Watched this Saturday night on PPV TV. What a strange little movie. The first thing I wanted to know was how much truth there was to it. Not that much. There was a commando unit composed of Jews, but the scalpings and the carving of Nazi symbols didn't happen, or at least there is no evidence of such.
It's a war movie, but it spends most of it's time watching people interact in nominally civilized situations. Quentin throws in bits of brutality here and there, but there aren 't any really big battle scenes. But there is always an undercurrent of serious threat. The violence on the screen was like nothing compared to the overall violence of the war. I suspect some people might take offense at mutilating the dead, but I'm sorry, I don't care. If they need to be killed, kill them. You want to play with dead bodies? Be my guest. It's not like the previous tenant has any use for it. I suspect it might be one of those religious things.
What's with the Brad Pitt's accent? He sounded more like he was from Texas than from the Appalachia. Or was that scar on his neck supposed to have affected his voice? Or maybe I haven't heard anyone from the backwoods of Tennessee recently. Or maybe that's just Quentin being funny.
The theater must have been very strangely constructed to allow everyone to be locked in, but to still have access to all the places they got to. Oh, that's right, it's a fantasy.
Why would the Nazi "Jew Hunter" strangle the actress? That seemed totally out of character. Oh, that's right, he's insane, coldly, rationally, insane. I suppose being a Nazi could have that effect on some people. And why did he let the little girl escape? Insanity needs no further explanation. And shooting the Jews hiding under the floor of the farm house by shooting through the floor. What's with that? That's something that only happens in American shoot-em-up movies. Oh. Guess I answered that one.
I read somewhere once where Quentin's forte was the conversation: watching people up close while they are talking. That little bit of info gave me something to hang on to. There were several conversations in this movie, most of the them conducted with at least one of the participants under extreme stress. They were well done. I didn't see any way that the people in these situations could have handled things any differently than they did.
Some of the conversations were pretty good. The one where the "Jew Hunter" interviews the French farmer in his farmhouse was one. The farmer obviously doesn 't like the Nazi, but he is doing his level best not to betray his feelings, and to not give the Nazi the slightest reason to take offense. The Nazi manages to detect the truth of the situation. Skillfully done, both the interview and the portrayal of the whole scene.
Quentin (may I call you Quentin?) uses music like nobody else. Nancy Sinatra's rendition of "Bang, Bang" (my baby shot me down) at the opening of Kill Bill blew me away. I was so impressed I bought the soundtrack and played it daily for probably a year. The music in this movie didn't hit me quite as hard, but it did include David Bowie's "Cat People", which I really like, especially the bit about putting out fires with gasoline.
David Bowie - Cat People
From the Wikipedia article about the song:
In 2009, the track was used in another film, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Despite being anachronistic, the lyrics are related to the plot, occurring when a character is preparing to commit arson in order to put out the "fire" of Nazi rule; the character has also been putting out the "fire" of her hatred of the Nazis with "gasoline" ever since her family's murder at their hands. The lyrics also mention "one thousand years", and the song appears in the film not long after several characters drink a toast to the "Thousand Year Reich".
There is one scene where the heroine is putting on makeup to get ready for the big night and in that scene she looks just like Uma Thurman. Quentin got Uma's looks locked in his brain? I've no complaint, it was just a little spooky how much she looked like Uma.The heroine did show one moment of (female?) weakness, and it was fatal. Up till then she had been a trooper. What caused her to falter? Because she was a young woman? Or perhaps because she is human.
And why did they misspell bastards?
Note on Google: Blogger (a wholly owned subsidiary of Google) was down yesterday, so I used Google Doc's to compose this. Unfortunately, the cut & paste and word wrap functions are not what you would call world class. Words that were separated by a line break sometimes get run together when the line break falls in a different place. I found and fixed several places, but there may be some I missed.
Update December 2016 replaced video title bar with whole video frame. The old one didn't opened a new tab instead of just playing where it is.
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