The American Spectator : Tarantino's Band of Bastards

Text Size

Tarantino's Band of Bastards

By James Bowman on 8.24.09 @ 6:02AM

Imagine a movie even worse than Kill Bill. It's not hard if you try.

Living as I do in the metropolitan area of our nation's capital, I sometimes seem to be surrounded by political technicians who pride themselves on judging the speeches and interviews and press conferences of our leaders by a detached and entirely professional standard. "That was a good speech," they will aver of, say, a State of the Union address, even though they may agree with not one syllable of its content -- or, indeed, as is increasingly the case, the content has become so platitudinous that it doesn't rise to the level of being either agreed or disagreed with. You see? Such people are judges not of policy or ideology or even rationality, all of which things they scorn to notice, but of the craft of political speech-making, independent of any content it may or may not have. Of course, they have learned this from formalism in the arts, and particularly the modernist mystique of the artist as craftsman -- someone to be judged on the formal skill with which his artifacts are put together rather than their semantic content. I think this is nonsense. A good speech, like a good work of art, is one that says something interesting and true. The technique can never be anything more than a secondary consideration.

Alas, I must pay a price for this belief, which is to submit myself to the status of a naïf among my fellow critics, an unsophisticated bumpkin who has simply failed to understand that the first rule of criticism for those who know their business is to ignore mere content. Shame on me! I can tell how shameful it is to be thought such an innocent by the lengths to which other critics are prepared to go in order to avoid the stigma of being thought to be so ignorant themselves. About Inglorious Bastards, for instance, the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis is in one sense quite right to say that "complaining about tastelessness in a Quentin Tarantino movie is about as pointless as carping about its hyperbolic violence: these are as much a constituent part of his work as the reams of dialogue." But what she appears to mean by this quite unnecessary observation is that, because it is deliberately vulgar and tasteless, the movie must somehow be supposed to have disarmed criticism. Sophisticated critics are allowed only to animadvert upon inadvertent tastelessness.

This is the ticket that Mr. Tarantino has used to ride to the very heights of auteurish movie-making in America, though admittedly these are not very high heights. His band of Inglorious Bastards, like him, glory in their ingloriousness -- as well as in their illiteracy, ignorance and brutality. That is the point of the movie which, like Pulp Fiction, is named for what Mr. Tarantino takes to be at once its happy vulgarity and its immunity from criticism. That's why I refuse to be browbeaten by the privilege of the auteur into imitating the misspelling he insists on in his title. Inglorious Bastards shall be here so called, in proper English orthography, as my small and doubtless insignificant protest against Mr. Tarantino's attempt to appropriate the common language for his own purposes and put his personal brand on it by an egregious misspelling.

For that act of expropriation, a kind of enclosure of the intellectual commons, is also what he is doing with history -- which is equally a common property and one that, in my naïveté, I persist in thinking an important one for truth to hang on tightly to her claims in. It is important for us to remember that those known to history as Nazis were not cartoon characters. Nor were those who fought and finally defeated them. Nor was that defeat accomplished by a gang of bloodthirsty, free-lancing American Jews in search of revenge who manage to commandeer a ludicrously implausible scheme to assassinate the entire German high command, including Hitler and Goebbels, in a small Parisian cinema by setting fire to a pile of nitrate film. I know, I know. Mr. Tarantino's are not real Nazis, any more than these are real historical events. But that doesn't seem to me enough of an excuse for them when American schoolchildren -- for whose eyes this film is principally intended -- may scarcely be supposed to know what was real.

The Germans are said, in a report from the Agence France-Presse, to be big fans of Mr. Tarantino's blood-drenched fantasy, and you can see why they might prefer that the descendants of those caught up in the world-wide tragedy their ancestors gave birth to should regard it instead as nothing more than a comic-book bloodfest between two equally unpalatable collections of human grotesques. Other Europeans glory in their reputation as sophisticates and cinéastes -- as, for example, does Natalie Haynes in the Times of London:

The Second World War has produced endless fun-yet-serious films: The Dam Busters, The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare. And Inglourious Basterds is a heroic addition to the genre. Its leading characters are mostly women and Jews, but there's no trace of a worthy Holocaust drama. This, after all, is the movie that one of its stars, Eli Roth, referred to as "kosher porn." Tarantino, in other words, has made a war film about war films, not one about war. His usual blend of smart dialogue and grisly violence is perfectly matched to his subject. War may be hell, but sometimes, on screen, it should be fun.

All true except for the bits about the movie's being "a heroic addition to the genre" and how "its blend of smart dialogue and grisly violence is perfectly matched to his subject." In other words, for her the idea of an exciting war movie is equivalent to the actual existence of such a movie. QT's movie is the reverse of exciting. It's all fake and contrived, a comic book that glories in its untruth to life. That the premiere in Nashville of this phony movie should have been hosted by Al Gore, the world's biggest phony, is no more than appropriate. Only a child could find such stuff exciting -- and, these days you would think, not many children either. But for her, the potential existence of such a child, together with the blinding critical insight that this is not a war film but "a war film about war films," is itself a justification of the movie. It will be a matter of some cultural significance either way, I think, when we know whether audiences agree with her or not.

topics:
Quentin Tarantino

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (51) | Leave a comment

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 8:05AM

Mr. Bowman,

We are all naturally fascinated by YOUR personal observations, YOUR heroic refusal to be browbeaten, YOUR thumbnail psychoanalysis of the entire German people, etc., etc.

That is, we WOULD be--had we known that your "review" would be more along the lines of an autobiographical catharsis-cum-grandstanding than something that would actually give us the requisite information to decide whether or not to see the bloody thing.

That said, having read the "review," I find myself wondering: What about the MOVIE?

Isn't that what reviews are supposed to be about?

Sincerely,
EM

martin J smith| 8.24.09 @ 8:20AM

EM did not read Bowman's review. He read what he wanted it to mean. This is a movie I will pass on and which strikes based on other views also as another historical revisionistic exercise loved by anti-american and the anti-semetic left in the US and Europe

martin J smith| 8.24.09 @ 8:20AM

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 8:44AM

I did too read the review, martin J smith.

Did you draw your conclusions about the movie from anything specific that Bowman wrote?

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 8:45AM

Also, do you think that posting the same thing twice is really necessary?

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 8:51AM

Perhaps you'll point out where Bowman observed the traditional conventions of analysis of plot, character, and so forth--as opposed to merely offering opinion unsupported by direct and detailed discussion of the movie itself.

That was the point I made in my post, which I assume you read.

Scot| 8.24.09 @ 9:16AM

EM,

No need to be an Arse about it and patronize MS.
Ultimately you are right. This wasn't a Traditional movie review. I think Bowman explained at the beginning that it would not be. So each here is free to take it for what it is worth.

He reviewed the movie in a historical sense and a social sense not in a contextual sense. Seemed like he wanted to rise above that in this review. Just my thoughts.

erp| 8.24.09 @ 9:31AM

Movies about WW2 no longer need to have any historical accuracy. Most movie goers look upon that period as we look upon the War of the Roses or some other long ago event.

Nazi's are and will always be good copy because the truth of their monstrosities, horrible as it may have been, have been amplified and expanded to include whatever demented fantasies "geniuses" like Tarantino can conjure up.

martin j smith| 8.24.09 @ 10:11AM

Here is the deal: WWII in the pre-revisionist view held that the Allies were the good guys the Nazis of Germany the bad guys. This moview according Bowman dinishes the seriousness of what WWII was about and also diminishes the heroic behavior of the Allied forces.

martin j smith| 8.24.09 @ 10:11AM

Cpm| 8.24.09 @ 10:26AM

I'd like to point out that The Dirty Dozen didn't really take out the German high command.There was no such thing as The Guns of Navarone. And so on.
Having seen the movie, if you like Tarantino movies it is worth your time and money. There are some terrific scenes, writing, and acting, in his style. I knew what to expect, and I enjoyed it. There is less of the Basterds in the film than you'd expect.
If you would never stoop to waste your money on a Tarantino movie, save yourself some bucks and skip it..
I agree with Etiquette Man, all I got from the review is that JB REALLY doesn't like QT.

martin j smith| 8.24.09 @ 10:43AM

Its not the movie but the message. In the context of era of WWII there is no way that such a film would be produced. The further we get from the events the more we forget about issues a such as appeasement,totalitarianism
racial superiority etc. Read William Sherer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or Churchill's History of WWII.

Cpm| 8.24.09 @ 10:55AM

Already read them.
This isn't historical fiction, it is revenge fantasy. That's the message, don't over think it.

Jeannine| 8.24.09 @ 10:58AM

After reading Mr Bowman's reviews for quite a few yrs, (Reviews I truly respect & most of the time agree w/.) this movie is definitely not for him. To me, Tarantino creates well-crafted, sometimes too violent, absurd (which I happen to like) movies. When being creative, whether writing a novel or poem or making a movie, the artist shares a bit of himself, warts & all, w/the audience. That said---Tarantino has issues. Yet, he knows that his movies are true BS & should not be taken seriously.

L. Ross| 8.24.09 @ 11:07AM

As I said in an earlier post, Mr. Bowman seems drawn to Finnish art films. Movies which ideally occur in a single room lit by a bare bulb. I can't think of a single review of a movie I would ever dream of seeing that he liked.

On the other hand, if he ever reviews a movie that I have seen and enjoyed, he hates it. Personally, I can't wait to see this one.

Jeremy| 8.24.09 @ 11:39AM

Yea, stopped listening about the time when your Al Gore timer ran out and you had to make an awfully large stretch to find a way to insult the man in a movie that has nothing to do with him.

Also, stop whining about historical accuracy. Get this, movies are not historically accurate. They're usually condensing weeks if not months of story into a two hour period, historical accuracy always takes a back seat to the rest of the film (e.g. Apocalypse Now, Hurt Locker, Patton).

Also Martin J Smith I failed to see where this movie had anything to do with your supposed "Anti-American, Anti-Semitic Left." I'm sorry that you believe the Jewish place is as the victim.
I'm also sorry for your cultish adoration of Bowman. Automatically screeching hate-speech at the first person to criticize the review, blaming them as a liberal (though the post did not display that tendency in any way) and as a Anti-Semite.

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 11:40AM

"Arse Trek"
Episode One

Scot: EM, stop being a such a bloooody Arse to poor ol' MS.

EM: Well, MS started it! He said I cheated on my Arsefleet entrance exam!!!

Scot: I dunna carrre. Captain Kirk says we have to reach the neutral zone by 1500 hours, or . . .

MS: Scooottieee!!! Tell EM to stop mocking my syntax!!!

Scot: Allllrriiight, laddys!!! I ken prooomise that I WILL turn this spaceship arrrround, if you dunna stop yer fooolisshness, rrrright this instant!!!

Captain Kirk (interrupting over intercom, dramatically): What . . . seems . . . to be . . . the holdup . . . Mr. Scott??? I thought I . . . told you . . . that . . . we need . . . warp power . . . NOW!

Scot: Aye, ca'pn, I no it. But I'll need at least 2 or 3 hours to get EM and MS to stop putting chewing gum in each other's hair long enough to recalibrate the dilithium chamberrrr.

TO BE CONTINUED???????????

Laney Bormel| 8.24.09 @ 12:03PM

Unfortunately, Tarrantino’s mockery of the real horror of Hitler’s attempt to annihilate Jews goes a long way to diminishing the real horror and to give aid and comfort to Holocaust deniers and those whose lives are informed by virulent and not-so- virulent anti-Semitism. That the mostly Jewish hierarchy in the film-making world bankrolls his glorification of pointless violence and perversion of real history is shameful and disgusting.

Bohred| 8.24.09 @ 12:05PM

There are some movies which purport to be accurate, an example was Platoon. They hawked that movie as the most perfectly accurate movie of the Viet Nam war. I walked out when the solder jammed his church key in a aluminum beer can with a pop top. In a normal movie that would be ok, but a movie which touts it's accuracy had better be accurate, (they also used obvious squibs, the wrong tires and on, and on, I got tired of the pompousness). This movie is a fun romp, not real, a fantasy like Sky Capt. and the World of Tomorrow. I'll wait until the DVD then buy and enjoy it.

martin j smith| 8.24.09 @ 12:14PM

Jeremy people can express oppinions and you can disagree but claiming someone has" cultish adoration " assumes you know me and that I have a hsistory of reading and responsing to Mr Bowman neither of which is true.

martin j smith| 8.24.09 @ 12:14PM

Brian B| 8.24.09 @ 12:25PM

Bowman, as he occasionally does, wrote a review primarily about culture and film's place in it, with special attention paid to Tarantino's schtick.
He's an adolescent artiste, but not an honest or courageous one. He cloaks what he thinks are important ideas in infantile films in an attempt to avoid, as Bowman points out, adult criticism of his ideas cause it's all just one big comic book joke.
But it's not; it's just derivitive, narcissistic pabulum about older, usually better movies that at least really were original.
It's what you get when you combine a third rate mind, lots of ambition, a good director's eye and a few gallons of fake blood; stylish tedium.

Tim| 8.24.09 @ 12:25PM

Will they be showing this in Gaza?

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 12:42PM

Hi Tim,

Yes, of course it will play in Gaza, but they will have to reshoot some scenes of course to accommodate certain key plot twists.

I hear Ben Kingsley has already signed up to play Arafat.

Morgan Freeman will be Sadat, and Ellen DeGeneres is expected to pull a real star turn as Golda Meir.

Naturally, Jason Alexander ("George" of "Seinfeld" fame) will be Menachem Begin.

Cheers!

Dixie Pixie| 8.24.09 @ 12:59PM

A Tarantino film is best considered as a live action cartoon as his films have all the depth of paint on film. A Tarantino film is at its best when considered as mindless entertainment. To try to find any deep meaning is his films is a waste of time and effort. There is only mindless action and cartoon characters. “Inglorious Bastards” is just another mindless violent romp using WWII as a playground. The review was a good attempt considering there was nothing in the film warranting a review.

Barbarian Heretic| 8.24.09 @ 2:09PM

1) Not every film aspires to be "Saving Private Ryan"
2) Nothing wrong with a little revenge fantasy in which history's victims get to kick a little Nazi butt.
3) Fot Pete's sake- it's just a movie. and a Tarantino movie, at that.

Joe B| 8.24.09 @ 2:27PM

After watching half of Pulp Fiction, I have avoided all subsequent Quentin Tarantino flicks. My spot judgment of this guy is that he doesn't read, and that he doesn't have much use for art, either. From movie reviews and plot synopses, I have come to the conclusion that his films have no dramatic arc or intelligent dialog -- mostly, they remind me of the inane fantasies of a 7th grader daydreaming in last period study hall or playing some frenetic computer game on his X Box.

Most of Tarantino's stuff can be found in the $4.99 discount bin at my local video store, but I'm still not tempted.

Portzebie| 8.24.09 @ 2:35PM

Bowman once remarked that Tarentino's films were "playful comedies." See his review of "Way of the Gun" on his website.

His opinion of Tarentino has obviously changed. I wonder why.

Seek| 8.24.09 @ 3:08PM

Guilty pleasure: "Jackie Brown," Quentin Tarantino's 1997 film based on an Elmore Leonard novel. A great film, better than the very good but overly-praised "Pulp Fiction" or the "Kill Bill" set. I plan to see the new one, too.

As for James Bowman, he only likes films , especially from places like Bulgaria and Uruguay, that wind up getting shown in two art houses across the country -- in other words, films nobody has a chance to see in the first place.

Vern Crisler| 8.24.09 @ 3:18PM

I think Bowman goes into movies with overly high expectations. For instance, I would never expect to see a Tarentino movie that was anything other than a violent comic book on screen. Same with science fiction or fantasy. Go in with the expectation you are going to see science fiction or fantasy, not Citizen Kane or Casablanca. Then you won't be so disappointed.

Tim| 8.24.09 @ 3:28PM

Etiquette Man
White gloves when you brain Arafat with a baseball bat?

Kolya Krassotkin| 8.24.09 @ 3:51PM

Although I've always believed it was important to study history and enjoy WWII movies, I find myself asking, "Who cares?" So much has happened since WWII, so many other wars, so many other holocausts, so many monsters other than Hitler (who was NOT unique in his evil) and so many other heros that another WWII movie, especially one as amateur as this sounds, seems silly and gratuitous.

Cpm| 8.24.09 @ 4:56PM

Lousy review, if Bowman detests Tarantino so much, why bother? At least he saw it unlike the people who have been ripping on it here. As one of the few here who has actually seen the movie, I enjoyed it very much, there are some very interesting and well written scenes, terrific acting, particularly by Christof Waltz as "the Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa. If you are a fan of Tarantino's films, go see it. If not, don't.

jigga-boo| 8.24.09 @ 5:43PM

EM, you are soooo gay!

Etiquette Man| 8.24.09 @ 10:06PM

Hi, offensive variant of the N-word that I will not repeat.

So I'm gay, huh?

Before I decide how to respond, is that a GOOD thing or a BAD thing? In addition to being a racist (as in the choice of a racial epithet for your screen name), are you also a homophobe?

Just wondering.

Etiquette Man("The Gay Blade")| 8.24.09 @ 10:11PM

Hi Tim,

We're trying to get DeNiro to be my stand in for the baseball bat scene, actually. He was SOOO good as Capone.

Instead of "team, team" we'll have the assembled Fatah contingent repeating "intifadah, intifadah" before Arafat gets brained, though.

White gloves are a must, of course, as should go without saying!

Cheers!

EM the Gay

Joe| 8.24.09 @ 11:43PM

im still going to see this movie

this is yet again another example as to why this site should just do commentary on politics not on movies

Tarentino meant for it to be stupid yet funny yet bloody yet amourous

Its just a movie "bout killin nAzis",whats wrong with that

just like conservatives reviewing "District 9",that movie had nothing to do with apartheid and everything to do about being a masterpiece,that was Peter Jackson's whole point about it

He had had that idea in his head for years

just keep to the polotics...

Joe| 8.24.09 @ 11:45PM

politics*

Matt| 8.25.09 @ 11:29AM

Gross-out violence -- another reason many conservsatives are losing the culture wars. Can you imagine early Christians saying "well, I think I'll go watch the gladiators kill each other, I mean, it is entertaining after all." Gruesome violence is never funny and seldom necessary even in serious movies. Great art of the past, including older films, was capable of conveying horror and distress in ways that didn't brutalize their audience. Thumbs down on Tarantino.

PostwarGerman| 8.25.09 @ 12:01PM

Wow what an intellectual challenge...yet another "kill the nazi" film. No doubt the killers check for party membership before pronouncing sentence.

Funny, you don't see the Germans making "kill the allies" films. Guess someone learned a lesson accepted responsibility for their actions.

Here's an original idea, a movie called "Red Death". The story starts on the east coast and moves accross the country where white americans massacre every indian they find. Hmm do you sense an parallel here? All that missing a catch phrase like Holocaust. Seems like the nazis had a role model...the U.S.

Oh, thanks in advance for the "go back to Germany" advice.

Ron Cabral| 8.25.09 @ 4:43PM

Yes, but the co-star Christopher Waltz will win the Academy Award for his brilliant performance.

J707| 8.25.09 @ 5:32PM

Anyone who thinks for a moment that this movie would be loved by "anti-americans" and "anti-semites" must truly be an idiot. I suppose "WATCHMEN" was created for people who hate America and graphic novels?

Anyone who would see a movie like this expecting some sort of painstaking historical accuracy and a prevailing tone of sacred, stone-serious reverence for World War 2 in general must be something of a misguided snob.

And chalking favorable German reviews of this movie up to an assumed German tendency to revise WW2 history is mean-spirited bigotry.

A critical review is one thing. An emotional tantrum is something else.

saveme| 8.25.09 @ 5:37PM

Conservatives suck.
EM, I love you.

LarryG| 8.25.09 @ 8:01PM

Why couldn't he just say the film is a pile of dog shit? Have to justify that fancy title , somehow. Want to see a movie that has a real message? "Cross of Iron". Or, "Das Boot" (Boot pronounced as boat, the German way). Boot is what the Brits call the trunk of their car.

Etiquette Man| 8.25.09 @ 9:36PM

Hi saveme,

I'm deeply flattered by your profession of love.

However, I fear that if you love me, you love a conservative. I think that Genghis Khan was a softy, and that "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be a convenience store, not an agency of the feddle gummint.

Can our love endure? Maybe we should just be friends.

You saw what happened when a Capulet and a Montague tried it . . .

Cheers!

EM (The Ultra-Conservative Gay Blade)

P.S. I'm actually not gay (not that there's anything wrong with that . . .). I was just tapping my foot, waiting for Senator Craig . . .

batonrouge| 8.27.09 @ 12:50AM

Hah did this writer seriously attempt to "correct" a supposedly fixed and constant English language? And assert that Europeans believe themselves to be very elite and snobby, even throwing in some italicized French words to add to the upper class effect? Your article reads like something out of Freep

vojo| 8.28.09 @ 1:06PM

I understand your outrage.
There is nothing glorious about the war
“Eye for eye …..”
This primitive instinct still dominates our world.
Tanatino is genius.

wojo| 8.28.09 @ 1:21PM

I said
There is nothing glorious about the war
except when you play it in 360 or Nintendo in comfort of your home.
Tarantino is genius.

maplestory mesos | 8.29.09 @ 4:09AM

Classic exposition, I have also mentioned it in my blog article. But it is a pity that almost no friend discussed it with me. I am very happy to see your article.

introspective| 3.28.10 @ 5:31PM

This is the great movie. Tarantino always makes a different movies. This movie is is special too.

werty| 4.22.10 @ 12:03AM

I’ll have a Poptropica full written walkthrough very soon, but in the ArenaBetting.com dukung fair play FIFA world cup AFSEL 2010meantime, here are some answers to some of the frequently asked questions about Mythology Island. Having trouble? Post a question in the comments and I’ll try to answer it!
Getting Hercules to Help You

Hercules won’t help you until you have all five items from Zeus’ quest. Once you have the five items, bring them to Athena. Zeus will appear and steal them. The big jerk! Once this happens, talk to Athena and she will tell you that Hercules will help you. You’ll need to have the magic mirror from Aphrodite because Hercules doesn’t want to have to walk. He’s so lazy!
Getting the Hydra Scale

You can see how to do this in the videos, but basically you need to jump up when the Hydra is about to strike. He will rear one of his heads back to attack and his eyes will bulge out. When this happens, jump up in the air and then try to land on top of his head. That head will get knocked out. When all five heads get knocked out, the ArenaBetting.com dukung fair play FIFA world cup AFSEL 2010Hydra will be asleep and you can click on him to get one of the scales. Poptropica I’ll have a Poptropica full written walkthrough very soon, but in the meantime, here are some answers to some of the frequently asked questions about Mythology Island. Having trouble? Post a question in the comments and I’ll try to answer it!
Getting Hercules to Help You

Hercules won’t help you until you have all five items from Zeus’ quest. Once you have the five items, bring them to Athena. Zeus will appear and steal them. The big jerk! Once this happens, talk to Athena and she will tell you that Hercules will help you.ArenaBetting.com dukung fair play FIFA world cup AFSEL 2010 You’ll need to have the magic mirror from Aphrodite because Hercules doesn’t want to have to walk. He’s so lazy!
Getting the Hydra Scale ArenaBetting.com dukung fair play FIFA world cup AFSEL 2010