing else, thought-provoking (see: above essay) and that really counts for something. To make the viewer consider, "Is this okay?" means that the viewer is thinking not only about this film and its place among other films, but about the real events, how we treat those events, and, in a smaller, specific sense, about the rules and purposes of storytelling/historical fiction.
With all that being said, if someone finds Basterds wildly offensive, I can't exactly tell him he's wrong. If something offends you, it offends you. I can maybe ask some questions and discuss some ideas (again, see: above essay), but I can't exactly say, "No. This does not offend you." Tarantino, in general, is already wildly offensive in his depictions of violence and resulting (what some call) immorality, so teaming Tarantino with such fragile subject matter is like throwing a lit match into a pool of gasoline*.
* The Big Book of American Cliches, Vol. 8. Harper-Collins, New York. 2007.
But, for me, Basterds, though toeing the line of appropriateness, doesn't cross it as I think it really does provide meaningful commentary on morality, dealing with evil, the role of art/film in regard to those, all while being careful not to tread on the weightiest, most sacrosanct elements of WWII (i.e. attempted genocide).
Back soon with why I think Inglourious Basterds was actually the single best movie of the year, instead of just not the worst.
"Naw, I don't think so. More like I'll be chewed out. I've been chewed out before." - Aldo Raine
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