The German word of the day is Offen, or in Englisg, Frank.

I saw the new Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds (that’s the correct spelling of the title actually) the other day and I think it was not only a good movie but another one of those cultural experiences that just appear out of no where because you happen to be in foreign country.  The film is about a group of Jewish- American soldiers who go behind enemy lines in occupied France to create all sorts of destruction.  Their story soon intersects with that of a young Jewish-French girl looking to avenge the death of her entire family at the hands of the Nazis, specifically an officer by the name of Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz, who won the best actor prize at Cannes for his performance and is also the first actor of the year to have Oscar buzz surrounding him).  Now, there are two reasons why I feel this movie could make an important blog: the first is the cultural issues that the film presents, both on screen and off, and the second involves the historical issues this film both presents and some, if not many, would say misrepresents.

Simply seeing a WWII movie in a German speaking country is an interesting cultural event but what made this experience so much more foreign and memorable to me was the issue of subtitles in the film.  Tarantino’s film does not follow other WWII tales where all the Germans speak English for some strange reason but actually has all the characters speak the language of the nation they represent.  The film is basically 1/3 English, 1/3 German, and 1/3 French and what made this so interesting for me was the fact that the subtitles used in the film aren’t made to help the English tourists visiting Vienna.  Though we saw the original English version the subtitles were obviously in German and what was even more aggravating were the scenes in German that had no subtitles at all.  I had to sit their while my friend translated as best he could the different verbal exchanges on screen and when it came to French I had to do my best with the lower division French courses I took at Davis as well as my three years of French in high school.  Nonetheless, I was still pleading in my mind for the French characters to slow down so I could cogitate in my mind what was actually going on.  To some, this probably would have ruined the movie but I must admit I probably have never used so much brain power watching a film, and this was a Tarantino film no less.  Just being in a movie theatre where dialogue is constantly changing from language to language and having only your wits about you to understand the storyline is a fascinating activity and one I might not jump to again but nonetheless partly enjoyed for its cultural value.  There were some other interesting nuances, such as the American jokes that only we would laugh at, or in other cases, the rest of the German speaking audience would laugh only after the subtitles came up on screen.  For all I know, there were probably some jokes in German that completely went over my head.

Now, the historical issues in the film are another area of cultural discussion because Inglourious Basterds only uses the events of WWII as a set piece to explain its story.  There’s a point where one can’t continue to say the film is following a WWII storyline but actually breaking out of the mold, heading into new territory, and shocking, offending, and surprising many in the audience.  What I sense Quentin Tarantino was looking for in making this film was a renewal of the 1960’s men on a mission film.  These films, such as The Deadly Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, and many others, all deal with a group of widely different American soldiers or spies being put together to go behind enemy lines in German uniforms and basically cause all sorts of havoc.  These films were able to connect the standard action picture with the war film and in some cases even base its material off real events.  But in the past few years a slew of truly serious WWII films were created and nearly all of them depicted the war as something without humor or action but with sadness and horror.  By returning to this old style of film, Tarantino is trying to bring back the fun of those old “men on a mission” films while also thumbing his nose at those films that have grown so serious that it seems impossible to portray the war any other way.  The fact is, WWII was an event like no other, and consequently, set itself up to be viable both as a jingoistic story of heroism or as a tale of suffering.  The acts the Nazis committed throughout Europe set them up to be both the greatest enemies Hollywood could ever want and the greatest antagonists of an drama period piece.  But the question of exploiting these events for the purpose of entertainment has taken its toll, both here in the United States and in Europe.

The EU made regulations recently that ban the depiction of the swastika and other Nazi iconography in all entertainment products that serve no historical or artistic purpose.  This law has caused such entertainment systems as video games to change the flags and logos of the Germans to less disagreeable symbols, such as the iron cross, even if the depiction of such an image on a flag is historically inaccurate.  The games are mostly all American products but our companies want to do well in oversea markets and so even Americans have to deal with the effects of the EU ban.  Movies are a blurry area for such a law and Tarantino’s film walks a fine line of historical accuracy and exploitative violence.  When you catch a commercial for the film here in Austria, you can see the Nazi flag throughout all the scenes but the one swastika that is stamped onto the title of American posters is missing entirely.  The symbol can’t be used for public commercialism but cannot be barred from the film itself.  Because video games don’t share the same artistic respect as film does in Europe, they can’t leisurely obscure such symbols on advertising and then fill such iconography into the game (most likely because governments want to keep such things away from minors).

Another historical concern is the representation of Nazis on film.  Last year there was some disagreement among critics about Kate Winslet’s performance as retired concentration camp guard Hannah Schmidt in The Reader.  Many saw the humanization of a Nazi as disrespectful but these critics seemed hell-bent on differentiating Nazis from humans and that I believe is ignorance as well since you can’t just say they were some alien force separate from the rest of the world.  Now, in Inglourious Basterds you have a much more nuanced interpretation of a Nazi officer that many critics have noted as the best depiction since Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List.  Christopher Waltz transforms his character into what I believe many people believed Nazi Germany was during the 1930’s and 40’s.  At times he can seem charming and intelligent (he speak four languages fluently in the film and loves to make jokes) but he can also perform acts of rage and perverse violence.  Thus, his character symbolizes the idea of a modern, sophisticated nation descending into total malevolence and conveying an ignorance towards mercy.  Unlike the stereotypical Nazi in Hollywood film, his smiles never hide some secret evil but are actually real smiles.  He seems totally unaware that what he does could be called abominable by others.  Thus, we know he’s evil but he doesn’t and that adds a nuance I think others tend to ignore or avoid in Hollywood.  The fact that the audience still knows he’s evil allows conservative critics to breath a sigh of relief that this isn’t another Hannah Schmidt performance where the audience is constantly questioning the morality of the character.

Now, you may be asking why should I be going on and on about these different performances.  Well, the fact is these performances describe the different perceptions we make of the past and how our representation of these historical eras will be presented in the future.  These performances can summarize how we as a society reflect on entire nations, whole ideologies, and large historical events and therefore should be studied on a sociological level for the importance they hold as an account of historical memory.  You could say I may be reading into this too much but in order validate my claims we will have to wait several years to see how depictions of the Second World War change in the future.  Whatever the case may be, these films, no matter how politically incorrect, have great implications regarding our process of determining history.  Thus, entertainment venues today can work just as well as a text book in telling the world what to think about our past.  It may not be authoritative and it probably is definitely inaccurate but what I believe film can convey most affectively is tone.  Tone can both make the world black and white as well as dilute it until it is gray.  This makes movies a powerful source of both sobering honesty and blatant propaganda.  Mattering on how film is used, one won’t determine the correct way of viewing history, but they may be seeing the direction the world is taking tonally in historical understanding.  Whether this is a good or bad thing cannot be easily determined since in my opinion, for every good movie there’s an equally bad movie.

History and culture was not something I expected upon entering the Burgkino theatre one week ago but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself constantly analyzing the audience as well as what I saw on screen.  This was in part an affect from the lack of English subtitles, which caused my brain to work extra hard to understand everything.  Overall, it was a good film and I’ve done my best here trying to evoke the historical nature of the film rather than simply giving a review of what I liked and disliked.  There were several things I had problems with but they don’t pertain to this argument and so I feel its best to disregard them here.  The irony about all this is that Inglourious Basterds doesn’t actually follow history at all after hour number two and goes off an alternative history tangent that either leaves you angry or jumping up and down in excitement.  I was in neither of these categories but I feel I’m an exception since I avidly study both history and film respectively and so could understand the criticisms both sides would have on the matter.  What the movie does do, as I’ve stated before, is promote a tone about the constantly changing retrospective power of the war.  On a basic level, the history channel level you could say, there is no debate and the world is split between bad guys and good guys.  This argument actually holds some weight based on the heinous acts committed during the war but I’d definitely say there’s a deeper level of study that can be found where the Manichaean focus of WWII is dropped and a more neutral view of history begins to appear.  I believe at some level film is beginning to fall into this more diluted zone of historical introspection, even if the lines between good and evil still exist on screen.  To make the film Tarantino has made, it would be impossible not to at least find some evidence in this conclusion.  The Nazis are still the bad guys and there is only minimal humanization of some of these antagonists, but overall, you’re given a more specific view of these characters than just Nazi #1 and Nazi #2.  It was enjoyable to see Inglourious Basterds and I want to see it again in America but I think there was definitely some valuable insights that occurred while watching the film that would have been hard, if not impossible, to completely comprehend had I seen it at the theatre in downtown Davis.