Posted by shaun
on 9/1/2009, 10:56 am, in reply to "Re: Counterpoint"
Message modified by user shaun 9/1/2009, 11:01 am
I don't think Landa portrayed himself with dignity - - he was an opportunistic snake who wanted nothing more than to have his cake and eat it too; the worst kind of slimeball imagineable--the sort to whom dignity itself is an alien concept. As for Landa's "mercy" of Shosanna playing into the demise of the Third Reich, well yes this certainly humanizes Landa and I think that is a good thing: the Nazis were, after all, human. Human enough so that I suspect a goodly percentage of them had begun to have second thoughts about the overall soundness of Hitler's campaign. I think this is one of the reasons Landa's character is so brilliantly shaped; he is not a cardboard-cutout villain. He schemed to find a way to save his own ass from getting hung at a War Tribunal, but ended up paying for his megalomania and coercion of his rank in the Waffen SS in a manner that can only be described as poetic justice. A beautifully rendered character, all too human. Of course the guy who the Bear Jew battered to death composed himself with dignity; Tarantino is not painting his villains with one brushstroke. What I find most rewarding about this movie, is how it sparks the need to question these matters. It forces this discussion to take place. And that is a good thing, from where I sit.
"Paranoia is a skill"
~...
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