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Inglourious Basterds is hardly the first movie to place World War II in the context of American show business. (Each in his way, movie stars John Wayne and Ronald Reagan made a career out of playing soldier while the war was actually on.) Basterds' coarse, ranting, ridiculously caped Hitler certainly contributes to the war's vaudevillization, but the notion of Hitler as screaming infant was more eloquently demonstrated several years ago, when a hilarious meme swept the Internet, subtitling a key tantrum from Downfall, the 2005 German drama of Hitler in the bunker: Bruno Ganz's disheveled führer was made to browbeat his generals about everything from his lost Xbox to the Superbowl upset to Obama's victory (in the guise of Hillary Clinton). With the evil genius of the 20th century already a joke everywhere outside of Germany—and perhaps even there—Tarantino's particular genius has been to provide a suitably regressive scenario for the sandbox war that cost 50 million lives.

The Producers might seem an obvious precursor, but there's a difference between victim and victor mocking Hitler. European Jews were losers; decimated by the war, their only victory was in individual survival. Where the Brooks scenario involves dancing on the monster's grave (a contemporary Purim play), the Tarantino scenario is less cathartic than bizarrely triumphalist. Even something as untalented as Levy's My Führer has a modicum of therapeutic value—if only for being created by a German Jew in Germany. Levy's fantasy conceives Hitler as a grotesque brat, and a Jewish protagonist, plucked from the Auschwitz death mills for the express purpose of bolstering the führer's confidence, as the lone adult in a world of Nazi buffoons. By contrast, Inglourious Basterds basically enables Jews to act like Nazis, engaging in cold-blooded massacres and mass incineration, pushing wish fulfillment to a near-psychotic break with reality.

Brad Pitt, Nazi hunter
Francois Duhamel/The Weinstein Company
Brad Pitt, Nazi hunter

Details

Inglourious Basterds
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
The Weinstein Company and Universal
Opens August 21

ALSO
Inglourious Basterds: The Quentin Tarantino Interview
by Ella Taylor

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Tarantino's movie ends with its corniest character (Pitt) proclaiming that a particular Old Testament barbarism just might be his masterpiece. As I wrote from Cannes, this movie could well be Tarantino's—if masterpiece is taken to mean the fullest expression of a particular artist's worldview. At Cannes, Roth characterized the movie as "kosher porn." Tarantino was less provocative and more grandiose—"The power of cinema is going to bring down the Third Reich. . . . I get a kick out of that!"—but he, too, was reveling in the compensatory, reductive aspect of the movies.

Here is an alternate World War II, in which Jews terrorize and slaughter Nazis—a just Holocaust. Schindler's List comforted audiences with similar, albeit less outrageous, reversals (the list is life, not death; concentration camp showers gush water, not gas). However devoted to movie magic, however, Spielberg would never be so tasteless as to admit the excitement he experienced in asserting his will over history.

jhoberman@villagevoice.com

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  • Joe La Rocca 11/02/2009 7:59:00 PM

    Hey, Hoberman. How about you spend less time attacking a director's (in this case, Spielberg) integrity and more time reviewing the actual movie itself? Jackass.

  • sakara 09/25/2009 7:18:00 PM

    is it true that quentin tarintino sucked a lot of nazi cock during the making of this movie?

  • ohmygod 08/30/2009 2:23:00 PM

    the comments!!!

  • jaws 08/30/2009 2:21:00 PM

    jawsjawsjaws

  • Lorin P 08/27/2009 11:02:00 AM

    Best review I've read. Hoberman is exquisitely articulate and hits every nail on the head. Me? Fun movie. Very showy. Film references-o-rama. Tall hat, no cattle. No one to care about. Next...

  • George 08/26/2009 10:24:00 PM

    "With the evil genius of the 20th century already a joke everywhere outside of Germany�and perhaps even there�" oh really? I would like to know Mr. Hoberman's definition of "everywhere". Certainly not among most people I know and countries I visited. And if Mr. Hoberman stands by that statement, is this a good or a bad thing?

  • anna 08/26/2009 8:17:00 AM

    there's nothing comparable here.. oh yes, there's is...the arrival of the nazis at the farm, it seems to me so deja vu, can not even place it anymore..the taviani brothers, the night of the shooting stars.. any thriller movie really, the witnessmaybe, the long shot, the enemy as a small dot, so many times...so many... done.. the godard reference, pathetic...the flying match, oh boy, fellini's the ships sails on, but the match did flew better.. the colors, again, but how many times..the flashing red, the blacks, the all choreography.. not much original at all, the story yes, but its execution...not that of a genuine artist,,,all credit really goes to the nazi officer actor..he is superb..original..as far as i know..... he makes the movie, and the story obliges... what do i think of the story...that's another story..

  • SAM 08/24/2009 6:24:00 PM

    Great film. Go see it.

  • g. 08/23/2009 10:56:00 PM

    I'm just surprised Mr. Hoberman found it "tough to resist". Or maybe he meant the viewer will...

  • roger corman 08/21/2009 5:47:00 PM

    quentin tarintino is the biggest schlock hack in the history of cinema...he doesn't have even one orgiganol idea---he steal scenes from other movies and calls them homages.

  • Adam Zanzie 08/20/2009 12:49:00 AM

    I am getting increasingly bored and irritated with J. Hoberman's endless slinging of mud against Spielberg over the past decades. Now, even with this review, he has to go back and dismiss "Schindler's List" as a film that somehow exploits the Holocaust. Let me just say: what a crock of pretentious blather. You cannot possibly believe a single syllable. Hoberman is obviously biased against Spielberg- considering that he doesn't even try to appreciate any of his films. Before the camera even begins rolling, I'm sure he's already made up his mind. He has hated Spielberg ever since "Jaws", and I think that pretty much sums it up. The fact that Quentin Tarantino considers "Jaws" to be one of his favorite films (and no doubt has referenced it) just goes to show how Hoberman has underestimated Spielberg's influence on so many of today's greatest living filmmakers.

 

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