Vera, Vera, what has become of you? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do? Well, Rog’, apparently they do. (And, to be she fair, she did say we’d meet again.)
Category: WWII
An Affirming Flame.
“All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority, whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State, and no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police. We must love one another or die.” W.H. Auden‘s “September 1, 1939” turns 70.
Via BDL, and seen where “ironic points of light flash out wherever the Just exchange their messages,” a.k.a. Twitter.
Swatting at Nazis.
Perhaps part of the reason I enjoyed the film was that I went in with egregiously low expectations. Particularly with Hostel director Eli Roth skulking about the premises — he’s Donny Donowitz, a.k.a. the “Bear Jew,” a Boston-born basterd who likes to go yahd on Nazi skulls with his Louisville Slugger — I went in thinking that this movie would basically be two and a half hours of grisly torture porn — or , in other words, the ear scene from Reservoir Dogs over and over again, made “ok” because the victims are Nazis. But Inglourious Basterds is both broader and more subtle than that. Yes, there’s some of that going on — particularly in Chapter 2 — but it’s handled much more expertly than I feared. (Nor are the victims in question just cartoon Nazis out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but multi-dimensional individuals in a huge spot of trouble.)
And, in any case, the Basterds are really a small part of the film as a whole. Borrowing liberally from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at the start, the movie begins in 1941 France with the interrogation of a French farmer (Denis Menochet) who may or may not be harboring his Jewish neighbors. His interlocutor is the courtly SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christophe Waltz, a bit over-the-top but probably a shoo-in for a Supporting Actor nod) who, in a wide-ranging conversation about milk, hawks, pipes, and paperwork, methodically picks apart the poor dairy farmer like a boy pinning down a butterfly. Then, we meet the Basterds, the elite unit of Jewish soldiers — led by “Aldo the Apache” Raine (Brad Pitt, also playing it broad) — who are kicking ass and taking manes all across Europe. Their dastardly exploits have even caught the attention of the German High Command — including the Fuhrer himself (Martin Wuttke), who wants them dead, like, yesterday. (Speaking of which, the early scenes in the FHQ, with Hitler throwing a tantrum over the Basterds, felt a lot like how I’d imagine a WWII-era Captain America film might pan out.)
Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), meanwhile, is more interested in getting his newest propaganda film — A Nation’s Pride, about the Sgt. York-like heroics of one German sniper (Daniel Bruhl) — the grand opening it deserves in Nazi-occupied Paris. To that end, and on the advice of said sniper (who’s a bit smitten with the proprietor), he looks to book the premiere at a theater run by a melancholy French beauty named Emmanuelle Mimieux (Melanie Laurent). But Emmanuelle, it turns out, is in fact named Shoshanna — we met her earlier in the film — and she more than most has a score to settle with these godawful Nazis. And, like Herr Goebbels, she knows a thing or two about using the cinema to make a dramatic statement…
I haven’t even mentioned the German actress/double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), or the dashing British film critic-turned-lieutenant, Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), or Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), the expert Nazi-killer sprung by the Basterds for bad behavior, or military mastermind Gen. Ed Fenech (Mike Myers, distracting but getting to live out his Peter Sellers dream some more), the man with a plan to knock out the German High Command in one fell swoop. Yes, this film is a truly baroque creation. It’s more a collection of loosely-related setpieces, to be honest, and some work better than others (A vignette involving a rendezvous-gone-south in a basement pub is a masterpiece of slowly-ratcheting suspense; the scene where Shoshanna is forced to eat dinner with a gaggle of Nazis feels ten minutes too long.)
Although most of the speaking here is conducted in French, German, or really-bad Italian (it’s all lovely to listen to, by the way — the musicality of QT’s dialogue definitely carries over into other languages), this is a Tarantino movie through and through. We have the long, meandering conversations punctuated by staccato bursts of violence. (See also: Any other Tarantino film.) We have the throwback homage-ridden score (Mostly Morricone, but David Bowie’s “Cat People” shows up in a truly odd spot.) We have the random digressions on “Pop Culture According to QT.” (There’s an extended riff on King Kong here that momentarily took me out of the film.) We have an obvious lapse into foot fetishism (the Cinderella scene, which, imho, doesn’t make much sense given what happens later.) There are, of course, several Mexican standoffs. It’s all very Tarantino, alright.
And we have the powerful ending, which I won’t give away in detail here. [Warning: This rest of this review is spoilerish.] As several characters say in Chapter 5, “the shoe’s on the other foot now.” And it is — After the tension-wracked first chapter, Basterds completely inverts the usual Cat-and-Maus relationship inherent to almost all movies of this genre. The political economy of IB is hardly what you’d call Zen, and if “turn the other cheek” is your moral touchstone, then the ending is deplorable in many ways. (Even Tarantino seems to think so, given that we the audience have basically the same reaction to Basterds as the Nazis do to A Nation’s Pride.) That being said, it’s a weirdly and undeniably intoxicating thing to see the Jewish Basterds being the guys holding the guns for once, and to witness their disembodied, cackling Avenging Angel exult in a vengeance long denied.
After all its Eurocinema-meets-The Dirty Dozen twists-and-turns, Inglourious Basterds ends up being a sort of a Leni Riefenstahl film for the Jews. And, well, propaganda it may be, but you don’t have to be a Tarantino-level foot fetishist to find it at least somewhat refreshing, even exhilarating, to see that boot on the other heel for once.
Secrets and Lies.
In the July 4th weekend trailer bin:
U.S. History for Dummies.
As many readers here well know, I’ve spent a good bit of time over the past decade studying US history. (In fact, over the past few years, I’ve occasionally helped my advisor keep a textbook up to date that recently drew the ire of right-wing blowhard Bill O’Reilly. Apparently, those damn pesky facts were somehow mitigating O’Reilly’s ability to spew forth the usual idiotic blather.)
Anyway, over that period of time, I believe I have in fact learned me a few things. So, as a public service of sorts, and because, after this morning’s revelations, I’ve reached the limit of craven and/or patently stupid falsehoods that I can feasibly ingest over so short a time, some “U.S. History for Dummies.” I expect most everyone who comes by this site with any frequency knows all this, but ya never know. Apologies for the didacticism in advance — if this were this a Coors Light commercial, this would be where i vent. (And thanks to Lia for the timely visual tax lesson, above.)
At any rate, as most people remember from high school, the original 1773 Tea Party was not a protest against high taxes or high prices at all. (In fact, legally imported tea — i.e. that of the East India Company, which was both suffering serious setbacks over in India and losing market share to smuggled Dutch tea at the time — was actually cheaper in the colonies after the Tea Act, since it was now exempt from the usual obligations.)
In small part a reaction of the East India’s commercial rivals to this sweetheart deal, the Boston Tea Party was mainly held to uphold the principle of No taxation without representation. Which I don’t think I need to explain. So, with the minor exception of DC-area conservatives who attended the tea gathering in Washington (without crossing over from Virginia or Maryland), the, uh, “teabaggers” don’t really have a leg to stand on here. This is particularly true after you consider that both ruthless gerrymandering and the vagaries of the Electoral College (I’m looking at you, Wyoming) actually tend to lead to over-representation of conservative Republicans in our halls of governance, even despite heavy losses for the “Grand Old Party” in 2006 and 2008.
Well, in fact, no state in the Union has any legal right to secede. (Not even Texas.) The existence of such a right was posited and debated quite often in the early years of the republic: by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, by the members of the Hartford Convention, by South Carolina’s philosopher-politician John C. Calhoun, and countless others.
But the illegality of secession was eventually confirmed — in blood — when eleven states attempted to pull out of the Union in 1861, due mainly to differing opinions on the institution of slavery and its expansion into the western territories. As a result of this insurrection by the southern states, a violent conflict broke out, which we call the Civil War. It lasted four years, and it was kind of a big deal.
Prior to the war, the states of the Confederacy believed secession to be their natural right, while those remaining in the Union believed it to be tantamount to an act of treason. With the Union victory in that conflict, and the subsequent readmittance of southern states in such a manner that reaffirmed that no right of secession exists, the question was settled. So it remains to this day.
Another argument we’ve heard lately — today Sen. McCain made it with his usual comrades-in-arms, Sens. Lieberman and Graham, while trying to protect Dubya’s lawyers — is that the CIA officials who actually conducted these recent acts of torture should be exempt from prosecution, because they were following the legal dictates of those higher-up in the administration. (To follow the reasoning around the circle, the torturers should be exempt because they were listening to the lawyers, and the lawyers should be exempt because they didn’t do the actual torturing. Cute.)
Anyway, whatever you think of the merits of this argument, this is usually referred to as the Nuremberg defense, and it is in fact no defense at all. Argues Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, devised by the Allies after WWII to determine what constituted a war crime: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” Insert “CIA interrogator” for person in that last sentence and you can pretty much see the problem.
America is not a Christian nation. This will be patently obvious to anyone who’s ever heard the phrase “separation of church and state.” Unlike, say, England, America does not have and has never had an official, established church. This is very much by design. For proof of this not-very-radical claim, see the very first clause of the very first amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
If that doesn’t do it for you, see George Washington’s famous 1790 letter to the Jewish residents of Newport, Rhode Island. “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.“
Or consider that Thomas Jefferson skipped his presidency on his tombstone to make room for his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: “Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” (We could also make mention of the Jefferson Bible, but let’s start slow.)
Is the reasoning here too circuitous for Rove, Gingrich, et al to follow? Ok, then, here’s the cheat sheet: the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, passed by a Congress of our Founders without declaim and signed into law by President John Adams. It begins: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…” Did y’all catch it this time? Good, let’s move on.
After the picture was taken, conservatives went predictably livid, with Matt Drudge headlining the offending photograph with the usual red text, Dick Cheney deeming Obama “a weak president” on FOX News, and Gingrich arguing that it made Obama look “weak like Carter.” “We didn’t rush over, smile and greet Russian dictators,” said Newt, and he wasn’t the only potential 2012’er aghast at Obama’s behavior. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada called the president “irresponsible” and the consistently shameless Mitt Romney painted Obama a “timid advocate for freedom”.
Um, ok. Well, let’s see here…
I could go on. With regards to that last one — Reagan yukking it up with Mikhail Gorbachev, then of “the evil Empire” — it didn’t take long before (surprise) Newt was caught in a contradiction. Apparently, Gingrich had previously argued on his website that Ronald Reagan’s good humor with Gorby was a sign of strength, not weakness.
Speaking of which, as Lawrence O’Donnell noted on MSNBC the other day, saintly old Ronald Reagan didn’t just smile and shake hands with America’s enemies. His administration sold them weapons under the table. So, please, assorted puddin’-heads of the GOP talkocracy, spare me your warmed-over tripe about poor diplomacy and weak leadership. As with everything else above, I’ve swallowed enough of your swill over the past few weeks to last me a lifetime.
Basterds and Huns.
Look alive, privates: The teaser for Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming WWII epic, Inglourious Basterds, is now online, starring (among others) Brad Pitt with a ‘stache and nasty neck scar, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Bruhl, B. J. Novak, Michael Fassbender, Maggie Cheung, Julie Dreyfus, Mike Myers, and Rod Taylor
Hmm. So far, I’m not feeling it. Even notwithstanding the aggravatingly misspelled title, both this and the overly-jubilant AICN set review make Basterds sound like WWII torture porn, or at best another installment of Tarantino wallowing in his grindhouse and Z-movie fetishes for two hours. (See also KB1, KB2, Death Proof.) I hope I’m wrong, and that this is a return to the form of the Reservoir Dogs-to-Jackie Brown years. But, as a AICN talkbacker aptly noted, it’s looking more and more as if QT has gone the self-indulgent, self-derivative way of Brian DePalma.
Mutiny in the Wehrmacht.
In mid-1944, the shadow of failed artist-turned-meglomaniacal psychopath Adolf Hitler still falls heavy across the continent, and, even as the Allies gather in North Africa, Italy, and the coast of Normandy, the Fuhrer maintains an iron grip over the oppressed peoples of Europe. As most everyone remembers from school days, Hitler was able to retain his power base in Germany, even amid the darkening gloom on both fronts, by ruthlessly organizing and consolidating the nation’s elite cadre of disgruntled character actors. Some of these character actors (Kenneth Cranham, Tom Hollander) rejoice in their servitude, and serve their Nazi master with an obsequious relish. Some of them (Tom Wilkinson, Thomas Kretschmann, Eddie Izzard) just look to keep their head down (for fear of losing it) and basically play go-along-to-get-along. But some character actors resisted. And as the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, and Terrence Stamp see their various attempts to unseat Hitler fail due to bad luck, poor timing, or compromised plotters, it becomes abundantly clear what they need to achieve their goal of regime change: a lead actor.
Enter Tom Cruise, otherwise known as Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a Catholic aristocrat who’s been shipped off to the now-doomed North African front for his free-thinking transgressions. (The Fuhrer’s resident character actor in charge there is Bernard Hill, a.k.a. Theoden king, and he still can’t run a battle without timely lead actor advice.) Horribly wounded in an Allied bombing raid, Cruise/von Stauffenberg loses an eye, a hand, and several fingers, but — for his service (and his very reputable name) — gains access to the Fuhrer himself, after some machinations by the plotters. As such, leadership of the proposed coup eventually falls out of the hands of the character actor conspiracy and upon him. “I am involved in high treason with all means available to me,” he tells one aide at his job interview, “Can I count you in?” In other words, enough monologuing already! What Germany need now is emoting and stunt work.
If it seems I’m being a bit glib about a story that indirectly involves millions of deaths, untold destruction, and (tho’ it’s only obliquely mentioned at the beginning) systematic genocide, well I apologize. Along with the Titanic-type sensation of continually “waiting for the iceberg” throughout Valkyrie, it’s really hard to sit through the film without recollecting the ubiquitous and consistently funny Bruno Ganz in Downfall meme. (See also the Cowboys, Warcraft, Burning Man, eBay, Wikipedia, Ronaldo, Youtube, etc.) It could be worse, I suppose: For the many citizens out there who see Tom Cruise and now can’t stop thinking “Scientology,” I can safely report that he’s fine in the role — it helps that both he and his character both answer to a higher power (and have a touch of the zealot about them) — and that the accent problem is handled smoothly (a la Hunt for Red October.)
I should say, before this “review” degenerates any further into pop culture musings, that the real historical facts of this story are fascinating. The plotters of this assassination attempt aren’t really visionary idealists or radical bomb-throwers — Hitler had already rounded up or murdered most of them — but the conservative-leaning remnants of the military and aristocratic hierarchies displaced by the Nazi regime. (The 20 July plot is basically crafted by generals and led by Junkers.) And the engine of their coup attempt is ingenious: The plotters almost succeed in converting Operation Valkyrie, Hitler’s last-ditch plan to stay in power should the roof cave in, into the machinery of his demise. Finally, these German patriots get sooo close to their goal that, had any one of several tiny contingencies played out even slightly differently, the history of the war (and its aftermath) would have been irrevocably transformed. As happens surprisingly often, it seems, the fate of the world is a game of inches.
All that being said, I found all of this information equally fascinating while watching the History Channel special after the film, so I’m not sure it really recommends the movie itself in the end. Singer’s Valkyrie is a smart, well-meaning two hours of cinema, and I was reasonably edutained by it, but at best I’d say it’s one for the Netflix queue.
Good Germans | Poor Little Rich Boy | Rusty Fan.
In the trailer bin of late:
Bastard out of Tennessee.
“Much of the pic’s dialogue is in French or German, and subtitles will be used, though Pitt will speak English in his role as a Tennessee hillbilly who assembles a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to take on the Nazis.” Brad Pitt officially signs up for QT’s forthcoming WWII epic, Inglorious Bastards. Also in negotiations to join the project at the moment: Nastassja Kinski, Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz, and B.J. Novak.
Hmm…I dunno. I haven’t read the script, which I heard was floating around, and probably won’t before I see the movie. I’d like to think that this’ll be a return to the form of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown for Tarantino. But the Kill Bills and Death Proof were so loopy, bloated, and self-indulgent that I fear QT has entered George Lucas territory, meaning that he’s surrounded by sycophantic yes-men and has sadly disappeared up his own ass, never to emerge again. And casting his buddy, torture-porn director Eli Roth, first only increases my wariness that this’ll be yet another self-referential bric-a-brac homage to exploitation flicks of the past. Still, hope springs eternal.
…and Sixty-Four on the Beach.
