Brandon's movie memory

I’m not sure that I buy Tarantino films as thrice-a-decade Big Movie Events. If guy’s gonna make his fun genre flicks, I wish he’d make them more often. The movies he is emulating didn’t take this long to shoot. I’ve been seeing (and trying not to read) reports on this for years now, while I only heard of District 9 last week and I liked ‘em both just as much.

One would think the movie follows the Basterds as they rampage through France and Germany killing nazis, but one would be wrong. Starts with a 20-some-minute scene of nazi Col. Landa (Christoph Waltz won best actor at Cannes – nobody can shut up about him) grilling French farmer Denis Menochet about the Jews he is hiding, in Landa’s patient, wordy (duh), polite, milk-drinking manner. The murdered Jewish family’s daughter Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent of Indigènes, who will never have a better role) survives (an image reminiscent of the last-girl-standing final scenes of exploitation horror flicks) and three years later is running a movie theater she inherited from Maggie Cheung (in deleted scenes, which will hopefully surface). At that time, hero sniper Daniel Brühl (star of Goodbye Lenin and Salvador) is hot for her, arranges to hold the premiere of his new propaganda film at her theater. When she hears the entire nazi high command is attending, she plots to destroy the theater with them inside.

So what about the basterds? Well, they’ve got a plot of their own to show up at the film premiere, with the help of movie star Diane Kruger (star of Joyeux Noël), threatened when she is injured in a firefight at a group meeting place (which claims the life of my favorite basterd, Hunger star Michael Fassbender). QT allows a single scene of their nazi-scalping terror campaign (starring bat-man Eli Roth) to stand alone – the vast bulk of the movie is introduction then the week or two leading up to the film premiere.

The movie makes light of death and torture, essentially coming off as a comedy (Brad Pitt’s hilariously fake accent helps that assessment). RW Knight: “Overriding Tarantino’s gratuitous gore instincts is his allegiance to the power of the cinema, which he makes material (literal) here in the form of a combustible nitrate collection.” Surely there are tons of movie references, for once actually talked-about and plot-relevant (Goebbels, Emil Jannings, Leni Riefenstahl) instead of appearing as influences and references in Kill Bill and Jackie Brown (Death Proof had plenty of movie talk, too).

DCairns:

“It’s a film about cinema,” said Joe Dante, who was quite enthusiastic. Perhaps not a war film at all. Or a film about the victory of movies over war, somehow. Certainly, that’s literally what happens in the climax, which contains, all too briefly, the most beautiful image Tarantino has ever conceived or executed.

I have to say I didn’t take it as seriously as some, enjoying the hell out of the sight of Eli Roth machine-gunning Hitler’s lifeless body into the ground moments after the above-mentioned beautiful image (already-dead Shoshanna’s filmed face projected ghostlike on the smoke rising from the burning film stock). And the unusual structure, tense dialogue and Film Comment article’s about Tarantino’s references to American Indian massacres and other carefully thought-out pieces of writing make me think it could be worth taking more seriously. But if I take it seriously, I’ll have to consider the following.

DCairns again: “Inglourious Basterds in a way is about stealing back pleasure from horrible facts, the revenge of cinema upon tragic events, but as interesting as that is in the abstract, it doesn’t strike me as a healthy response. And the gloating nastiness is much closer to Nazism than it is to the spirit of resistance.”

The “gunman” (Hideaki Ito, star of Cross Fire from the Gamera director), a stranger who blows into town, plays one of the two ruling gangs against the other and emerges as the sole adult survivor.

Ruka Uchida, love child of the red and white clans, the other survivor and only non-participant of the bloodshed. According to closing titles he will grow up to be sequel-happy Italian hero Django.

Shun Oguri (Azumi, Miike’s Crows Episode 0) is Akira, the boy’s father, killed before the movie even starts but shown in flashback.

Yoshino Kimura (Glory to the Filmmaker, Dream Cruise), mother of the young boy turned Red Clan prostitute and killed off at the end.

Koichi Sato (Ring Spiral, Kinji Fukasaku’s Gate of Youth), cruel leader of the red clan, rips it up with a chain gun.

Yusuke Iseya (Memories of Matsuko, Distance, After Life, upcoming Blindness), stylin’ leader of the white clan, kinda the less evil of the two evil lords.

Kaori Momoi (Izo, Kagemusha), Akira’s mother and a legendary badass in hiding who comes out and helps our hero for the final fight. Falls somewhat in love with a white-headbanded guy whose name I couldn’t figure out.

Teruyuki Kagawa (of Memories of Matsuko, Serpent’s Path and the next K. Kurosawa film), the town sheriff torn between loyalties to both sides, becomes schizophrenic. Probably Miike’s most interesting new character in the story.

Quentin Tarantino (Destiny Turns On The Radio, Little Nicky) plays the funny-talking white guy in the framing scenes.

Watched late at night with Jimmy. Full of eager anticipation, turned quickly to apprehension when we’re unable to understand half the dialogue (plays at festivals with English subtitles, which we lacked). Then movie seemed to get longer and louder and more tedious, and I got sleepier and less interested…

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it has visual appeal, and a few stand-up-and-clap moments of bravura. Didn’t leave me cold exactly, just… wasn’t thrilling and I started to regret suggesting it.

But ya know what? Looking through the screen shots I started to like it a lot more. It’s a really awesome movie when… you know…

…when I’m not watching it.

Really there’s no question that Grindhouse is spectacular, so I’ve just been pondering which parts of it were the MOST spectacular. Rodriguez’s segment? Tarantino’s? The voiceover on Thanksgiving? Edgar Wright’s goddamned hilarious Don’t? Nicholas Cage? Danny Trejo as Machete? Rose McGowan’s machine-gun leg? Tom Savini? Kurt Russell’s crybaby finale? Rosario Dawson’s backseat hotness? The car stunts? Rodriguez’s surface noise and missing reel?

Planet Terror has an incomprehensible plot and is just in it for the fun of blowing things up and inventing unpredictable, shameless plot devices (still can’t believe the nurse’s kid shooting himself). All sorts of back story is either hilariously lost in the missing reel or just never existed, including Freddy Rodriguez’s El Wray character (who, btw, killed Osama Bin Laden). The production quality goes from slick to “dawn of the dead” (the zombies loose in the hospital scene) and back again. Bruce Willis is a… mutant, military something. It’s just a lot of fun.

Death Proof is very carefully plotted, with a Psycho plot twist in the middle, very neatly setting up the rest of the movie. Reviewers have noted that Tarantino is presenting the first group of girls (hot radio DJ, three friends and one rival) to be not very likeable, then after they’re dispatched by stuntman Kurt Russell, he introduces the other group (two stunt women, two film-crew friends) as the affable heroes. Makes sense, but I might’ve been phasing out during the long dialogue scenes, still overwhelmed by Planet Terror and the trailers, and missed his intentions there. Either way, the ending is beautiful.

Gotta see again, obviously.