Inglourious Basterds, due to my interest in World War II in general, its poetic use of

different languages, and bold historic revisionism is my favorite Tarantino film so far.

It was to my surprise therefore that the film only got a 69 metascore on IMDB.

It turns out that Tarantino diverting from history angered some critics.

Jonathan Rosenbaum for example called the film deeply offensive and morally akin to

Holocaust denial.

To those critics the history of the holocaust is simply too serious for such revisionism,

too serious for Tarantino’s style of cinematic violence, which is violence of course as exciting over

the top spectacle or even comedy

Jack Nugent from Now You See It argued that with Inglourious Basterds Tarantino makes

fun of his audience by drawing a parallel between the way the Nazis enjoy the mindless

violence and killing in A Nations Pride as we enjoy the violence Tarantino creates in

his own film

I would argue however that it is not quite as simple as that.

As some of the comments on Now You See It’s video point out, Tarantino criticizing his

audience for liking violence would be the highest form of hypocrisy.

Tarantino has pointed out multiple times his love for cinematic violence as fun and entertaining

spectacle.

I would argue that with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino not so much criticizes his audience

for liking violence but, through an historical lens explores and reflects upon the power

of cinematic violence and cinema as a whole.

Many critics, have pointed towards the final scene of Inglourious Basterds as Tarantino

declaring the film his masterpiece.

Yet, if we look back in the film he places himself in questionable company

When Now You See It compares the violence in A Nation’s Pride to the violence of the

basterds he fails to see important differences in their cinematic styles.

The Nazi film ‘stolz der nation’ or a nations pride which is featured in the climax

of Inglourious Basterds is a parallel to Triumph des Willens from Leni Riefenstahl who is mentioned

multiple times in the movie.

The violence in A nation’s pride is shot in the fascist aestethic.

Susan Sontag, also referring to Riefenstahl, states that the Fascist aesthetic are tales

of longing for high places, of the man above, the ubermensch, one Aryan ideal that is placed

above all else.

The Basterds to the contrary represent a multicultural collective of the American meltingpot.

They come from different places and backgrounds, in their difference a challenge to the Aryan

Easthetic that Goebbels promotes in A Nations Pride.

Now the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds is already a break with typical Tarantinoesque

cinematic violence.

Yes it is explosive but it doesn’t function so much as spectacle or comedy as Tarantino’s

violence usually does.

Tarantino constructs the scène in such a way, slowly building through Hans Landa that

the explosion of violence feels quite horrific and cruel making this opening chapter feel

more like scene from a holocaust film than Tarantino’s normal don’t worry, it’s

only a movie kind of violence.

Of course this isn’t the case in the next chapter, where we meet the Bastards.

Here the violence is both spectacle and comedy.

Aldo Raine even directly mentions the link between cinema and violence as sources of

entertainment.

These first two chapters function in two ways.

Both scenes are completely different in their tone and view on violence yet the scenes are

also very much alike.

Both feature a commander that claims to have come down from the mountains to take part

in the war who is in control of the narrative and directs the scene towards it’s violent

conclusion.

Yet the violence in the first chapter is cruel and horrific while in the second chapter it

is spectacle and comedy.

Of course within our culture we naturally and rightfully so root for the allies and

not for the Nazi’s yet Tarantino does hint that the Whermacht officer who is beaten to

death is an honorable man.

Tarantino therefore shows that through cinematic techniques such as the soundtrack violence

can have two totally different functions in two very similar scenes.

The second function is to make a clear distinction between the basterds and Soshanna as characters.

Although most of the Basterds are Jewish they come different places and backgrounds.

They are a multicultural ragtag group that merge into a greater American whole with the

goal to bring terror to the Nazi’s.

Shoshanna however is defined by her identity as a Jewish victim of the holocaust.

For a while she adopts the identity of a French girl but she never forgets what happened to

her and her family.

Now the film builds toward a climax where both Shoshanna and the Basterds execute their

revenge plot on Hitler and the Nazi command.

Both revenge plots together results in what seems to be a typical Tarantino scene of over

over the top violence.

Yet they are in fact different narrative conclusions that compete with each other.

The Basterds burst in shoot Hitler and Goebbels to bits and then blow up the whole theater

including themselves.

The main Basterd, Aldo Rain survives however, and in the end the Basterds narrative is one

of a rugged American cowboy that rides into town, kills the villains against impossible

odds and rides out triumphantly.

Through this lens it is indeed very arguable that Inglourious Basterds trivializes the

horror of the Holocaust and evils of the Nazi regime against the Jewish people.

However although the film ends with the Basterds, Shoshanna’s revenge still lingers

which plays out darker and more unsettling than that of the Basterds.

Her revenge requires her own extinction.

Her revenge plays out from beyond the grave while her image becomes embedded in smoke

connecting it to the otherwise unreferenced horrors of the concentration camps.

She rises from her moment of greatest vulnerability, as she lies dying to reach an ambivilant triumph.

She has authored her revenge on the people who murdered her, her family and countless

others of her people, gazing at them from the smoke and ashes of the very furnace constructed

to destroy her.

As with the Basterds Tarantino’s fulfills his revenge fantasy on the Nazi’s through

Shoshanna’s narrative.

Yet her narrative is much more aware of the holocaust and Jewish suffering under the Nazis.

The film thus offers two distinct narratives and the question becomes who has in fact killed

Hitler?

Who does the audience see as the main drive for revenge?

Technically the Basterds and Aldo gets the last word yet for those watching it cannot

escape the haunting sense that it was someone else, someone in the smoke that by now is

dispersed to the winds, who really killed Hitler.

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