Posted by kovacs
on 9/2/2009, 1:41 pm, in reply to "Re: Counterpoint"
but other times it just leads to a bigger fire. I'm well aware that there are many shades of grey in Basterds, but I think it's pretty clear that the movie ultimately condones the torture and ritual scarring of enemies.
There's a common thread through many Tarantino films, where he places characters in situations that "justify" sadistic violence. And with Inglorious Basterds he's tied the story to the Nazis, a group that essentially everybody can agree to hate. By doing so he's taking the dehumanization of torture victims to an entirely new level while also making them seem more real than, say, the victims in your average horror movie.
It's true that Shosanna's character was portrayed as a heroine - all the Jewish characters were portrayed as heroic - but there just was not a lot of depth to any of them either, and this is something I find problematic. The Jews in this movie were rather, well, Nazi-like.
Tarantino and many others would deflect my criticism by saying that the movie isn't really ABOUT World War II but instead his love of cinema. That's blatantly false and people wouldn't exhibit such bloodlust so comfortably while viewing the movie if the historical connection weren't there. How would we feel if, instead, this movie were about Chinese-Americans raping and bayoneting Japanese soldiers in 1937 Nanjing? Obviously this is not a perfect analogy, but you see what I'm getting at.
A lot of my thoughts about this were crytallized by reading reviews written by disgusted Jews, so I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I have plenty more to say about this movie, and Tarantino deserves credit for once again provoking thought. Still, a part of his personality comes through in his work that I find to be repugnant.
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