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Movie #1: "Inglorious Basterds" Written & Directed by Quentin Tarantino
*** Warning: There are spoilers in this review. ***

Maybe I'm going out on a limb when I say that Quentin Tarantino is a movie buff who happens to make movies. It's not the worst thing to be. I haven't even seen all of his movies, so my opinion could very well be flawed. Nevertheless, it's become common knowledge among movie critics that Tarantino's movies are all about paying homage to directors of the past. Tarantino is the ultimate movie geek. He knows movies. He knows styles of cinematography and dialogue. He knows color schemes and angle shots. It's obvious in his product that he adores film. Yet does his movie knowledge work to his detriment in the sense that his movies are so full of homage that they have no identity of their own? Nevertheless, Tarantino has created a niche for himself, and he has a knack for stirring up visceral audience reaction.

When asked by Tarantino at the Cannes Film Festival in May how he felt about "Inglorious Basterds", the king of all film critics (in my opinion) Roger Ebert responded that it is either the best or worst film of the year. After a subsequent viewing, Ebert concluded it was the best. In some ways I agree with Ebert, but for reasons that probably differ from those of the typical Tarantino fan. The reason is this: the movie is a master class in meta-criticism. Framed around a group of Jewish-American soldiers (the "inglorious basterds") charged with hunting down, killing and scalping Nazi soldiers, the film puts the audience in a quite uncomfortable position: one of deciding whether or not to cheer on these soldiers as they kill, maim, and even carve German soldiers.

I felt dirty more than once while watching the film, wondering if it was more appropriate to smile or grimace while Hitler's face was shot numerous times into a bloody pulp. And I've come to the conclusion that this reaction is exactly what Tarantino intended. A friend with whom I saw the film pointed out one of the most telling scenes in the movie: a movie theatre full of Nazis watching a movie about a German solider taking out countless American soldiers from a watchtower. The camera scans the audience as they smile and laugh uproariously at the tragedy unfolding before them. Throughout the movie, as I sat listening to the laughter and sensing the smiles of those around me as the "basterds" slaughtered one German solider after another, I realized that we, the audience, were being parodied in the movie. Our collective conscience was being confronted and challenged. Of course things would have been different (better) if Hitler had actually been murdered - I'm not questioning that - but does that mean as a society we have a free pass to judge every single German soldier (or any soldier involved in a war we may not agree with) in the same way we judge a sadistic or corrupt leader? Or are they equally guilty for "simply following orders"? That's not a question I can answer, but the movie places the questions directly in front of us whether we choose to see them or not.

Perhaps my questions run too deep considering that Tarantino has always romanticized violence. He overdramatizes and fantacizes violence in a way that is both shocking and reassuring, because while it is gory and unsettling, the violence is also fantastical and voyeurstic. It's comic-book on celluloid.

Yet I believe that Tarantino has succeeded in creating quite a powerful allegory through this movie, raising questions of good and evil, revenge, integrity and cowardice. No character gets off easy in this film, and none deserve to.

What the film does not do is create human relationships that we care about. The movie is about superlatives- exagerrated characters who find themselves in exagerrated circumstances. Of course WWII and the Holocaust are all too real, but the framework of this film is not set up to look history in the eye but rather to look at ourselves through a lens of heightened satire and farce. One can even say that Tarantino trivializes WWII and the Holocaust, but for every person who says such a thing, there will be someone who says "Shut up! You're thinking about this way too much. It's ****ing Tarantino, for cripe's sake."

The movie is visually-pleasing. The image of Shoshanna- the young woman who four years earlier escapes being murdered by the evil Nazi Col. Landa- as she prepares to seek vengeance is a beautiful one. Dressed in a long, red dress, she sits in front of a vanity, applying red lipstick and placing a hat on her head, a small veil covering her eyes. The scene is art in motion.

For all the distance created between audience and characters in Tarantino films, for some reason, it's hard to stop thinking about this movie and what Tarantino wants us to think.