“We’re gonna be doing one thing and one thing only, killing Nazis.” Lt. Aldo Raine proudly says as he stands before his recruits. Raine speaks in a deep Tennessee accent and has an impossibly square jaw (one that only actor Brad Pitt can effectively achieve without lapsing into outright parody).
Quentin Taratino’s seventh film, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS starring Pitt as Raine, is violent. It contains the most realistic, in-your-face violence of any Tarantino film since Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blonde tortured a police officer by playfully removing his ear in 1992’s RESERVOIR DOGS. Violence, both comic and realistic, plays an integral supporting role in all of Tarantino’s movies. But the dance that the master auteur often performs dangling on the edge of good taste is precarious.
“We will be cruel to the German, and through our cruelty they will know who we are…” Raine continues passionately. “They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us.”
Raine’s men remain perfectly poised in a straight line before him. Sqt. Donnie Donowitz (played by a scary Eli Roth), standing apart from the line, flashes a wicked grin.
Donowitz will later be nicknamed the “The Bear Jew,” a baseball bat wielding killer of Nazi soldiers. Donowitz has possibly the film’s best scene, which is, of course, one of the most violent.
“And the German will not be able to help themselves from imagining the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands and our boot heels and the edge of our knives.” Raine himself is getting excited.
His voice gets louder as he continues.
“And the German will be sickened by us…
“The German will talk about us…
“And the German will fear us…”
Raine’s next line is most telling. He’s yelling here.
“Nazi ain’t got no humanity, they need to be DE-STROYED!”
It is the way he says ‘destroyed’ in that almost sweet Southern drawl that sells it. And in Lt. Aldo Raine, Tarantino has created another character born to do violent things, bad things depending on how you look at it. But this time the violence is directed toward an easy target—Nazis. And Hitler himself isn’t safe. History be damned!
But regardless who is on the receiving end, the more violent Tarantino’s films get, the more we tend to like them. And we should have seen this coming, Tarantino himself warned us of his almost sadomasochistic bent in RESERVOIR DOGS. Warning: These next quotes contain adult language.
“Then one day she meets this John Holmes motherf----- and it's like, whoa baby, I mean this cat is like Charles Bronson in the GREAT ESCAPE, he's digging tunnels. Now, she's gettin' the serious d--- action and she's feeling something she ain't felt since forever. Pain. Pain.” That’s Tarantino delivering the lines playing Mr. Brown in RESERVOIR DOGS. He’s engaged in some macho talk over coffee at a diner. You know, this is where Mr. Pink refuses to tip.
Mr. Brown happily continues his explanation of the meaning of Madonna’s pop hit LIKE A VIRGIN.
“It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt her, you know, her p---- should be Bubble Yum by now, but when this cat f---- her, it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see the pain is reminding a f--- machine what it once was like to be a virgin. Hence, 'Like a Virgin.’”
Such an exchange illustrates our relationship with Tarantino’s violent material. Even though he assaults us with bloodletting, we like it, sometimes at its most bloody. But with INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS Tarantino is messing with history, and in doing so, he’s walking a fine line.
Of course, the movie takes the spaghetti western approach that Tarantino has called one with “World War II iconography.” But in his zeal to produce an entertaining cinematic gem, the ‘macaroni combat’ handling of such serious subject matter has the effect of limiting the emotional connection BASTERDS has with the viewer. This film certainly isn’t SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, nor does it try to be.
Even with a running time of more than 2 and a half hours, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS zips along. And a large number of characters drop in and out leaving an impression but not with the same impact as Tarantino’s Oscar winning ensemble PULP FICTION. And where that film may have played fast and loose with reality, it did not conflict with actual events themselves. This leaves BASTERDS in alien territory and no doubt branding the movie Tarantino’s DR. STRANGELOVE.
But the violence infused with comedy is Tarantino’s masterstroke. And the comedy is derived from his uncanny ability to combine graphic visuals with witty and quotable dialogue. Compare the relatively humorless and not quote worthy WWII actioner VALKYRIE. Most viewers will find BASTERDS much more entertaining with Tarantino’s film the more violent and more expositive of the two.
But as the blood spews and the body count rises, viewers might be embarrassed by taking joy in such ugly and even mean-spirited material. Still, Tarantino makes it work as he has before. Consider the humor he was able to evoke from the accident in back seat of that car in PULP FICTION.
While engaged in a spirited conversation with Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), Vincent (John Travolta) accidentally fires his gun into the back seat. The window and most of car goes red with blood.
“Whoa!” Vincent says shocked. Blood drips from his hands.
“What the f---'s happening, man?” Asks Jules, driving, as blood drips from him as well.
“Ah, shit man!”
“Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face.”
“Why the fuck did you do that?” Jules asks incredulously.
“Well, I didn't mean to do it, it was an accident!”
Jules is disgusted.
“Oh man I've seen some crazy ass sh-- in my time...”
Vincent interrupts Jules.
“Chill out, man. I told you it was an accident. You probably went over a bump or something.”
“Hey, the car didn't hit no motherf---ing bump.”
“Hey, look man, I didn't mean to shoot the son of a b----. The gun went off. I don't know why.”
“Well look at this f---ing mess, man. We're on a city street in broad daylight here!”
“I don't believe it.”
“Well believe it now, motherf-----! We gotta get this car off the road! You know cops tend to notice sh-- like you're driving a car drenched in f---ing blood.”
Audiences noticed all that blood too, but they excused it and laughed. Maybe our society is just desensitized to the level of violence on display in that scene or they look at it as comic violence. But whether or not the blood-letting is taken as metaphorical matters little, Tarantino had figured out how to paint his canvas with the red stuff and call it art.
But what does it all mean?
Ordell Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Tarantino’s excellent 1997 film JACKIE BROWN, rests his head on his arm and closes his eyes. He’s thinking. The wheels are turning, and the camera just sits there. After a few moments of silence, Ordell has the answer, the light bulb has appeared.
“It’s Jackie Brown!” He exclaims.
Many viewers may not concern themselves with the deeper importance associated with Tarantino’s work. Are the films meant as some sort of cautionary tales like the film noir movies of yesteryear? Certainly his work to date, even the less successful Grindhouse entry DEATH PROOF, could be justified as exactly that—an entertaining and unyielding examination of resistance to temptation and the consequences of giving into it. But redemption is not usually part of the equation in Tarantino’s movies, where good guys are often hard to find. And the bad guys are the ones we like the most, shades of gray abound. That’s why INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is such a unique movie in the Tarantino mythology; it’s got some heroes.
In Tarantino’s 2003 film KILL BILL VOL. 1, after a furious fight between The Bride (Uma Thurman) and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), Green’s four-year-old daughter arrives home from school. As the bus pulls up outside, the two dangerous women stand knives drawn before a large bay window in the remains of Green’s living room, now wasted by the fight. The little girl enters the home and a temporary truce is made.
But later in Green’s brightly pastel painted kitchen a box of cereal explodes from the concussion of a handgun hidden therein. The bullet misses The Bride, who skillfully uses her blade to dispatch Green—a knife wound to the chest takes Green’s life. As The Bride retrieves her weapon from Green’s deathly still body, she becomes aware that the four-year-old is standing behind her.
“It was not my intention to do this in front of you.” The Bride says coldly. “For that I'm sorry.” A dishtowel is employed to wipe Green’s blood from The Bride’s blade.
The Bride continues as she cleans her weapon.
“But you can take my word for it, your mother had it comin’.” The Bride says looking over her shoulder, her back to the child.
The Bride turns to face the little one. We hear the innocent crunching sound of cereal between The Bride’s feet and the linoleum flooring of the kitchen.
“When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting.” Again The Bride is cold, methodical, she’s not sorry for what she’s done, at least, not yet.
And she’ll be waiting indeed. The consequences of The Bride’s dark acts have left a child motherless and maybe even given life to another hell-bent assassin seeking vengeance. Such is the way of the assassin, the moral hinted at earlier as Green tried to reason The Bride out of taking her revenge. There is no end to the violence, the more of it, the more of it.
And this theme is carried forward by the filmmaker, crudely handled in DEATH PROOF, and now maturely fashioned into a revisionist World War II fantasy. Perhaps no other character in Tarantino’s movies to date understands the consequences of the violent path more than INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS’ Col. Hans Landa (a perfect Christoph Waltz). Dubbed “the Jew Hunter” by his enemies, Landa is as intelligent and charming as he is deadly and diabolical. And the fact that this character might not be too far removed from an actual NAZI officer makes the character even more chilling.
As Landa’s foil, Tarantino gives us Lt. Aldo Raines, a man hailing from the Smokey Mountains and claiming some Indian ancestry. Raines may be working for the Allies, but Tarantino makes him just as much a monster as Landa. He carries a large hunting knife and has his men take the scalps of the soldiers they kill. In one scene, Raines tortures a German movie actress who is the mastermind behind a plot to kill Hitler. In another scene, Raines lets loose the Bear Jew upon an extremely brave German officer. And the consequences of this bloody violent rampage cannot be easily justified, death begets more and more death. Tarantino smartly understands that not all German soldiers are party to the unspeakable acts of the Führer. And if we cheer as Raines carves a Swastika into the forehead of a German soldier, maybe that is more telling of our own personal lust for blood than of the moral rightness of our intentions.
Landa, the anit-hero of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, prides himself on his ability to empathize with those he’s charged with finding. And whether it be his enormous intellect or his insatiable ego, he takes time to explain himself in a way that can only be called “classic” in execution.
Following a conversation with a French dairy farmer and sharing a glass of his milk in the farmer’s cozy farmhouse. Landa explains how he’s able to perform his job, that of the Jew Hunter, so exquisitely.
“Now if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast, it would be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk. But if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with a beast, it would be that of the rat. If a rat were to walk in here right now as I'm talking, would you treat it to a saucer of your delicious milk?” Landa asks.
“Probably not.” Answers the farmer.
“I didn't think so. You don't like them. You don't really know why you don't like them. All you know is you find them repulsive. Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews. Where does the hawk look? He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere he would hide, but there's so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide. However, the reason the Führer's brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me. Because I'm aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.”
Through all the blood and clever dialogue, respect for human dignity is underneath Tarantino’s work. It might be Jackie Brown asking Max Cherry to take her to a dimly lit bar because it looks as though she’s just gotten out of jail. Or the awkward truce Marsellus Wallace brokers with Butch Coolidge following their emasculating joint encounter in that awful basement. One’s ability to empathize with another human being, especially during those times a fellow traveler is at a low point, sets us apart and makes us unique. Sometimes there are no good guys, just shades in between.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS opens on Friday.
