Martin C. Winer

Inglourious Basterds : Bastardizing Holocaust Remembrance Martin C. Winer A comedy about nothing may be quite clever but a Holocaust movie about nothing is irresponsible at best.  For many years after the Holocaust, the film world observed a mourning period not even willing to touch the topic.  Then a spate of films came out seeking to portray with the utmost realism the horrors that had occurred.  The screenwriters did not use their imaginations in constructing the screenplays since Nazi imagination was as evil as it was complete.  Screenwriters dedicated themselves instead to rendering a faithful reproduction of those tragic events. But now it seems as though enough time has passed such that the Holocaust can serve as comic foil to wrap and serve a helping of Quentin Tarentino gratuituous violence.  In Tarantino’s earlier works like Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, violence was a backdrop against which he nourished his viewers with rich character development.  Many remember the character of Max Cherry, a Bail Bondsman who discovered the Delfonics and his youth in a passing romance with Jackie Brown.  Tarantino’s unique gift is in providing full Technicolor hues to seemingly ordinary characters.  In this sense, Inglourious Basterds fails as a Tarantino movie long before it fails as a movie dealing with the Holocaust. The characters of this film are two dimensional and black and white.  Despite ample opportunity to shed light on the characters, the closest Tarantino comes is in his depiction of Col. Landa who is a master rat in a world of rats.  The closest Tarantino comes to any sort of message is delivered through Landa who reports that a squirrel and a rat are both very similar rodents, yet only the rat is detested.  By extension the reason Tarantino provides that the Jews have been so heavily targeted is a childish “Just So” story.  Any search for a broader meaning to the film will fall as flat as the remaining characters. Beyond failed character development this film often offers mere caricatures.  Brad Pitt’s performance was notably poor in that he offers only a hyperbolic rendition of an American of southern descent with an obnoxious accent.  The ‘Basterds’ – a troupe of American Jewish soldiers out to scalp Nazis – are equally hollow depictions of people bent on revenge.  Tarantino shines at bringing out characters in films set in California.  But when it comes to developing characters in war torn Europe, it seems that he has bitten off more than he can chew. The ending of the film is as disappointing as the character development.  Tarantino offers an alternate ending to World War II where the Nazis are brought down by a cunning act of espionage and subterfuge.  Anyone with the slightest sense of history will watch with raised eyebrows comparing this with the real ending of over 60 million people dead before Hitler and his Reich met its end.  To end Hitler with the flick of Tarantino’s pen, even though this be a work of fiction, seems irreverent of a painful history. The ultimate concern of such a film is brought out in a line from the very film itself:  “Goebbels considers the films he’s making to be the beginning of the new era… an alternative to … the German-Jewish intellectual cinema of the 20’s.”  If Tarantino has decided for himself that it’s time to move beyond the painful and historically correct depictions of Holocaust films past, and that instead the Holocaust can be used as a mere backdrop for contemporary drama, what era in film making will this usher in?