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?

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - Tommy Lee Jones Shines as Director

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada 

This is a great film replete with suggestive symbols of grace, redemption, magical thinking, loss and the boundaries that are personal, cultural, and spiritual, not merely geographic. Ironically, when a dreamless, aimless Barry Pepper, who seems already past his prime at 30 becomes a member of the border patrol, he shoots an anonymous Mexican (Jones's blood brother so to speak)--and not even having the sympathy to try to help him--in fact, not having the humanity to even touch him as he lies bleeding to death--is more concerned about his job than another human being. In this case the Mexican to him is merely a type, not really a person. On the other hand Tommy Lee Jones, who sees the person behind the persona, is more concerned about the soul than the outward trappings of language or labels. When he discovers his friend dies at the hands of Pepper, Jones sits in his friend's modest shack just to feel his presence--to commune with his dead friend, as a means of coming to terms with his grief. 

Faced with the indifferent locals who would rather save their butts than save their souls, Jones takes it on himself to become the humanizing agent in a mercenary world. Forcing the border guard at gunpoint to accompany his friend to his final burial place, he traverses a bleak land that could be the Eliot's wasteland or the underworld. When he brings his friend home, he finds to his surprise, this beloved Mexican town is not what it is described to be. But as he understands that sometimes the imagination fulfills a purpose that life cannot, dignifies the death of his friend and redeems the humanity of the border guard. This film shows how human relations matter; how the electronic media are mere illusion producing devices; and even an old cowboy's body can find the fountain of youth by sticking to basic principles of human decency and understanding, and even the most direloneliness can be overcome even miles from home.

Michael Clayton: Analogies to the book of Jonah?

Many have remarked the opening of Michael Clayton is an example of exemplary film dialogue, particuarly the extended speech of Clayton's colleague, who has discovered that his life is a lie (so to speak).  Is this the raving of a bipolar sufferer or the message of a prophet?   First consider the speech:"Two weeks ago, I came out of the building, okay. I'm running across Sixth Avenue, there's a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I'm dictating. There's this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we're standing in the middle of the street, the light's changed, there's this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I- I-I freeze, I can't move. And I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered with some sort of film. It's in my hair, my face. It's like a glaze like a- a coating, and, at first I thought, oh my God. I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I'm drenched in afterbirth, I've-I've breached the chrysalis, I've been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I'm thinkin' no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth. This is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity.

I- I-I- I realized Michael, that I had emerged not through the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the- the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of s--t for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now."

Consider the resemblances to flee. He goes to Tarshish. God calls up a great storm at sea, and the ship's crew cast Jonah overboard in an attempt to appease God. A great sea creature sent by God, swallows Jonah. Inside the fish's belly, he says a prayer in which he repents for his disobedience and thanks God for His mercy. God speaks to the fish, which vomits out Jonah safely on dry land. After his rescue, Jonah obeys the call to prophesy against Nineveh, and they repent and God forgives them. Jonah is furious, however, and angrily tells God that this is the reason he tried to flee from Him, as he knew Him to be a just and merciful God. He then beseeches God to kill him, a request which is denied when God causes a tree to grow over him, giving him shade.
In Michael Clayton, Michael may be God's messenger who involves himself in rectifying the evil that his colleague has uncovered.

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 

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

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

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