And fuck Tarantino fanboys, too.
I meant to write a full review after I calmed down some anyway, but the anon who commented on the other post was pretty much a perfect springboard:
You tell them, girl! I mean, who cares if the movie is extremely well-shot and acted! If I feel inconfortable watching it it must be a bad movie! Fuck art! Fuck quality! Fuck expression! I want politically correct, preachy Oscar-bait films with a moralistic ending!
I looked around Rotten Tomatoes, too - pretty much all of the negative reviews are flooded with presumptuous comments like this that impose a bunch of illegitimate reasons. Some, like the anon above, accuse the rest of us of being sensisitive PC babies (and an especially large fuck you goes out to these people; not all of us are so privileged that we can watch this shit without being triggered). Anyway, I just thought I'd break down my reasons because it basically amounts to two things I love doing: ranting and overreacting to comments on the internet.
I mean, okay, that depends rather heavily on the definition of "art" we're going to be using. I'm taking it for granted that by "art" they mean "high art," stuff that elevates itself above the chattel of everyday film. Well, it's not that. If it was that, I'd say it's accidental Dadaism. It's art in the sense all movies are art. One review I read said that Tarantino's work usually imitates, but rises above because of excellent writing and filmmaking, but that with this piece it's really no better than what he imitates and that's more or less true.
Okay, so, good things out of the way first: Brad Pitt as Aldo? Is definitely as amusing as the commercials have led you to believe. If the movie had been more focused on him with a much more lighthearted tone and less graphic violence, I think it probably would have been pretty much fine - yes, still full of a lot of Unfortunate Implications, but hopefully so tongue-in-cheek that you weren't supposed to take it seriously anyway and much more in the vein of Tarantino's other work. I mean, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill were chiefly about fun action and snappy dialogue with violence that could be generally overlooked (or at least weren't riddled with unfortunate implications).
His outfit is decidedly less amusing. I cannot think of any reason for "The Bear Jew" to be a fan favourite aside from his name. He is not entertaining unless you find brutally beating Nazis to death with a baseball bat (and getting to watch it in HD, whoo!) entertaining. And, well, I imagine fans of the movie are basically looking for that, exactly. I just think the movie is doing something incredibly wrong when they make you feel bad for the Nazis. Under normal circumstances I'd ask myself "Well maybe that was the point?" but it just so obviously is not the point - there really is no point. And it isn't in that nihilistic "everyone in the world is a terrible person" sort of way because 1) Tarantino doesn't make those kinds of movies, 2) There's never any indication that this is the case and in fact the movie kind of hangs on your desire to watch Nazis die and 3) That would be preachy Oscar-bait, ironically.
There are definitely parts of the movie that are good. The opening scene, I'd say, is the best of them, in part because of the actor playing Mr. LaPedit as he's interrogated by a SS officer (who is a complete cardboard cutout of a villain but nonetheless very slick). This scene is, I think, the best in the film... but like the rest of the movie, it's too damn long. I saw this scene beforehand but without any subtitles and for some reason, the lack of subtitles added to it. Trying to figure out what was going on without knowing exactly what was said was interesting and emphasized the actors and characters. Translated into English the whole thing is a long, boring crawl, half of which should have been cut and almost none of which is actually necessary.
The whole movie is like this. It's absolutely glacial. Honestly, I do not have a problem with talking movies, and traditionally Tarantino has done them well, but not here. The dialogue is not interesting in either English, French or German. There is probably a solid hour of exposition that should never have taken more than 20 minutes. This film needs heavy editing. A lot of the time it just seems like watching Tarantino masturbate because I can see that he's packing as many references as humanly possible into said pointless dialogue. The only people whose talking you are really interested in get almost no time whatsoever - most of the dialogue belongs to Nazi shmucks and the decidedly less interesting members of the Basterds. Shoshana, the Jewish woman who is the protagonist of the "other movie" - because it really does seem like two movies stuck together, and their difference in pace and tone is very distracting - has plenty of scenes but the vast majority of them she is not talking in, just being very curt with a bunch of long-winded and irritating Nazis.
The Shoshana part of the movie is interesting, but would have been more so if they had bothered to give her a character beyond "veangeful Jew running a moviehouse dating a black guy." Her half is joyless and serious, but then, so is basically every scene that Aldo is not in. The slick Nazi brightens things up from time to time, but the fact that he's a cardboard cutout of evil dedicated to creating tension and antagonizing other characters means that it's really only the acting doing any brightening.
Okay, so all of that's been kind of a long-winded laundry list on why this movie sucks for reasons other than the ones I've mentioned, and I could go on but I've already written a novel so I'm just going to skip ahead to the thing that pissed me off the most.
Spoilers
Shoshana is a Jew whose family was murdered in front of her by the slick Nazi she meets later on in life while another Nazi tries to pick her up. She runs a cinema and the infatuated Nazi says "Hey, Goebbels, let's premiere your new movie at her cinema!" The actress does well here because her response is "I am going to burn the theatre down with the Nazis in it" really does have that desperate edge to it. It was probably the only act of Nazi-killing I could get behind in the whole movie, because whether or not it was justified it did have a point to it and it did not come off as sadistic (and even less so when you consider that burning the theatre down = ending the war). So. Shoshana and aforementioned Black Boyfriend come up with a plan to burn the theatre down. Part of the plan involves her filming a short message for the Nazis and playing it before she burns it - and then forcing somebody to develop the film in one of the only violent but undisturbing scenes in the picture.
At the end of the film she waits in the projector room for the time to burn the theatre. The nazi that's been bothering her shows up to flirt, then storms into the room saying "I am not the kind of man you say no to." She gets him to lock the door, pulls a gun from her purse and shoots him twice in the back. He lies there prone and we see the camera focus on him a lot, then focus on her a lot. And because I watch movies, I know this means he's not dead and he will get up and attack her in a minute. And also because I watch movies, I say to myself, "Oh they better not."
And then they do!
Shoshana, the veangeful and heretofore rather desperate, driven, and hardhearted character (when it comes to Nazis) at least, does not breathe a sigh of relief and make sure the guy who basically wants to rape her is dead. When she sees him moving, she does not shoot him again in the back of the head while he's on the floor. No, she has a moment of ~womanly weakness~ or some shit and bends down to touch his leg tenderly. After shooting him twice in the back. And of course, this ends just as you'd expect it to - with him rolling over and shooting her to death.
Something flipped like a switch at her death scene and I guess it was just a side effect of such massive disappointment.
Even worse? When the theatre does burn we see the clip Shoshana recorded for the Germans to watch before the theatre lit up, and actually it features her cackling like the wicked witch as it burns, which not only makes her death scene all the more confusing but kind of rips the sympathy and vindication out of the whole affair. The first part of her message would have been fine and they should have kept it stony-faced, DOUBLY SO because apparently her and black boyfriend had planned to go up in flames as well. But of course, if they didn't have her laughing then Tarantino wouldn't get to do a shot where her face is projected onto the smoke, and cool always takes precedence over thoughtful or IC or whatever. Also, I suppose the laughter would appeal to the demographic for this movie a lot more, I.E. people who like watching other people being beaten to death with baseball bats and don't particularly mind watching a woman strangled to death for like 5 minutes on-screen (or at least don't come away from it with anything more than "Awww, poor lady, that guy's a jerk!").
Ironically, one of my big complaints about the movie was that it was overlong, hahaha.
You tell them, girl! I mean, who cares if the movie is extremely well-shot and acted! If I feel inconfortable watching it it must be a bad movie! Fuck art! Fuck quality! Fuck expression! I want politically correct, preachy Oscar-bait films with a moralistic ending!
I looked around Rotten Tomatoes, too - pretty much all of the negative reviews are flooded with presumptuous comments like this that impose a bunch of illegitimate reasons. Some, like the anon above, accuse the rest of us of being sensisitive PC babies (and an especially large fuck you goes out to these people; not all of us are so privileged that we can watch this shit without being triggered). Anyway, I just thought I'd break down my reasons because it basically amounts to two things I love doing: ranting and overreacting to comments on the internet.
I mean, okay, that depends rather heavily on the definition of "art" we're going to be using. I'm taking it for granted that by "art" they mean "high art," stuff that elevates itself above the chattel of everyday film. Well, it's not that. If it was that, I'd say it's accidental Dadaism. It's art in the sense all movies are art. One review I read said that Tarantino's work usually imitates, but rises above because of excellent writing and filmmaking, but that with this piece it's really no better than what he imitates and that's more or less true.
Okay, so, good things out of the way first: Brad Pitt as Aldo? Is definitely as amusing as the commercials have led you to believe. If the movie had been more focused on him with a much more lighthearted tone and less graphic violence, I think it probably would have been pretty much fine - yes, still full of a lot of Unfortunate Implications, but hopefully so tongue-in-cheek that you weren't supposed to take it seriously anyway and much more in the vein of Tarantino's other work. I mean, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill were chiefly about fun action and snappy dialogue with violence that could be generally overlooked (or at least weren't riddled with unfortunate implications).
His outfit is decidedly less amusing. I cannot think of any reason for "The Bear Jew" to be a fan favourite aside from his name. He is not entertaining unless you find brutally beating Nazis to death with a baseball bat (and getting to watch it in HD, whoo!) entertaining. And, well, I imagine fans of the movie are basically looking for that, exactly. I just think the movie is doing something incredibly wrong when they make you feel bad for the Nazis. Under normal circumstances I'd ask myself "Well maybe that was the point?" but it just so obviously is not the point - there really is no point. And it isn't in that nihilistic "everyone in the world is a terrible person" sort of way because 1) Tarantino doesn't make those kinds of movies, 2) There's never any indication that this is the case and in fact the movie kind of hangs on your desire to watch Nazis die and 3) That would be preachy Oscar-bait, ironically.
There are definitely parts of the movie that are good. The opening scene, I'd say, is the best of them, in part because of the actor playing Mr. LaPedit as he's interrogated by a SS officer (who is a complete cardboard cutout of a villain but nonetheless very slick). This scene is, I think, the best in the film... but like the rest of the movie, it's too damn long. I saw this scene beforehand but without any subtitles and for some reason, the lack of subtitles added to it. Trying to figure out what was going on without knowing exactly what was said was interesting and emphasized the actors and characters. Translated into English the whole thing is a long, boring crawl, half of which should have been cut and almost none of which is actually necessary.
The whole movie is like this. It's absolutely glacial. Honestly, I do not have a problem with talking movies, and traditionally Tarantino has done them well, but not here. The dialogue is not interesting in either English, French or German. There is probably a solid hour of exposition that should never have taken more than 20 minutes. This film needs heavy editing. A lot of the time it just seems like watching Tarantino masturbate because I can see that he's packing as many references as humanly possible into said pointless dialogue. The only people whose talking you are really interested in get almost no time whatsoever - most of the dialogue belongs to Nazi shmucks and the decidedly less interesting members of the Basterds. Shoshana, the Jewish woman who is the protagonist of the "other movie" - because it really does seem like two movies stuck together, and their difference in pace and tone is very distracting - has plenty of scenes but the vast majority of them she is not talking in, just being very curt with a bunch of long-winded and irritating Nazis.
The Shoshana part of the movie is interesting, but would have been more so if they had bothered to give her a character beyond "veangeful Jew running a moviehouse dating a black guy." Her half is joyless and serious, but then, so is basically every scene that Aldo is not in. The slick Nazi brightens things up from time to time, but the fact that he's a cardboard cutout of evil dedicated to creating tension and antagonizing other characters means that it's really only the acting doing any brightening.
Okay, so all of that's been kind of a long-winded laundry list on why this movie sucks for reasons other than the ones I've mentioned, and I could go on but I've already written a novel so I'm just going to skip ahead to the thing that pissed me off the most.
Spoilers
Shoshana is a Jew whose family was murdered in front of her by the slick Nazi she meets later on in life while another Nazi tries to pick her up. She runs a cinema and the infatuated Nazi says "Hey, Goebbels, let's premiere your new movie at her cinema!" The actress does well here because her response is "I am going to burn the theatre down with the Nazis in it" really does have that desperate edge to it. It was probably the only act of Nazi-killing I could get behind in the whole movie, because whether or not it was justified it did have a point to it and it did not come off as sadistic (and even less so when you consider that burning the theatre down = ending the war). So. Shoshana and aforementioned Black Boyfriend come up with a plan to burn the theatre down. Part of the plan involves her filming a short message for the Nazis and playing it before she burns it - and then forcing somebody to develop the film in one of the only violent but undisturbing scenes in the picture.
At the end of the film she waits in the projector room for the time to burn the theatre. The nazi that's been bothering her shows up to flirt, then storms into the room saying "I am not the kind of man you say no to." She gets him to lock the door, pulls a gun from her purse and shoots him twice in the back. He lies there prone and we see the camera focus on him a lot, then focus on her a lot. And because I watch movies, I know this means he's not dead and he will get up and attack her in a minute. And also because I watch movies, I say to myself, "Oh they better not."
And then they do!
Shoshana, the veangeful and heretofore rather desperate, driven, and hardhearted character (when it comes to Nazis) at least, does not breathe a sigh of relief and make sure the guy who basically wants to rape her is dead. When she sees him moving, she does not shoot him again in the back of the head while he's on the floor. No, she has a moment of ~womanly weakness~ or some shit and bends down to touch his leg tenderly. After shooting him twice in the back. And of course, this ends just as you'd expect it to - with him rolling over and shooting her to death.
Something flipped like a switch at her death scene and I guess it was just a side effect of such massive disappointment.
Even worse? When the theatre does burn we see the clip Shoshana recorded for the Germans to watch before the theatre lit up, and actually it features her cackling like the wicked witch as it burns, which not only makes her death scene all the more confusing but kind of rips the sympathy and vindication out of the whole affair. The first part of her message would have been fine and they should have kept it stony-faced, DOUBLY SO because apparently her and black boyfriend had planned to go up in flames as well. But of course, if they didn't have her laughing then Tarantino wouldn't get to do a shot where her face is projected onto the smoke, and cool always takes precedence over thoughtful or IC or whatever. Also, I suppose the laughter would appeal to the demographic for this movie a lot more, I.E. people who like watching other people being beaten to death with baseball bats and don't particularly mind watching a woman strangled to death for like 5 minutes on-screen (or at least don't come away from it with anything more than "Awww, poor lady, that guy's a jerk!").
Ironically, one of my big complaints about the movie was that it was overlong, hahaha.