Myths of Origin, Nationality and Cinephilia: an Analysis of
Inglourious Basterds, a Quentin Tarantino’s Movie.
Marina Soler Jorge
Universidade Federal de São Paulo
1. INTRODUCTION
Inglorious Basterds is a movie written and directed by North-American filmmaker
Quentin Tarantino and released in Cannes and all over the world in 2009. It tells the
two-plan history for killing Adolf Hitler and all the SS and SA leaders: the first is
developed by the “Basterds”, a bushwhacking guerrilla army composed by Jewish
soldiers led by lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt); the second plan is the work of
Shosanna, a Jewish French woman who had all her family killed by Colonel Hans
Landa (Christoph Waltz) and who is willing to burn her movie theatre with all the Nazis
inside.
We intend to discuss Inglorious Basterds in relation with myths of origin and cinephilia.
Our main task is to connect the question of nationalities with the love for the cinema.
Although Tarantino is known as an encyclopaedic filmmaker, who fills his movies with
a wide range of quotes, in Inglorious Basterds he surpasses the “cult movies” references
- exploitations and kung fu movies – and reaches the cinephilia as a higher degree of
cinema love. However, this love is not shown without consequences, as the audience
role is put in question.
2. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS AND MYTHS OF ORIGIN
Quentin Tarantino’s movie has divided critics mainly because its rewriting of history,
or, we can say, its demystifying feature that can be seem especially in its disrespect by
some “sacred” subjects. We should not make jokes about World War II and persecution
of Jews, some critics have said. On his blog, Jonathan Rosenbaum, for example, a critic
who is used to gruesome violence (is the author of Midnight Movies, with J.
Hobberman), called the film “deeply offensive as well as profoundly stupid” and
“morally akin to Holocaust denial.”
Although comedy movies had been made before regarding this subject (as The
Producers by Mel Brooks and La Vita è Bella by Roberto Benigni), Inglorious Basterds
has bothered some critics because its rewriting of History is undertaken partly by the
hands of tough Jewish people, who let behind their role of victim and start to torture,
kill and scalp the Nazis – which, by the way, is bloody funny for the audience. Killing
Hitler, killing Hitler by the hands of Jews who act more like suicide bombers than as
“civilized” people, and make fun of the violence in a “exploitation” way, was perhaps
too much for some movie writers. Inversion is the word, according to Newsweek critic
Daniel Mandelsohn. From his point of view, Tarantino has turned Jews into Nazis: “in
history, Nazis carved Stars of David into the chests of rabbis before killing them; here,
the ‘basterds’ carve swastikas into the foreheads of those victims whom they leave
alive” (Mandelson, 2009/13/08).
However, inversion is everywhere in Inglorious Basterds: not only Jews kill and torture
Nazis, but they also act as terrorists – what, at least since Durkheim, is a behavior
associated with mechanical solidarity societies, where the notion of individual is
supposedly absent. Some basterds and Shosanna lose their lives in order to kill the
Nazis, and this can be interpreted as a suicidal act, with all the unspoken consequences
regarding identity changes. Their lives are smaller than the “cause”. Aldo Raine, the
basterds’s lieutenant, called himself “the direct descendent of the mountain man Jim
Bridger”, which means that he “got a little Indian” in him. According to Raine, their
“battle plan will be that of an Apache resistance”, and so they will dismember and scalp
Nazis. Thus, Americans are acting like indigenous people, hunting and ambushing
Nazis in an “uncivilized” way. Therefore, inversions here are constructed in an even
more radical strategy than critics have suggested: European nations are saved by acts of
“savagery”, and so their rebirth, their re-origin, and the rescue of what we call
Civilization depends on those who behaves outside its limits.
We can argue that to say that Tarantino has turned Jews into Nazis is not really correct.
despite the suggested comparison between carving Stars of David and to carve
swastikas, “the Jews of Inglorious Basterds lack the systematic killing methods of the
Nazi war machine. The Nazis are not placed in concentration camps, nor killed en
masse in any gas chambers. Germans were not ripped from their homes nor forced to
live in ghettoes. They did not have their children taken from them and murdered”
(Rennet, 2009). That lack of systematic methods is a crucial difference.
Michael Rennet considers that the actions taken by the Jews are related to revenge – as
it was in Munique (Steven Spielberg) and Defiance (Edward Zwick). But I would argue
that, in Inglorious Basterds, revenge is not the question because the characters, even
Shosanna, are not moved mainly by personal motivations. Putting an end to WWII is
not an individual matter. What we see in Inglorious Basterds are individuals
dangerously committing their own lives (even Lieutnant Archie Hicox, a movie critic,
and Bridget von Hammersmack, an actress) to a bigger cause in an almost suicide
mission, which is not, we can say, very “Western”. If they succeed, the result won’t be a
personal revenge, but a new Europe freed from Nazism.
Moreover, carving swastikas has a purpose that surpasses torture and mutilation. As
Aldo Raine says, we cannot let Nazis to live unnoticed. In a Europe where we are
unable to identify, from physical characteristics, who was in each side of the war, we
must find a way to mark our convictions. Thus, what is at issue is the rebirth of a
Europe in which evil is not forgotten. The boundaries between nations can be narrowed,
but not the boundaries that separate Nazism from other beliefs.
3. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS AND CINEPHILIA
With Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino undertakes a unique relationship between cult
movies and cinephilia. At the same time that he recreates Europe History, he brings into
question the division between high and low art. While producing a myth for the
emergence of a new Europe freed from Hitler, Tarantino performs a new association
between exploitation and cinephilia. This association doesn’t go without a nation
discussion, since it is understood that exploitation cinema has to do with the United
States (as the Basterds) and cinephilia has to do with European cinema (and, above all,
with French critics and their love for cinema).
In fact, cinema is not a simple background for his plot. The cinema is directly linked to
the murder of Hitler – and this is not a metaphor. Almost all the characters work or
pretend to work in the movies. If, on the one hand, part of the critic has felt troubled by
the disrespect to History, on the other hand this declaration of love for cinema was very
well received.
The Europe that emerges from the end of the war, in Tarantino’s vision, has to be a
cinephile continent, where erudite mise-en-scène coexists with exploitation movies. Not
by chance, with its peculiar blending of tough guys, violence and impeccable frames,
the western spaghettis of Sergio Leone is the main model for this cinema. With an
overture that was celebrated as the best western spaghetti sequence ever, Tarantino pays
tribute to the realizateur who was able to connect the American genre with the
European mise-en-scène while addressing mass audience.