Case Study #2: Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's latest film, the World War II/revenge/exploitation/spaghetti western flick Inglorurious Basterds (henceforth referred to as IB, since purposefully misspelling things triggers my OCD), is the most recent film to set off a critical firestorm regarding both its meaning and place in Tarantino's filmography. The reason I felt compelled to write an entry on the film is because this ongoing debate has really encapsulated for me a large problem I have with modern film criticism, and one of the reasons I set up this blog. And secondly, it also details the love/hate relationship I have with QT and his films.

For a cinephile like myself, there are a few films that you will always remember the first time you watched them, that have a profound effect on you when the credits roll. The first for me was Star Wars as a kid. I had never really thought about movies before that, but Star Wars showed me that there was a whole other galaxy right inside my TV set, and imagination.

As I got older, Pulp Fiction had a similar effect. On the recommendation of a friend, I watched the movie at 2 AM one night on TV (uncut) while I was home alone. When it was over I had a new favorite movie. I was 15 and impressionable, and for a few years at least Pulp Fiction represented a masterpiece of cinema. It was the first film I had seen that critics, film professionals, etc, consider to be truly great. If I looked down a list like the top 250 on IMDB, or the AFI top 100 movies, there would be a lot of films I hadn't seen, but Pulp Fiction was one I had, and it was always rated quite highly. Deservedly so, I thought.

Over the next six years I saw a lot more movies and had many more experiences like I did when Pulp Fiction ended. My taste in film evolved, and soon the undisputed favorite had many challengers from all corners of cinema. But Tarantino was always a tricky director for me to pin down. I saw and loved Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, heard stories of his thievery, and was disappointed by Death Proof. Slowly, he began to descend my list of favorite filmmakers. My views on art changed, and I began to see less and less I liked in his movies. They were still a fun ride, but they didn't leave my mind racing and neurons firing like Wild Strawberries or Late Spring did. I had soured on Tarantino.

Cue IB. Sitting in the theater I was ready to be unimpressed as I was with Death Proof, to walk out of the theater swearing off Tarantino. But IB evoked a sort of visceral response from me. I had fun. I enjoyed his technique, his dialogue, his characters. IB was a fun ride, and when it was over I left with a smile on my face. A good movie. Not great by any means, not the masterpiece Tarantino slyly claimed it was, but a solid, enjoyable flick.



Then, I wandered upon a forum thread discussion of the movie (on The Auteurs, a great site, if anybody is interested). And boy did this movie spur discussion. Essentially, the fight was 3-ways. In one corner, you had the Tarantino fanboys, my former colleagues. In the other, you had the Tarantino haters, who believes QT represents everything that is wrong with modern cinema. And somewhere in between, you had critics who were trying to interpret the film through historic, political, feminist readings. And some found that this gave the film legitimate meaning while others felt it was a misstep because their interpretations didn't hold up.

I didn't agree with any of them. QT is not the messiah of filmmaking, and if you believe that you need to see more movies and probably get out more. Neither is he the end of cinema, he clearly has a lot of talent and the presence of his films do not overshadow any other director. But his films also do NOT contain deep insights into the human experience, politics, history, or anything else.

I realized that I was wrong for souring on QT. In any interview you ever see with the guy, he always talks about film. He genuinely loves movies, and that's all over every single one of his films. But my problem is that after every film critics try to turn it into something its not. They do mental gymnastics, push, pull, stretch, and conveniently ignore until the film fits into what they personally believe to be "art." And if it doesn't work, they thrash it.

But Tarantino never talks about history. He doesn't comment on our perception of World War II, of the Jews, or any of this. Its all incidental to him. When he talks about a scene, he talks about what movies influenced his making of it. When he directs his actors, he gives them points of reference from other movies. This is a man who listed "Speed" in his top 20 movies of the past 17 years. He's never had any more ambition than giving the audience a fun ride. Which he does. Well.

It hit me that it wasn't Tarantino I had a problem with, but the critical response to his movies. I don't care if Tarantino makes a movie that doesn't align with my sensibilities. He's just making the kind of films he wants to make, the kind of films he watched and loved. What I have a problem with is the critical response that his movies always tend to stir up. For some reason his name causes critics to consider his films as something more than they are. To put him up there with the greats, the Bergmans, Kurosawas, Godards, is a disservice. Looking at his movies in any intelligent way reveals little more than a love for bullets and witty repartee. I've never read any interpretation of his movies that convinces me of any motivation beyond indulging his own sensibilities. Every single one conveniently ignores large chunks of the movie, or uses vague, small motifs (such as the nicknames in IB) extrapolated to make ambiguous points. IB doesn't make some grand historical statement. Its a collection of scenes he thought would play out well. With access to money, he's a kid in a candy store. More power to him.


The problem isn't just with QT, but film criticism in general. Critics, in an attempt to appear intelligent, will take a movie like The Dark Knight and try to draw a connection to the conservative political movement. Or make the case that Terminator 3 is a metaphor for post 9/11 America (I actually read this, in a film studies TEXTBOOK of all places). To that I say- what about the scene where he hangs off the back of a truck? Its just so disingenuous. Can't we enjoy these movies for what they are rather than falsifying some greater ambition beyond making a buck?

Like I said, I enjoyed IB for what it was, but if you think about it's "themes" for more than 10 seconds after the film is over, well, see a doctor. In the ensuing discussion in the forum, where I made this very case, somebody agreed with me that QT didn't intend for the movie to be viewed as it was, but that there were still "codes" in the film that needed to be interpreted. The scary part is, people actually believe this, that there are some sort of secret, unintended patterns in films that are worthwhile to point out. To what end?

I'm all for multiple interpretations, but the artist's intent has to factor into it. You can't give a Marxist reading of a Shakespeare play, because Shakespeare wasn't a Marxist, plain and simple. I'm much more interested in films that can provoke a personal reaction, that can give us a snapshot of life. Some of the films I've viewed this summer, like A Woman Under the Influence and Late Spring, do this very well. It's more effective anyway to examine the human condition rather than make some grand historical or political allegory. I can read about history or politics on the Internet. Film can do so much more.

What I'm saying is entertainment has a place, and it goes back to my "movie/film" dichotomy that I outlined in my "Opening Night" post. IB is a fun movie. It's great entertainment, and QT is a great entertainer. But if we're looking to him for a serious meditation on the Holocaust, we're in trouble, folks.

Case Study #1: Watchmen

"Part of what Watchmen is about was trying to set up four or five radically opposing ways of seeing the world and let the readers figure it out for themselves; let them make a moral decision for once in their miserable lives! Too many writers go for that "baby bird" moralising, where your audience just sits there with their beaks open and you just cram regurgitated morals down their throat. Heroes don't work that way anymore. What we wanted to do was show all of these people, warts and all. Show that even the worst of them had something going for them, and even the best of them had their flaws." - Alan Moore on Watchmen


Before I weigh in on the latest geeky pop-culture obsession to all of a sudden become cool with the frat-boy crowd because some PR firm did their job right (jeez, am I jaded or what?), let me start by saying I am in awe of Watchmen as a graphic novel. Frankly, I think its one of the best books I've ever read and one of the most philosophically layered and intricate novels every constructed. And I'm not saying that from some comic book fan's point of view, I've read the classics as well, and what Alan Moore does in Watchmen is a modern continuation on the epic scale of something like Paradise Lost; that is, trying to work out man's place in the universe through art. Heavy stuff. And yes, there are superheroes and they fight bad guys from time to time, but its all quite incidental in the face of the themes Moore is tackling.

That's why you'll have to take what I have to say about the movie adaptation of Watchmen with a grain of salt, but its a classic case of Why I Hate Movies; OR Why I Love Film. I differentiate between the two, see, because I truly believe that film is the greatest medium for art in existence. It combines all other forms of art and when a master is at work there is no comparison. You can take the visual style of a painting and combine it with the feelings you can only get through music, set it to the great drama of the theater and the themes and characters associated with literature. All too often that potential is wasted by the popcorn-munching genre flicks designed to appeal to people who will shell out their hard-earned money for any old piece of crap and like it. I don't mean to preach and I don't mean to dismiss; I like a good popcorn flick every now and then as much as the next guy but there comes a point when the entire landscape of cinema is clouded by these cash-ins. And its frustrating when you see that film as a whole has so much more potential than that.

Graphic novels similarly have a ton of untapped potential, as geniuses like Moore prove. The meshing of visuals with literature is a lot more powerful than a simple "picture book." And yet, the comics industry is bogged down in fantasy tales of superheroes and other things that don't really stimulate the old brainbox. Moore saw this and flipped the script, turned everything on its head and produced one of the greatest works of art of the 20th century. Unfortunately, Watchmen was mostly remembered by the fanboys for the badass, dark characters, and it kicked off a decade of snarling Wolverine clones and tormented superheroes. But nobody ever recaptured what Moore had done, including Moore himself.

That brings me to Zach Snyder's Watchmen. For those of you still reading at this point I'm gonna say pre-emptively that a lot of what I write here will make little to no sense without having read the novel. This is not a review, its an analysis, and there are SPOILERS ABOUND for both book and film. If you haven't read it, click off my blog now, go out, and shell out the money for it. If you were gonna go see Watchmen this weekend, save your ten bucks and pick up a copy of the book instead, you might spend two dollars more but it'll be entirely worth it. I mean this with no malice intended, I truly hope you listen to me, close the window, and open a new one.

Right. So as I've established, I love both Watchmen and film, so a Watchmen film must seem like its straight up my alley right? Despite Moore's own protests that the book was unfilmable, something I now agree with, I still had cautious optimism for the film. There was a ton of lip service in the press payed to how faithful Snyder has been, but I get the feeling that a lot of the people writing these articles haven't picked up the book in awhile. Because while Snyder is faithful visually and story-wise (for the most part), his flick has lost a lot of what made Watchmen just so revolutionary. I'll start at the beginning.


As I walked into the theater for Watchmen, or as the Odeon here in London stupidly proclaimed on the marquee "The Watchmen," I was actually excited. Despite months of me telling myself not to expect much, I was still going to see a Watchmen movie. Its mind-boggling to think of how this movie got to the screen; I'll spare you the details because its been printed numerous times over the past few months. And the opening scene, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan lighting up a cigar and watching Adrian Veidt's "Unforgettable" commercial, was pitch-perfect... for a good 10 seconds. Then an intruder, and a 5-minute fight scene (or ass-kicking, the Comedian doesn't land a punch really).

Wait, what? On the whole Moore's book has about 3 fight scenes, and "scene" is a loose term. Translating them to screen would take up 30 seconds. In the book the Comedian is thrown out the window with nary a struggle, boom, case closed. Already I was put off, because in everything that I read it said that Snyder was struggling to cut down the movie to fit everything in. And the giant squid ending couldn't be in because it'd take too long to explain everything and blah, blah, blah. But we're 5 minutes in at this point and I could already shave off 4 minutes. Still, I'm young and optimistic, so I figured I'd give Snyder a chance. After all, he hadn't ruined anything yet.

After a really well-done title sequence, the movie settles down and we begin to follow Rorschach around as he looks into the Comedian's murder. For the most part Snyder sticks to the book during these sections. But the opening scenes are mostly a detective story, and not a very interesting one at that. I began to think to myself: does this just not translate well? The plot is really a potboiler type of a mystery. So why did I love the book so much? Then I began to really think about all the reasons why.

I realized that the reason Snyder's film wasn't working for me was because its the details that make Watchmen transcendant. I love seeing a kid discover a comic book and how Tales of the Black Freighter ties into Adrian Veidt's own journey. I love Hollis Mason's last stand, and all the background in Under the Hood. I love the quotes at the end of chapters, the titles of chapters, and Dave Gibbon's artwork. But most of all I love the characters. And that's what Snyder is missing.

He thinks Watchmen is about superheroes. To argue against that sounds dumb at first but its really about the people under the masks. We never see those people in his version. Moore says- "wow, the people who would be superheroes in the real world would actually be quite fucked up." Snyder says- "COOL! Superheroes!" Its why there are chain guns on the Owl Ship, and why there are extended slow-mo fight scenes interspersed between all that boring dialogue stuff. Yawn. Wouldn't want to actually get too deep here would we?


I'll give an example. After explaining why Rorschach is different from everybody else (because he kills unmercifully), Snyder inserts a fight scene where Nite Owl and Silk Spectre beat up a gang full of thugs. In said scene, Silk Spectre stabs one of them in the neck with a knife. Sorta contradicts what he just did, doesn't it? And this is a Snyder addition. For someone who proclaims to have reverence to the novel, he certainly doesn't mind taking some artistic liberties in the name of broad appeal. The problem is, when he does it, it invalidates much of what Moore was trying to do.

I still held out hope. Just wait, I thought. The scene that first hooked me in the book was when Rorschach has his psychiatry session with Malcolm Long. The chapter focuses on Long, who goes from confident and moralistic to frightened and scared. Rorschach not only converts Long to his point of view, but the reader/audience as well. We find out about his character; why he views the world in black and white, and it starts to make sense to us too. It's that all important "persepective" Moore talks about in the quote at the top of this post.

But it was nowhere to be found. Sure, we get the story about why Rorschach kills people, and Snyder overindulges and showing just how brutal he can be. But Rorschach's moral objectivity, his "gaze into the abyss" quote, hell, his whole damn character, are cut. And I am not a bitchy fanboy- I understand some things will be lost in translation. But Snyder chooses to center his film around the guy, so you'd think he'd develop him a bit better. Plus, it just pisses me off to think that all that extra time is spent on fight scenes, or the ridiculous alternative energy subplot, or all those scenes of the laughably-bad Nixon in the war room. Why?


And here's where I get to the crux of my argument: Snyder doesn't understand the book. Its over his head. He sees the cool characters, he gets the vague politics and Cold War paranoia to a certain extent, he sees the shock value of superheroes misbehaving. But he doesn't understand any of the philosophy at the heart of the book. Moore spends an awful lot of time establishing that Doctor Manhattan basically is God, Snyder spends a lot of time undoing this.

Billy Crudup was an inspired choice and Manhattan's origin is great, but where is his "Watchmaker" soliloquy on Mars (lending a much deeper meaning to the title then just the name of a supergroup, which it isn't in the novel). Where is his "we're all puppets, I'm just a puppet who can see the strings" line? And why, dear God why, did Snyder take his genius line "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends" and give it to Laurie ("I think Jon would say nothing ends"). He misses the entire point of the character.

That quote is given weight when Manhattan says it because he perceives time simultaneously. Manhattan says the line to a doubting Ozymandias who worries whether he has done the right thing (here he's just the "bad guy" who wants to reshape the world in his own vision). And the quote hits home because you realize that although Ozymandias' scheme may have worked in the short term, he has not saved humanity, merely tricked it for the time being. Likewise Rorschach doesn't just seem like a stubborn fool spouting psychobabble, but instead he understands something about humanity and their place in the universe. We do have purpose. Its worth fighting for. Not everything is a joke like the Comedian thinks. In the end, Manhattan is inspired to go create life elsewhere- he has realized human life has meaning (what that is, Moore doesn't say, it would be fabricated if he claimed to know).

But Snyder changed all of that. All those warring philosophical viewpoints are boiled down into good guys vs. bad guys. Every philosopher has postulated the hypothetical "superman," what exactly would happen if someone was a god? How would they view the world? If it was possible to be omniscient and have a perception of time what would we learn about the universe? Could we perhaps answer the mysteries of life? Moore has the balls to make him a goddamn character. But here his powers are watered down to the point that Manhattan is easily duped by Ozymandias, who cant even trick the audience into thinking hes not the villain. Yep thats right, Ozy tricks God.

And the common argument is all of this takes too much time to explain, just be happy with what we got. But here is what separates a movie from a film- a movie looks to entertain. You pay your ten bucks, see some bad guys get beat up and everybody goes home happy. A comic book does the same thing. But a film looks to inspire. It makes you think, it reaffirms your life or makes you question your place in the universe- or dare I say it does all three at the same time like the Watchmen novel. The potential was there, but wasted.

On to the giant squid. Fans of the novel probably noticed that Moore's climax was heavily altered for the film. In the book, Ozymandias kidnaps the world's elite scientists and artists and forces them to create a psychic squid, which he teleports into downtown Manhattan, where it proceeds to turn itself inside out and kill everybody. Yes. That happens.

OK, obviously it seems ridiculous and something that you could cut out easily. But Moore didn't just throw this in there willy-nilly. Its part of his overall purpose. The squid is tied into something that Moore personally wanted to comment about, and thats art. Why are artists involved in the making of a squid? And why are they being forced to work for Ozy?

First a quick aside. At its most philosophical Watchmen asks about the meaning of life. The Comedian sees no meaning. Rorschach finds meaning in his sense of morality. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre find it in love. Manhattan is searching for the reason behind why everybody is so intent on preserving life because he sees things from a strictly objective and biological standpoint.

For Moore, art is meaning, and the squid is what happens when that meaning is taken away. Forced into creating the squid like slaves, the "intellectual elite" that Ozy captures create something horrific rather than beautiful, something that destroys rather than progresses. Human existence is meaningless when it is corrupted in this way. The squid destroys psychically rather than physically. Manufactured art is soul-destroying, quite literally.

Do you see what I'm getting at here? It's why Moore has the last laugh. The bitter irony for Snyder is that he doesn't understand this point either. Although he cuts the giant squid, the whole movie is a giant squid, and Snyder is Ozymandias. He twists, he perverts, he corrupts, he manufactures. He sucks the meaning out. But the squid doesn't work with the story Snyder is trying to tell, because he would never get to that level. To him, its to be taken literally as it is at face value. He never digs any deeper. That's what keeps his film grounded in mediocrity.

Again, I understand the time issue. And I've stated before a lot more of the themes could have been touched on or explored with the exclusion of the Strangelovian war room and fight scenes and extraneous bits. But even if you can't fit the squid in, what stopped Snyder from shooting the film like Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings, that is, shoot everything possible and release it all for the fans later. LotR is way denser than Watchmen and WB is sinking 100 mil into this baby. More than that, once the press machine got going Snyder had complete creative control. If he went to the press with one inkling of discontent (that the studio was messing with his baby), the fan backlash would be unimaginable. WB would have been burnt to the ground. I want to give him credit for trying but at the same time its difficult not to hold him completely responsible.



A brief smattering of other nit-picking criticisms. Beyond all the changes, I just don't think the film works, even for those who haven't read the novel. The plot is disjointed, the dialogue cringeworthy, and most of the acting is uninspired. I think this is because Snyder doesn't know how to explain to his actors what he is trying to achieve because I don't think he understands it himself. It seemed like there were two people working on the movie- Snyder and Moore, but every choice Snyder makes for himself clashes drastically with Moore's vision (examples: superhero fight scenes in a deconstruction tale, Laurie stabbing a guy in the neck, Hallelujah during the sex scene). If Snyder wanted to add to the story he should have done it in a way that helped to underscore Moore's work, because the whole thing just doesn't make sense otherwise. He's certainly visually talented, the movie is drop-dead gorgeous, but like most hot babes there's not a whole lot going on much deeper than that.

So Who Watches The Watchmen? Good question. I'm not entirely sure. One who hasn't read the book surely would be lost in the ridiculousness of the whole thing. It doesn't have the detail of Moore's book to keep the plot flowing, there's no reason to be invested in any of the characters. Maybe if all you want are some cool fight scenes you'd like it. I can't imagine the people who "get" the graphic novel to like it much either, although some vociferously say they do and tell everybody who doesn't to fuck off, over and over, all across the Internet. If we all listened to Patton Oswalt, the movie would be beyond criticism just because OMG ITS WATCHMEN FINALLY!!!1 But its this kind of attitude, this willingness to eat up any brand name just because we've seen it before, that is responsible for the shitty movies he lists, Transformers, and every other garbage movie "based off" some random thing that was popular once. Coming soon: Ridley Scott's Monopoly! That'd be funny if it weren't true.

I'm reminded of a scene from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. The main character Faustus wants dominion over death, so he makes a deal with Mephistopholes, the devil's agent. Yet the devil explains to Faustus that only God has power over death; the devil can merely conjure images and shells. Perfect visual recreations with no soul or personality. Faustus understands this, yet later asks for Helen of Troy, gazing on her, he says "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" The scene is heartbreaking in that Faustus knows deep down this image is fake, yet he talks himself into settling. Thats how I feel the fans of Watchmen are taking the movie. They want to like it, so they'll take anything. Only reason Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull got ANY good remarks this summer. I hope.

I understand I've rambled and if you're still reading at this point god bless you. Maybe you can write me off as a fanboy and maybe I am. But I will say this: I love art and more than that I love good art. More than that, I love bitching when good art is turned bad by the Hollywood machine. That's why this blog is called Why I Hate Movies when anybody who knows me knows I'm in all actuality an absolute cinephile. If you've enjoyed this rambling incoherent analysis and hopefully actually thought about some of the points I brought up, keep checking this space for more entries when I get around to it. I have a feeling this is just the first case study in an unfortunately long line...