Response to Inglorious Basterds - And what's with the incorrect spelling?

  I will give a 'reading' of this film as briefly as I can. I can't believe I'll spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but maybe at least some who have seen it will re-consider their assessment. I found Inglourious Basterds to be one long cinematic joke--an ironic joke. Nothing in this movie should be interpreted without considering that Tarantino wants you to understand you're watching a movie. The problem is that many people who watch movies don't think about the fact they're watching one, or forget they're watching one. Tarantino wants you to be aware of this--what better way than to create some very "bad" cinematic moments? IN other words, this movie is a satire of movie convention. I think that is why there are a number of 'sitting around the table' scenes that are are very long and tedious. They are not meant to be believable as cinematic art because if they were they would be defeating the purpose of the film. They're artifice and the best way to demonstrate artifice is to point it out directly. Goddard did this when he filmed light cables that threaded their way through a mise en scene right where the actors were performing. Tarantino does it here by creating both utter cliches and utterly 'bad' filmmaking. That a German officer would speak perfect French to a French farmer, then stops, says he has limited French-speaking abilities, and then speaks in English to the French farmer who happens to speak English is pretty goofy, and it's boring. But It's meant to be. When a Nazi hunter doesn't order his men who are sitting around a jeep to run down and kill a Jewish girl while she is running through the countryside--and instead had a grin on his face is equally absurd--the suggestion is that they will meet again one day. How does he know this? Because it's a movie.

But that's OK, because we're not seeing an attempt to create a cinematic version or interpretation of historical events because all such movies are fabrications. All movies are fabrications, of course, and Tarantino is trying to remind the viewers of the fact. We are seeing an exercise in how a filmmaker controls what goes into the art. If Tarantino wants to create a bad scene, then he does so. It's as if he were saying, "I'm so in command of the grammar of cinema that I I'll make this scene too long, contrived, cliched, dull, etc., just to show I know the good and bad aspects of cinema.

He even has one actor, Mike Myers, play a cliched version of his own cliched actor's persona. He's not portraying a British officer. He's portraying Mike Myers. The range of jokes in the film go from the sublime to the ridiculous, the latter evident when Brad Pitt tries to fake an Italian accent at a gathering of SS officers. That is straight out of The Three Stooges or Mel Brooks. Additionally, the alteration of the Nazi sniper spy movie and the subsequent flames leaping around the movie screen have all the production values of an Ed Wood movie. You don't see "Plan 9 from Outer Space" because it's a good movie. You see it because it's a bad movie, although you might say it's so bad that it's good.

I'm not suggesting that I'm a Tarantino fan. I really don't care what movies he makes or why. I haven't seen "Kill Bill" which I believe he directed. This stuff isn't rocket science, so I wouldn't use such words as 'genuis' or 'brilliant.' But at least it's a change of pace from the usual Hollywood garbage.

You could take every scene and shot, and about every line of dialogue from this film and find a meta-communicative aspect. That's why it would be way too tedious to truly critique the film. It would take a thousand pages or so. But you get the idea. Now go find a few 'bad jokes' of your own if you have the inclination. BTW, what better way to show the artifice of film titles, and in particular, the way titles of films are used to stand out as a form of a film's PR than to misspell one?

Pan's Labyrinth: Deserving of an Oscar for Cinematography

Interview with Guillermo Navarro


Oscar for best Cinematography Goes to Pan's Labyrinth

For those that watch DVDs for the Commentary - Walk the Line Voted #1

 Walk the Line was voted the best in film commentary.  What do you think of the other 99?


Top 100 film commentaries on DVD 

Cinematography in The Quiet American

Roger Ebert's Review of "The Quiet American" (Four stars)

Where the film lacks dramatic tension, Christopher Doyle’s cinematography provides a much needed visual fillip. A veteran of the Hong Kong film industry and regular Wong Kar-wai collaborator, Doyle also shot Noyce’s other recent release, Rabbit Proof Fence (Phillip Noyce, 2002). In The Quiet American, Doyle’s cinematography varies imaginatively from the destabilising, hand-held battle sequences to the static, Ozu-inspired interior scenes in Fowler’s Saigon residence. A particularly effective device, repeated on several occasions, has Pyle looming erratically into frame, an obliquely suggestive formal representation of the increasingly ambiguous status of his character.

Is there anything to learn about cinematography by watching Black and White?

Black and white feature films list: the best cinematography

Alfonso Cuaron on American producers

When I was developing the script for Great Expectations the producers were worried about my depiction of class relations. It's because Americans insist there's no class problem in the US. -- Alfonso Cuaron

Cinematographers pick the 50 best films 2000-2010

Do you agree with these choices? If not, which should be included? Which should be eliminated.

The 50 best films 2000 - 2010: Cinematographers Vote

10 Great Cinematographers - Film History

10 Cinematographers and Sample Clips

What is a Cinematographer? Cinematographer of The Kings Speech Explains

What is a cinematographer? Read an interview with the cinematographer for The Kings Speech

Read an interview with Danny Cohen, cinematographer for The Kings Speech here:

Interview

John Cassavetes talks about film and cinema

Most people don’t know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, It’s very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to… As an artist, I feel that we must try many things – but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad – to be willing to risk everything to really express it all. –John Cassavetes

Christopher Doyle Masterclass in Cinematography

Ten Best Italian Films?

1. 'La Strada'
(Federico Fellini, 1954)

2.'The Conformist'
(Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)

3. 'Ossessione'
(Luchino Visconti, 1943)

4. 'L'Avventura'
(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

5. 'A Fistful of Dollars'

6. 'The Battle of Algiers'

7. 'Dear Diary'
(Nanni Moretti, 1993)

9. "The Consequences of Love'
(Paolo Sorrentino, 2004)

10. 'Pane, amore e fantasia'
(Luigi Comencini, 1953)

Robert Bresson on Film

Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.

Wernor Herzog on Film

We live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.

Ingmar Bergman on film and art

I want very much to tell, to talk about, the wholeness inside every human being. It's a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then.

Christopher Doyle on Film

Christopher Doyle: The clouds moving across the road in random patterns, the traffic, what's going on by the roadside - all affect the shot. So you have to think just a little ahead, beyond your mundane self. Why fall back on old habits and other people's ways? Why not trust your eyes and intuition? Why not use taste instead of training? Try to find what best expresses what's going on, what's exciting to your eye. What you end up with may not be "new", it may not be brilliant, but at least you can say it's you.

Jean Renoir on Film

All technical refinements discourage me. Perfect photography, larger screens, hi-fi sound, all make it possible for mediocrities slavishly to reproduce nature; and this reproduction bores me. What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object. Jean Renoir

John Huston on Film

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.
--John Huston

Martin Scorsese on Film and Art

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard. Martin Scorsese