Movie and Television Reviews

Ingloroious Bastards* almost did something impossible: it almost made me root for Nazis. More on that later.

I'm sure I disagree with him about everything and although I don't know first hand, he seems like quite an unpleasant fellow; however, Quentin Tarantino is a genius and Inglorious Bastards ranks up there with his other great accomplishment, Pulp Fiction.

The story is every right-thinking, historically-minded person's fantasy: avoid a past disaster by killing one or a few of the individuals responsible for the event- in this case, Adolf Hitler and his gangster friends; and to mete justice on the evil- the same as above and everybody who follows them.

The American government recruits Jewish-Americans to go behind Nazi lines and terrorize the Germans. They do this successfully. The "Inglorious Bastards'" terrorist credentials in good order, IB changes gears and turns sharply into a Dirty Dozen, mission-behind-enemy-lines storyline. There are actually two plots to destroy the Nazi high command: the one by the IB and the other by an incognito Jewish theater owner.

Why genius?

First, the acting is phenomenally good. I've heard some criticize Brad Pitt's accent, but it sounded fine to me. Christoph Waltz as the Sherlock Holmes-meets-Heinrich Himmler SS Colonel, Hans Landa, is magnetic. It's fun to hear Teutonhottie Diane Kruger speak German.

Diane Kruger

Next, Quentin Tarantino forgoes cinema conventions (while holding true to Tarantino staples). Except for one soldier, Tarantino doesn't show us the recruitment or training of any IB (I learned that it will be in a prequel). The protagonists of the two anti-Hitler plots never meet. No character growth whatsoever. Yet, he makes it work.

IB is really a series of verbal confrontations, starting with Landa's knowing conversation with a French dairy farmer hiding Jews, and moving on to IBs' interrogation of a German patrol, a standoff in a basement bar, and several other magnificent tète-à-tètes (or as Brad Pitt's character, "Aldo the Apache" might say...ahh, never mind). One might think it odd that an action movie's most exciting scenes are spoken spars, but Tarantino's conversations have the feeling of action, as if you're watching them knife fight with words. Brilliant.

Risky, near-cheesy, distonal touches like super-imposed arrows pointing to Nazi hierarchy don't distract as much as delightfully surprise.

Politics/Message:

Quentin Tarantino is a nihilist.** I'm not. I don't think that all violence is absurd and I make distinctions between the proper conduct of war and barbarism. In one "chapter" of the movie, the IBs act like Nazis. It's not that they eschew protocol to satisfy their rage like some soldiers do in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers- they enjoy it and consider it part of their mission.

Remember when liberals would criticize some of America's tactics in the War on Terror as "stooping to the level of terrorists?" I actually agreed that the United States could disgrace itself in war; I just didn't think that water-boarding spies and terrorists, as opposed to uniformed soldiers, and bombing terrorists hiding near civilians, qualified. The IBs' behavior certainly does and I just can't get behind that no matter how just the cause.

I felt very uncomfortable when the audience I went to see the film with cheered IB cruelty; IB sadism almost made me sympathize with the Nazis (I was able to stop myself in time).

IB isn't obnoxious in this regard when it deals with the anti-Hitler plot instead of the IBs' mundane Nazi hunting.

* Yes, I know it's spelled, "Inglourious Basterds," but I'm an English teacher and I don't get the joke. Thanks for making my job harder, Quentin.

** Nobody's really a nihilist. It's impossible as it goes against our nature. Some come close, however.

P.S. Inglorious Bastards is a remake of an Italian move which I'm watching tonight.

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(you can look at the TV hostess for a while until the trailer)

"Where did the aliens come from?" is not the question that came to my mind as I watched District 9. I wondered, "Where did District 9 come from?" It has no obvious precedent in either plot or tone, which is why it's not only a great movie, but will be considered a brilliant burst of creativity in a comic book-dominated film age.

In District 9, an alien craft strands itself over the South African city of Johannesburg (itself an interesting choice and self-acknowledged as such in the narration). The government herds the aliens into a shanty town where they spend their life acquiring cat food from Nigerian gangsters, mostly; some "prawns" have larger plans.

The Multi-National United (MNU), a private company charged with taking care of the aliens, wants to relocate them to a newer facility farther away from Johannesburg. The president of MNU's chooses his son in law, the nerdy Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), to go into the camp and serve the aliens eviction notices. Wikus and the eviction notices are good examples of why District 9 is so hard to peg and, therefore, so interesting.

Wikus is a shy, naive, dedicated bureaucratic geek with a beautiful wife and a fierce brave streak. The eviction notices are an absurdity that straddle legal-illegal, just-injust moral zones.

The aliens themselves are a bundle of contradictions: disorganized primitive cat food eating insects capable of space travel and advanced weaponry.

Wikus finds and accidentally opens a contraband chemical in one of the shacks that slowly turns him into an alien. He collapses during a party, and his family takes him to the hospital and then to the MNU labs where they find that his DNA has been sufficiently altered to allow him to use alien weapons, a very valuable modification.

Wikus escapes to District 9 where he discovers that the liquid was not developed as a biological weapon to turn humans into prawns as a human (including those in the audience) might suspect after witnessing its effects on humans, another keen misdirection by the writers.

Some reviewers have complained that the ending devolves into Transformers-style action. First, one shouldn't assume that action is inherently less artistically weighty than calm reflection. Second, I prefer good action that makes sense to contrived profundity. Third, any defect in Transformers isn't because of the action.

I liked the ending and the sappy post-climax.

One subtle moment of genius is when the aliens lose hope along with the chemical and momentarily resign themselves to the new shanty town.

I enjoyed the faux-documentary style of the first half of the movie. It's a refreshing way to tell the backstory; the director could have used the standard montage-and-voiceover (Lord of the Rings), voiceover alone (Bladerunner) or character dialogue. There's a smooth transition to a non-documentary style that might be studied by film students in the future.

Distric 9 inspired a rare attitude in me. As you know, I always side with humanity over aliens, no matter how good the aliens seem to be. I even wanted them to catch E.T. I admit to rooting for the aliens and soon-to-be aliens in this one, however.

Politics/Message:

Personal bravery, loyalty to family, and integrity are still at the core of a man's existence.

No religion. An interview with a clergy member during the documentary part may have been interesting...or maybe not. It's a whole can of worms.

I fully expected this to be a "wise alien race shaming humanity" sci-fi morality tale like the horrible (but reflective, see?) The Day The Earth Stood Still. Nope. The alien degeneracy isn't humanity's fault, although they didn't help them live a dignified life either. The bad guys are human, but I didn't understand District 9 as a blanket indictment. I saw the aliens as equal to humans.

Of the two main bad guys, one of them is arms dealing MNU. Nothing new there. The other one is a Nigerian gang. The Nigerians are cruel, avaricious, and superstitious. MNU is greedy and cruel, but more organized and less superstitious. MNU has blacks working for them, although none are scientists. Both sell arms. Some might call the contrast between the antagonists, "racist." Others might point out that the writers are drawing a equivalence between the two, saying that groups often have the same motivation even if one may appear more sophisticated.

The relationship between the humans and the aliens may be a metaphor for intra-human non-understanding, apartheid, or inequality in general, but if it is, it's not heavy-handed in any way.

Bureaucracy is silly.

For a creative political message, how about the effects of welfare policies on a group of people or, paternalism demoralizes a population. Indian reservations, Detroit, and Palestinian refugee camps come to mind.