This film starts with an an inglorious injustice, and ends with an equally inglorious resolution, The portayal of violence is most often Sado massochistic, the sado massohistic shots and roles rather simply characterised by low camera angles looking up at the towering agressors or vice versa etc, and enacted by very 2 dimensional charicatures, whos main ouvre seems to be a line in intimidatory bullying and flippancy toward the value of life, I guess thats a proper american portrayal though ?
The Nazi’s may as well be called the “Nastys” in this film, There are are hardly any redeeming characters to indentify with, not even the the escapee jew come sudden unexplained cinema entrepreneur whos moral devolution has resigned her to murder as the solution ?(even under the “nasty’s” interogation there wasnt a satisfactory explanation for her sudden fortune change ?, she may be jewish but plot wise, I dont think it was sensible to infer that she can acrue assets and capital that quickly) and the under-dialogued john Steinbeck-esqe black projectionist for the sake of it romance figure daubed marcel, Seemed to be added artificially to further serve and function as a tool purely to elicit plot revelation wise, the full extent of racist beliefs the nastys held, just to ram home to the viewers, the moral superiority, of the equally immoral murderers the “in-gori-ous ass terds” we the audience were supposed to be indentifying with.
The humour throughout was generally a failure, and seeemed greatly at odds with the setting of extreme violence.
why does humanity wish to class films like this as entertainment ? to me it is more like some kind of excremental mental noise rape, where the inequitys of all characters are unceesingly unredeeming. As per most overlauded tarantino tosh, his twisted imagination does everything to try and promote ugly violence as some form of art, and fails, for violence can never be art.
Brad pitts “hick halfbreed apache” is probably the most annoyingly badly affected accent, he has yet tried on, and he looked particuarly like he was lazily functioning on only half his cylinders in most scenes.
Sadly some of the best acting comes from the nastys themselves, with the jew hunter hans landa (played by Christoph Waltz) outclassing most of the other actors in this film, by such a factor as to make brad pitt look almost static by comparison.
The batter up scene is violent in a completely unredeeming way, and done in a way designed to irritate the senses, purely for titilation of the perverted masses that are now inured to, and unquestioningly accept this portayal and level of extreme violence, as an ordinary part of the mainstream media/moviegoing experience.
Each opposing characters life is portayed as a casually disposable comodity, due a false perception as the other to be subhuman on both sides, and violence a suitable tableau for one liners, and evil wit to be played out upon. At no point are any characters given the dignity of the finer human qualities or temporarily conflicted in their actions, ie all the germans killed are justified, within the moral framework of the film, by being unstintigly portrayed as idealogs to the last man. Which leads to very shallowly developed character roles, and leaves one very dissatisfied with the setup. The uber Juden portrayed amongst the bastards also seem rather pointless and historically absurd, Sadly none of the germans are portrayed perhaps as reluctant soldiers in an ill desired war, forced to play a part or die, no in this film they all are nazi zealots in love with the motherland, except for the jew hunter who sadly has to betray his character framework in a highly unrealistic manner, in order to provide the inept ending of the film, in which he entraps himself into the basterds hands for no particularly fathomable reason ?
Again another american film that follows this great tradition, of generating a false fictional portrayals of history, that the illterate viewers of the world might confuse for a possible actual history, U571 being a classic example of their muddying of the waters history, for the sake of shallow entertainment.
As with most tarantino films, some of the characters more personal social interplay dialogs are well observed, and is where most often the best acting, and humour is to be found, the jew hunter interviews and restaurant scenes par example.
The portrayal of hitler is singularly one dimensional in this film, if hes not ranting like a child and banging his fist on a table, hes liable to be revelling muahahahaha style, like a stereotypical bond villain at the sniper film.
The comic book spaghetti influence which is to be found in all tarantino films plays out at certain points but to ill effect very often as those these references are being played with unhappily here, The prototypical towering shots of the two jewish gunman machine gunning down, the stampeding cattle like portayal of the trapped nasty party members in the cinema auditorium, is comic in its aggression but also disturbingly brutalistic, the base way with which the people are shot and hitlers face is ground into mush with bullet fire, from a jewish gun toting face that can only be described as expressing an evil and inhumane relish, unsuitable for a protagonist hero, with whom the audience is supposed to approve of ? grates quite badly with me, possibly only being rescued, if it was an ironical allusion to the concept of ‘victim turned bully’ that zionist israel could be concluded to be … today.
In fact all of the american characters illustrated this film seem to be so flat and poorly acted, as to be testament perhaps that americans seem to self identify purposefully with a moral landscape as flat as a 1920’s flapper’s bustline. Consequently the viewer is drawn to identify with more fully developed nazi characterisations, and perhaps the english officer.
Mike myers smirkingly, barely contains his upper class officer character from diverging deeply into the comedic in an uncontrolled and accidental fashion, he must try harder to shake that facially amusing vibe, that is always slightly, knowingly smiling from behind his eyes, as this gives away to the auduence that he is not quite capable of being fully in character, as say perhaps a genuine english actor would have been at playing this same role, the failed churchill representation was also poorly handled, such that at first I thought there was a tramp/old man/specter at the feast, in the scene of the british officers deployment. But this in a way is part of the films problem in that it strikes a very awkward balance between its comedy elements and the extreme violence shown. In fact the films comedy is so weak, that one of the best lines is a minor character claiming to know … no italian. There is also a suspicion that the majority of the poorly written comedic lines were mistakenly placed on brad pitts shoulders for delivery, and he failed to deliver them to anywhere or anyone. To such an extent that the nastys come accross with some of the best comedic content.
As sadly is common in most tarantino’s films, this one seems to have lost its moral compass, yet not in a sophisticated way, but one designed to irritate the moral eye for the sake of attention.
But Quentin and his ilk is part of the generation that perceive of grand theft auto as an acceptable form of child entertainment, without the realisation that all concepts through their repitition, gain power and significance culturally, and this repitition whether in the form of psychopathic fantasy, inevitably can be taken as a type of culturally tacit approval of such forms, and the weak minded might even identify with and adapt for subconscious repurposing some of the poor moral framework shown within the film.
I Guess perhaps my psyche is to easily riled, but none the less, the excorcism here written was necessary to expunge the heap of bad noise the viewing of this film, wrote into my mind, verdict i wouldn’t bother watching this film whether a tarantino fan or not.