But in the meantime, I have a few observations:
* The geography of critical reaction is puzzling. Reviews from the United States were good overall, with the notable exceptions of the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the New Yorker and Slate.
Yet in England, it was hard to find a good review. The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, the Telegraph are all bad reviews. The Times, for example:
"When we finally get to it (Tarantino has never been one to cut to the chase when he can masturbate through endless pages of smarty-pants dialogue) , the film’s climax proves to be its downfall."This surprises me, as I hate most other cultural movements in England at the moment, but at least their critics seem well and truly "over" Tarantino.
I thought the explanation may be that the closer you get geographically to the reality of the War, the more offensive the film may look. But in Germany, the reviews are apparently enthusiastic. Oh well, it's not as if German sensibilities were ever easy to comprehend. I suspect that giggling about the moustache alone would have prevented Hitler's rise to power in any other European country.
In Australia, it's all positive reviews as far as the eye can see. You would have thought, given our cultural position straddled somewhere between the United States and England, there would be some negative review somewhere, but there isn't, as far as I can tell. Odd.
* The fans are a worry: those sophisticates who aren't worried about the empty rattling sound made by the space in his head where Tarantino's maturity should reside should at least worry about the types of fanboy they are probably sitting next to in the cinema. I base this on the ridiculously aggressive response you see in comments whenever there is a bad Tarantino review. The worst ones I saw on Rottentomatoes, referring to a desire that the reviewer's wife be raped, have (I think) now been deleted. Let's face it, a lot of his fans get off on the violence.
Full marks to Kenneth Turan at LA Times who wrote:
"As it goes on and on, 'Inglorious Basterds' feels increasingly like the kind of hollow, fanboyish cinema that is all the rage these days.""Hollow" seems the perfect word when talking about Tarantino.
* What is it with the Left and movie violence now? Back in the 1960's and 1970's, it seemed that it was primarily the Left that used to disdain unnecessarily graphic movie violence. Revenge and vigilante movies were (correctly I think) seen as an angry right wing phenomena, at a time in which there were still identifiable right wingers working in Hollywood.
Now, virtually all reviewers, and all of Hollywood, come across as Left wing, yet they have embraced a nerdy director with a revenge and violence obsession. They have also, more generally, made their peace with graphic violence and gore, no matter what the context or reason for for it. Even apart from Tarantino, think of the Saw movies and the other examples of an especially grotesque and sadistic slasher genre that has come into its own in the last 10 years.
Yet, as with the extensive amount of real sex in Shortbus, having seen something once or twice seems to mean critics - even those who presumably might be somewhat middle of the road in their politics - won't question the morality or wisdom of what's on the screen anymore. The only issue you will sometimes seen raised is the feminist aspect of a story. A movie perceived as anti-feminist will be still be in for an ideological hiding, but that's about the extent that lefties worry about movie morality now.
Well, that's just not right. Sure, some critics take Tarantino to task for his morally vacuous use of violence, but it's damn few, and to Lefty luvvies like David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz it doesn't matter a hoot.
Grow some moral testicles again, Lefties, and make a call on the morality or social effect of what you are watching on the screen for a change.
Well I enjoyed it. The scripting and plotting was fairly clever even though Tarantino's characters do have a habit of talking - and talking and talking and talking and talking - in the process turning a simple one minute scene into a complex 15 minute one.
ReplyDeleteI thought the graphic violence was fairly understandable in the historical context - ie, it's about a bunch of soldiers in the second world war! Violence is definitely going to feature heavily in this sort of context.
That said the climax was so gut wrenchingly hideously violent as to shock almost anyone, though it still makes sense (the blitz, the bombing of Dresden, and the dropping of the A Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all comparable acts of violence, and it's no coincidence that they happened in the 2nd World War.)
I'd say it's Tarantino's best flick since Pulp Fiction. And I don't think you liked that one either, so maybe to you that isn't saying much!
There's probably a lot that can and has been said pro- and anti- the subject of cinematic violence, though in Tarantino's case I think he always - or very often underscores his violence with subtle points about character, clever scripting, etc - he does criticise the violence in his movies.
ReplyDeleteSo, for instance, in Pulp Fiction the characters - largely hoods, criminals, retired soldiers, and boxers - quibble about small moral offences, manners, and relationships while killing/beating up/shooting others. So his characters are both hypocritical and also self-deceiving. I think that's a good and well made point.
That's a really interesting point you make about the left's reaction to violence in cinemas over time.
ReplyDeleteIf you're right, then the old school left must have, at the same time, a) hated cinema violence and b) been in love with the Marxist idea of revolution, and defensive of dictators like Stalin, Mao, etc.
And the new left a) love cinema violence b) hate the military, and get up in arms at any war that takes place.
Maybe it's just a case of swings and roundabouts.
Oh Good Lord, Tim, I have to hereby sack you from your previous crucial role as Poet Laureate during my Coronation procession on robot mule up the Sydney Opera House. (I hope you had remembered that.)
ReplyDeleteI feel confident that any moral ambiguity of violence in his movies is more in the mind of the viewer than the director. A similar question has been raised by a couple of reviewers about IB: is the fact that he has the Jewish "basterds" commit what would clearly be war crimes actually mean he is raising moral questions about who the audience is prepared to root for?
Nice theory, but it doesn't tie up with what Tarantano (I refuse to explain the mis-spelling) has been saying himself. It's been all quite the opposite - this movie is meant to be antidote to the portrayal of WW2 Jews as victims - their actions are about empowerment. Read the article in The Atlantic I linked to in the previous post if you don't believe me.
As I am sure I have said before - even in making a movie like Pulp Fiction which has bad things happening to bad people, and hence should (in theory) not encourage a viewer to imitate its protagonists, it has, due to its glossy veneer of "cool," probably had the opposite effect. Hence, Phillip Adams said that his mates working with the drug addled of Sydney blamed Pulp Fiction for an upsurge in heroin use. Who knows if that is verifiable or not, but it seems plausible to me because it's what I thought while watching the movie.
So all this talk about the audience being able to distinguish make-believe violence from real worries me in a similar way. I'll give you another example - the Matrix gave gun blazing dudes in black overcoats a very cool image, which, funnily enough, was the way a couple of high school kids dressed as they blew away their school a few years later.
Again, it was all a fantasy, sure, but (I know I am giving myself a lot of credit here, but it's true) I did worry about the cachet of "cool" that movie gave gratuitous violence too.
Now, we all know that there are very, very few individuals who are going to imitate movie violence. It would also fatuous to suggest that all movie violence should stop if there is ever a risk that even one person will imitate it. I allow for depiction of violence as part of entertainment, and not even "serious" entertainment. Yet the part of the reason I do is because I reckon (and I know, this is just me boosting my own judgement) you can see that there is no risk at all that anyone will (for example) rip out a playmate's beating heart as in Temple of Doom, or that someone will be inspired to kill by (say) Schindlers List.
But - I still say that there are reasonable grounds for criticising movie violence (or drug taking) when portrayed in as "cool" and morally vacuous a fashion as Tarantino does.
Steve
ReplyDeleteYou lucidly lay out a fundamental ethical issue which to me is of no less than central to our civilisation.
The wide acceptance of this sort of violence for sensation in films is to me clear evidence of nothing less than a type of moral numbing, in a way well illustrated by the general tone of the previous repsonses to your post.
The fact that the churches have not been on this years ago is sadly more evidence of their decline to ethical irrelevance.
What you have written is in fact the first time I have seen the issue raised, and , to me, you nail it.
Congratulations
But - I still say that there are reasonable grounds for criticising movie violence (or drug taking) when portrayed in as "cool" and morally vacuous a fashion as Tarantino does.
ReplyDeleteWell I think your criticism sounds reasonable! The only point at which I might differ from you substantially is in saying that I think Tarantino is a good director.
'I feel confident that any moral ambiguity of violence in his movies is more in the mind of the viewer than the director. A similar question has been raised by a couple of reviewers about IB: is the fact that he has the Jewish "basterds" commit what would clearly be war crimes actually mean he is raising moral questions about who the audience is prepared to root for?
.... this movie is meant to be antidote to the portrayal of WW2 Jews as victims - their actions are about empowerment.'
I never said there was a moral ambiguity of violence in the film. The ambiguity does exist, to a certain extent, in the portrait of the characters. I agree that Tarantino does seem to want to 'empower' American Jews in this film. The alternative, that Tarantino was 'raising moral questions about who the audience is prepared to root for', would be more offensive in my book - ie, what film director in their right mind would advocate for the Nazis? Tarantino rightly doesn't make the mistake of rewriting the history of WWII in this way.
PS There is a legitimate complaint against Tarantino the public person, as opposed to Tarantino the filmmaker - he has quite a flamboyant personality, and is a shameless self-promoter (perhaps in Hollywood you have to be.) But there's often a difference between the publicity he sends out about his own films, and the message inherent in the films themselves. It's true to say that he does give a veneer of 'cool' to violence in some of his movies. This probably has an ironic point (like the use of light popular-romantic music in Dr Strangeglove) but it can be legitimately criticised. As you so eloquently do.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: you give me too much credit, I think, in that if you read the comments threads after some negative Tarantino reviews or articles, you do learn that a lot of people are pretty appalled by his movies. See the forum on Slate after Dana Steven's negative review, for example:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/nrmtyd
My concern is that the critics seem to generally think it is now never appropriate to include an assessment of violence or sex in a movie in terms of its morality, value or effect on the audience. Some take the attitude "well, Tarantino violence is not my cup of tea, but the movie still has many good points", and that kind of namby-pamby failure to call a spade a spade annoys me too.
And you are right about the Churches and their wimpish attitude to movies now. The US Congress of Catholic Bishops movie review site says of IB:
"Inglourious Basterds" (Weinstein/Universal) is a provocative World War II fantasy requiring careful moral assessment from viewers well-educated in Catholic teaching and able to withstand its occasional episodes of graphic bloodletting. In between those incidents, writer-director Quentin Tarentino weaves a suspenseful, though somewhat lurid, alternate history of a tragic epoch...
the American band's systematic brutality toward low-ranking enemy soldiers, especially prisoners, is far less easily justified, and can only be accepted within a genre far removed from reality and on the supposition that all Teutonic combatants were, to some degree at least, Holocaust enablers."
What a wimp out of a review. I can't see what's wrong with a bunch of Bishops calling out the clear moral deficiency rather than just suggesting "well, I suppose you can excuse it if you allow that it is a fantasy in which all German soldiers did deserve having their heads beaten with a baseball bat".
That review can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/nug6lj