Are we using the right criteria to judge QT when we measure his work comparing it to say, Resnais’ “Night and Fog” or Wajda? Like Ari said, QT has hampered his work by living in a cartoon fantasy, but the idea of cartoon fantasy isn’t flawed by definition, or else, Mel Blanc and Chuck Jones were just wasting their time and that isn’t something I can accept given the genius of their work. There’s value in the fantastic or cartoonish, just as there is in the surreal, the hyperreal, the neorealist, etc. It all depends on execution, imagination, and quality. Where I praised QT by saying he was crafting more “human” characters, I was doing so because the more cartoonish aspects of his work were being overdone and lamentably his abilities to depict some approximation of reality was atrophying. If the cartoonish aspect of QT was all that made his movies worthwhile, this wouldn’t be something to bemoan but something to celebrate, but the man’s most successful films have some degree of humanity to them, which I at least liked. Now, this ain’t the same thing as thinking Kill Bill woulda been better if it had thoroughly explored the grimmer realities of urban gang warfare in Japan or openly engaged with questions sexism and gender-inequality in the West and Far East. I just like to see a director do what I think he’s good at and not stagnate or become a slave to his own formulas and/or audience expectations.
i thought “katyn” was unwatchable because its a terrible film. no passion, no energy, no emotion, and no unique cinematic style. makavejev’s “sweet movie” says so much more to me, in a more powerful way, about the massacre in a few minutes than wajda achieves in an entire film.
i never set out to compare tarantino to wajda, or “basterds” to “katyn”. so i dont hold one more valuable or more compelling than the other as part of my argument, though i do find “basterds” a much more interesting cinematic experience. but theyre two different films, about two different things, with two different approaches, from two directors a world apart. we might as well compare “basterds” to “night and fog”, or “sweet movie” for that matter.
i dont think the bear jew is a responsible answer for world history, and i dont think the holocaust is a cute little topic for tarantino to riff on. but i also feel that world war 2 isnt so sacred and untouchable a subject that tarantino cant make a genre film out of it. if thats the case, we might as well attack almost every hollywood war film ever made.
tarantino is an artist, whether you like his works or not. the question is whether hes a bad or good artist. hes no craftsman, and hes no hack either.
yes, film can still accomplish something when it comes to world war 2. but honestly, what more does it need to accomplish? its a whole new century, with new problems and new concerns. tarantino didnt so much trivialize history any more than those directors of glorified hollywood war films did.
Well, I just bought this on blu-ray today and re-watched it. I enjoyed it even more second time round. Aside from a couple of niggles I think it really only has two major weaknesses; Eli Roth’s performance as The Bear Jew and the final fifteen minutes or so which is just silly. Other than that though a very good film.
as with many contemporary films, its probably about 30 or 40 minutes too long.
A bit too violent for my tastes! And i am big fan of his way of showing violence but in this film i was a bit horrified but his depiction of mass killings!
“Are we using the right criteria to judge QT when we measure his work comparing it to say, Resnais’ “Night and Fog” or Wajda?”
No, we probably aren’t. In his favor I will say that, as far as completely shitty filmmakers go, Tarantino is one of the best.
TARANTINO’s movies are electrifying, funky, exciting. This one has great moments, interesting actors. As a Tarantino sort of fan myself I wonder sometimes though: ISN’T ALL THIS A LITTLE SHALLOW? Forgive me for the boring word “SHALLOW” but honestly it is what came first to my mind after seeing INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Still I watch it over and over and with great pleasure!!!!
Leave it to Tarantino to make a World War II film devoid of humanity. It’s bloated and overlong and its morality is infantile. It’s a series of set pieces that serve as painfully transparent tension builders and nothing else. It’s Tarantino being obnoxiously, embarrassingly, self-consciously Tarantino-y. It’s like watching a man fellate himself for 2 1/2 hours.
“It’s Tarantino being obnoxiously, embarrassingly, self-consciously Tarantino-y. It’s like watching a man fellate himself for 2 1/2 hours”
- All of which could equally apply to that demi-god Godard.
At least Godard never unsubtly proclaimed ‘I think this might be my masterpiece’. That was beyond cringeworthy.
I don’t think he ever got his film history so mixed up either. Although maybe the proto-auteurist critic and posters for films that wouldn’t have had posters were self-conscious pieces of fantasy akin to the Hitler plotline. After all, it’s not a film concerned with realism, so maybe I shouldn’t let those things stop me from liking it.
I saw the film in theaters twice, and both times people laughed in the first scene when they switched to English. People all over were laughing like it was some sort of intended joke.
I never got it.
I think that we’re just not used to seeing foreign actors switch to fluent english in the middle of scene. It’s a strange thing to watch, and sometimes people laugh when strange things happen.
I can’t believe I got to page 15 of this thread before stopping. Riveting read!
I didn’t like the movie, by the way. I’m too burned out from attempting to read the entire thread to give my reasons why though.
@ 6000
No, you gotta understand this. You know how you can sort of hear what people are thinking in their laugh? When it’s fake, when it’s legit. If you get the joke, if they don’t. If it’s at somebody and not with somebody. This was the kind of laugh that said “I get what he’s doing”. Everybody was so confident in their laughter. It was weird. I’ve told this to many people that swear the whole concept was put there to cause this laughter. Like…QT wrote it as a joke.
It’s silliness. It all made sense about five minutes after he did it.
“I can’t believe I got to page 15 of this thread before stopping. Riveting read!”
Haha, yeah it was the best of times and the worst of times on the auteurs during the heyday of this old thread.
I saw Inglourious Basterds and I thought it was great. Maybe a half hour too long, but still great :)
When I first saw INGLORUOUS BASTERDS in theaters, I’ve felt that it was a first time watching a foreign film in theaters because I usually watch them at home and how Tarantino made this film was phenomenal (I even thought it was 3 hours long when I first saw it). I haven’t seen this film about 2 years now after seeing the second time (by the time it came out on DVD). The film was mostly talky, and had some action-packed scenes which all that made it one of the best I’ve seen so far in 2009. Brad Pitt & Eli Roth did both a magificent job with their performances as the members of the Basterds.
One day last year, I even bought a copy of the script at Broders and I loved reading it. The film did had a superb screenplay Tarantino wrote. I had it for like a few months and it suddenly got stored in another place. It was even more amazing experience with admiring INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.
I was kinda surprises how they used the CAT PEOPLE theme song in the film because I’ve always been a huge fan of CAT PEOPLE. The song made me feel like it seem yesterday when I first listened to the soundtrack album of CAT PEOPLE before watching CAT PEOPLE for the first time. But anyway, they done a fablious job with adding this song in the film because in the story our heroes were ready to face the villians for the big opening night of the film our heroes made.
All in all, I will never forget my first time experiences with this film. I’d sure like to watch it again it soon because (like I said) it has been 2 years since I last watched it.
Wow. 2 years and 800 posts later. I’m ready for a new Tarantino flick!
Totally. I’m not much of a Tarantino fan but I also like RESERVOIR DOGS (his first film). RESERVOIR DOGS, DEATH PROOF, and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS are the only Tarantino films I’ve seen. I wonder what will his next film will be about. My brother is a huge Tarantino fan.
McBean
Matt – It’s actually a lot closer to 800 posts. Of course it was just on the brink of falling off the first page until you boosted it to the top with your comment :o)