There's a Film in the Percolator : Inglourious Basterds

Ben Ostroff

Inglourious Basterds presents Quentin Tarantino’s vision of a World War II film. Tarantino presents the audience with a revisionist history where a group of American Jews infiltrates Europe and make Nazis pay for the murder committed on six million of their people.

At first the film seems like a catharsis for the Jewish people. The audience looks on as the Inglourious Basterds, torture and beat helpless Nazis. Early on in the film, when the audience first meets the Basterds, Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of the group, tells some Nazis they are about to beat that “Watching Donnie [the most feared Basterd] beat Nazis is the closest we ever come to the movies.” As Donnie, or as the Nazis call him, the Bear Jew, continually hits a Nazi with a baseball bat, the rest of the Basterds cheer and laugh on. By invoking “the movies” Tarantino encourages the audience to act like the group of Basterds, and applaud the Bear Jew and the rest of the Basterds while they terrorize German occupied Europe.

But Tarantino turns his film into a debate on the morality of all killings through the introduction of the German side of the conflict. The Basterds’ plot to end the war and kill off the Big Three of the Third Reich (Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Goring) revolves around a Nazi propaganda film première. Goebbels’ film, titled Nation’s Pride, documents the “heroics” of a young German soldier who killed hundreds of Americans over a three-day period. The Germans think that the film is just what they need to turn around the spirits about the war, thus the appearance of Hitler at the premiere in Paris.

When Nation’s Pride begins, the Nazi audience waits patiently to watch the massacre of hundreds of Americans. When the killing begins, the audience begins to cheer—just as the audience of Inglourious Basterds is expected to when watching the Basterds kill Nazis. By only showing Nation’s Pride through the point of view of a member of the German audience—that is, in shots of the entire cinema, including the audience, and not just showing the film on the screen—Tarantino draws a comparison between the German audience members of Nation’s Pride, and the audience members watching Inglourious Basterds. By doing this, Tarantino draws an uncomfortable comparison of his audience members to the Nazis—including Hitler and Goebbels, who laugh and cheer as a German murders hundreds of Americans. But as soon as the Germans begin to enjoy the killings the theater is set on fire, and there is no escape. The audience of Inglourious Basterds is able to revel while watching as the audience of Nation’s Pride gets burned alive. Tarantino reinforces the fact that the audience should enjoy the death of the Nazis through the multiple shots of Hitler’s body being mutilated by bullets fired from the guns of the Basterds.

The final shot of the film makes the painful comparison between Nazis and the audience of the film concrete. This point-of-view shot, seen through the eyes of a Nazi General, is of Lt. Aldo Raine and another Basterd nicknamed, “The Little Man,” carving a swastika into the Nazi’s forehead. The audience briefly sees the knife go into the forehead of the Nazi, but by the final shot they are left to seeing through the General’s point-of-view, only hearing his screams, and Lt. Raine proudly proclaim, “I think this is my best yet.” Here Tarantino reminds the audience of the power of the cinema, where only he can control what the audience sees.  Quentin Tarantino uses Inglourious Basterds to play with the audience of his film. Tarantino asks his audience whether it is moral or not to enjoy the violence in any film, no matter whom the aggression is being inflicted upon.



 
Ben Ostroff immigrated to Pittsburgh about five years ago. He can be found wandering the streets of the East End wearing Montreal Canadiens paraphernalia.