"What does the Torah say about Tarantino?"

Damon W. Root | August 21, 2009

Early reviews of Quentin Tarantino's bloody new World War II movie Inglorious Basterds are looking pretty good, though The Wall Street Journal's Jordana Horn reports on some of the most interesting: the audience response from a private screening held at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage:

It's understandable that Mr. Weinstein, one of the heads of the Weinstein Company, which produced the film, was somewhat wary of the audience reaction to "Inglourious Basterds," out in theaters today. The film's central premise is revenge fantasy-one in which Jews, both American and European, wreak the vengeance upon Nazis. They are killed, scalped, burned and disfigured. And, to a certain extent, the participants revel in the violence of it all. Mr. Roth's character, not-so-affectionately nicknamed "The Bear Jew," beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat.

So how did it play? (Spoiler alert!)

Rita Lerner, whose mother was liberated from Dachau and whose father survived the war in Siberia, said that she was "unfortunately happy" to see the climactic theater burning scene during the screening. "With Hitler there, and all those high Nazi officials-how great would it have been?" she asked. "Maybe I would have had grandparents growing up, or other family. Not one minute did I feel sorry for them: It was well-deserved. When they locked the doors, I was hoping they wouldn't be able to get out." Her sister, Vivian Reisman, took it a step further: "I felt like Tarantino was a fellow Jew, just the way he made me feel so proud of the Basterds and the revenge against the Nazis. . . . He's a member of the tribe, as far as I'm concerned."...

"There's something in that gusto that's scary," Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, professor of Jewish Law at Fordham University, said to me about the premise of the film. "You like it too much."

Read the rest here. Jesse Walker on the politics of vigilante cinema here and here.

Comments

arg|8.21.09 @ 3:02PM|#

It's "Left Behind" for jews.

creech|8.21.09 @ 3:05PM|#

It is well that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it.

hmm|8.21.09 @ 3:06PM|#

It's like bashing evil right wing fascist militias!!!


I couldn't resist.

Meta4|8.21.09 @ 3:07PM|#

"What does the Torah say about Tarantino?"

Absolutely nothing.

|8.21.09 @ 3:25PM|#

"What does the Torah say about Tarantino?"

He's a mensch, but he should use the n-word less.


I get the impression from the ads that IB is less a darkly comedic revenge than Kill Bill 1 & 2. But that could be because they're pimping Brad Pitt's scene saying that "our job is to kill 'Naatzees'." Anyone seen it today or in preview? Lighter tone than Kill Bill?

Video of QT listing his favorite movies since 1992.

ed|8.21.09 @ 3:36PM|#

"There's something in that gusto that's scary," Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, professor of Jewish Law at Fordham University, said..."You like it too much."

Was he talking about the film or the Obama administration?

wayne|8.21.09 @ 4:21PM|#

I will admit that I like Tarentino's stuff, e.g. Pulp Fiction.

I am not planning to see IB, though. Bashing skulls with a baseball bat just makes me cringe.

|8.21.09 @ 4:32PM|#

I think it's a completely craven, cynical way to make an ultra-violent war movie full of gleeful killing and maiming, and pre-empt any criticisms by making the victims Nazis, who are safe to dehumanize.

|8.21.09 @ 4:35PM|#

I'm not really a fan of Tarantino. His stuff is usually a mixed bag, as far as I can tell.

I saw something where Brad Pitt took a big shot at Valkyrie. That amused me for some reason, even though I thought it was okay.

|8.21.09 @ 4:39PM|#

I think it's a completely craven, cynical way to make an ultra-violent war movie full of gleeful killing and maiming, and pre-empt any criticisms by making the victims Nazis, who are safe to dehumanize.

For that very reason, I plan to see it this weekend.

Plus, I have this inexplicable fondness for Brad Pitt vehicles, with only a few exceptions.

|8.21.09 @ 4:52PM|#

I have this inexplicable fondness for Brad Pitt vehicles

The first rule of Brad Pitt vehicles is you do not talk abut Brad Pitt vehicles.

The Gobbler|8.21.09 @ 4:55PM|#

"I think it's a completely craven, cynical way to make an ultra-violent war movie full of gleeful killing and maiming, and pre-empt any criticisms by making the victims Nazis, who are safe to dehumanize."

Tarantino has Goodwined his career.

The Gobbler|8.21.09 @ 4:56PM|#

"Plus, I have this inexplicable fondness for Brad Pitt vehicles, with only a few exceptions."

Great in "A River Runs Through It".

GILMORE|8.21.09 @ 5:21PM|#

"Plus, I have this inexplicable fondness for Brad Pitt vehicles,

Bow-chicka-bow-wow?

Geotpf|8.21.09 @ 5:32PM|#

wayne | August 21, 2009, 4:21pm | #

I will admit that I like Tarentino's stuff, e.g. Pulp Fiction.

I am not planning to see IB, though. Bashing skulls with a baseball bat just makes me cringe.

I haven't seen it (yet), but I bet the really gory stupid is just off screen, yet shot in a way that you FEEL IT. Pulp Fiction had a rather nasty man-on-man rape scene that was shot the same way-you didn't actually see anything, but...

|8.21.09 @ 5:44PM|#

QT has made a career out of upping the gratuitous stylized violence. I thought Pulp Fiction was brilliant, but I'm tiered of his one note. When you're reduced to beating up Nazis, you've run out of ideas.

|8.21.09 @ 5:49PM|#

Warren,

Not at all. He could do another film where Ukrainian peasants fantasize about beating up their Soviet overlords. Including Stalin.

|8.21.09 @ 6:05PM|#

The first rule of Brad Pitt vehicles is you do not talk abut Brad Pitt vehicles.

I just caught Fight Club on the satellite for the first time in years. I had forgotten what an excellent movie it is.

"Mayhem Project" would be an awesome name for a blog. Or a band. Or a video game.

|8.21.09 @ 6:16PM|#

Agree w Warren; gratuitous violence doesnt require lots of creativity.

|8.21.09 @ 10:40PM|#

Agree w Warren; gratuitous violence doesnt require lots of creativity.

There's gratuitous violence (BAYHEM!) and then there's gloriously presented gratuitous violence, set to a badass soundtrack.

There's also that dialogue thingy that QT does.

If I were childless with copious amounts of free time this weekend, it would be a double header of District 9 and Inglorious Basterds.

Mike H|8.21.09 @ 11:19PM|#

Could a move like this be made about the Japanese Imperial Army? While not as methodical or as well organized (in most cases) their bloodlust was the equal of anything Germany was capable of.

Is this some kind of cultural self loathing of the West's creative class?

And IMHO, there is only one Lee Marvin. The man fucking lived it

Mike H|8.21.09 @ 11:21PM|#

Hows about an Inglorious Bastards featuring the Soviets and Ukrainians?

Amakudari|8.21.09 @ 11:26PM|#

"Mayhem Project" would be an awesome name for a blog. Or a band. Or a video game.

Well, the authors of the best financial blog out there (IMO) use Fight Club pseudonyms:
http://www.zerohedge.com

They get the nihilism right. (And, to nit-pick, it's "Project Mayhem" and I'm sure tons of bands and blogs have picked up on it.)

At their best, both Pitt and Tarantino produce some damn good stuff, so I'll be looking forward to it.

Amakudari|8.21.09 @ 11:30PM|#

Could a move like this be made about the Japanese Imperial Army? While not as methodical or as well organized (in most cases) their bloodlust was the equal of anything Germany was capable of.

Is this some kind of cultural self loathing of the West's creative class?

No, it's probably more that the Japanese didn't affect Westerners like the Nazis did. Plenty of movies have been made about Pearl Harbor and our island-hopping adventures.

And I think history here is more sensitive. We rounded the Japanese up in internment camps, firebombed civilians and nuked two major cities. I don't think we're revisiting the Pacific theater with a vengeance any time soon.

B|8.22.09 @ 1:46AM|#

I thought it was an awesome movie. One of the most entertaining I have seen in a long time. Furthermore, the acting performance of the gentleman who played SS Colonel Hans Landa was absolutely fucking amazing.

As for making a movie about the Japanese, please spare us the bullshit how the Japanese were the fucking victims in WWII.

Lamarck\'s Giraffe|8.22.09 @ 5:03AM|#

The movie itself didn't bother me so much (although I thought it was plodding at times) as the reaction from the audience in the theater I was in. The second part of the movie (it is literally broken up, with title screens) involved some real brutal scenes of torture of what were essentially German POWs. Many people around me cheered and laugh throughout the movie. Perhaps that was Tarantino's intent, but I was... disquieted. The reactions of the people around me made it easy to see how the American public (and probably any nationality) so easily goes along with horrible actions perpetrated in our names. We are told that the enemy are "bad guys" so it is OK. In my book there is a difference between sending special forces in to assassinate the Third Reich hierarchy and using those same men as a sort of terror squad that torture and kill foot soldiers that may or may not understand the larger implications of what they are doing.

Nazi's are a safe group to hate and pretend they are more monster than human. We are allowed to laugh and whoop with when one get his brains beaten in with a baseball bat, by a Jewish soldier.

Sure, its just a movie, but I couldn't help but wonder if anyone else in the crowd was thinking about our own collective actions. American expansionism and imperialism, Trail of Tears and assorted Indian actions, the Mexican war, the Spanish-American war, Japanese internment, My Lai, global War on Drugs, Abu Ghraib, rendition, Guantanamo, etc.

Many of these actions are allowed to happen because we assume we are the "good guys" and our enemies are all nasty Muslims or Nazis who had it coming. I don't know if that was Tarantino's intent, but the majority of the people in the theater I was in saw seemed to see it that way.

Eric Sundwall|8.22.09 @ 8:26AM|#

I'd like to see a movie about post war Japan and how the Japanese learned baseball from American GI's . . .

Jordana|8.22.09 @ 12:06PM|#

Thanks for the shout-out. I did an interview with Tarantino where I asked him some of the same questions being addressed in the comments; you can read it here at

http://www.forward.com/articles/112638/

LarryA|8.22.09 @ 12:14PM|#

Rita Lerner, whose mother was liberated from Dachau and whose father survived the war in Siberia, said that she was "unfortunately happy" to see the climactic theater burning scene during the screening.
"There's something in that gusto that's scary," Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, professor of Jewish Law at Fordham University, said..."You like it too much."

This sounds like American Jewish pacifism speaking. Although it's somewhat of a stereotype, there is among U.S. Jews, particularly of the liberal/intellectual variety, a lot of support for the "force is never necessary because you can reason with your opponents" theory. This shows all the way from international opposition to war to support for individual gun control. If you just make yourself helpless enough, bullies will become your friend.

To such folks feeling good about winning for a change, even in reel life, is a suspect emotion.

What interests me is that Inglorious Bastards comes on the heels of last year's Defiance, the historical about Jews who did fight back against the Nazis. [SPOILER] In real life the Bielski brothers succeeded in saving thousands more Jews than the rabbis who scoffed at the idea the holocaust was happening, and who advocated huddling in the ghettos and "getting along."

I await next year's Silver Screen offerings, to see if coincidence will turn into a trend.

|8.22.09 @ 1:02PM|#

I think it's a completely craven, cynical way to make an ultra-violent war movie full of gleeful killing and maiming, and pre-empt any criticisms by making the victims Nazis, who are safe to dehumanize.

Maybe he's trying to make some oblique point about Nazis being humans too. Or dehumanization of the enemy in general.

There's been a recent trend of "good nazi" movies. Or movies featuing the occational good Nazi. Valkyrie, Zwartzboek, Downfall.

Zwartzboek involved some fairly over-the-top scenes of violence enacted by the the "resistance" against people suspected of being Nazi symapthzers. It was rather daring to cast them in a negative light, but it made the point pretty effectively.

Possibly Tarantino has seen some of these films and is following the trend. But maybe I'm crediting him with too much intellectual accumen.

Tim Cavanaugh|8.23.09 @ 10:25AM|#

If you're going to make a " revenge fantasy in which Jews wreak vengeance upon Nazis," shouldn't the Basterds be led by Saul Rubinek or Adam Goldberg or some other actor who doesn't look like a Madison Grant Nordic? This is like Shecky Greene's joke: "I was supposed to play Moses in The Ten Commandments, but they said I looked too Jewish."

Mad Max|8.23.09 @ 8:35PM|#

For Tarantino's next project, how about a biopic about a religious leader who, according to one reliable estimate, saved between the lives of between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews from the Holocaust?

Joy|8.24.09 @ 1:54PM|#

Tarentino is very twisted, but that is what makes him famous.

|8.24.09 @ 2:36PM|#

Were the "Basterds" in the '70s film that was one of Tarantino's inspirations led by a southern gentile? Perhaps that's the reason for the Pitt casting.

I'm with Lamarck's Giraffe and others above -- Nazi villains give a director a blank check for brutality. Forget burning Hitler and Goebbels at the end -- no one should seriously be engaging in handwringing over that -- but set all the scenes of gleeful brutalization of POWs in any other setting, like US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, and one can only imagine the outcry over this film.