Inglourious Basterds

Apparently I am one of the few people who didn’t enjoy Quintin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). I am not a big fan of his films to begin with. This is another piece of genre blending filled with cinematic references, particularly to Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, what with the opening words, “Once Upon a Time ... in Nazi-Occupied France,” dramatic music based on the theme of “Für Elise,” a panoramic shot of the French countryside, then a close-up of a man’s face. I’m already annoyed. The various plots are frightfully contrived and the dialog is too smart for its own good. For no good reason, we get other references to WWII films, like Where Eagles Dare, some unnecessary Marvel Comics lettering, unwelcome voice-overs, Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, Leni Riefenstahl, Max Linder, and on and on. The main story is an indulgence in an alternative reality, there are jokes about situations that aren’t funny, there is no moral core, violence is a means to solve problems, and Jews perpetrate atrocities as awful as their enemies. The characters remain flat – Brad Pitt’s First Lieutenant Aldo Raine is particularly distracting with his faux-Tennessee drawl jabbering about Nazzies. The only redeeming quality is Christopher Waltz’ performance as SS Colonel Hans Landa, who is fluent in German, French, English, and Italian, and has a knack of making polite conversation even when he’s interrogating. In brief, the movie is about two plots to eliminate the German high-command, including Hitler, Goebels, Göring and Bormann, while they attend a premiere at a Parisian cinema theater. And apart from Alder carving a swastika in Landa’s forhead, that’s it. The End. History has been rewritten.

Pan’s Labyrinth

A little while ago I finally saw Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006) by Guillermo del Torro (Blade, Hellboy), yet another dark fantasy film. I can’t say I know what to make of it... Much Ado about Nothing? It’s set during the Franquist repression in Spain at the end of the Second World War. A woman named Carmen travels with her young daughter Ofelia to her new husband, the Falangist Vidal. To escape her new life with this brutal military stepfather, and to escape the general violence in her war-torn country, Ofelia retreats into a fantasy in which she is a long-lost princess of the Underworld. A Faun in an overgrown labyrinth gives her three assignments to test if she really is the daughter of the King of the Underworld.

It’s true that the girl’s fantasy world (a reversed Platonic Cave allegory, if you will) contrasts poignantly with the horrors of the real world. Her pregnant mother grows increasingly ill. One of the servant maids who took the girl into her care turns out to be an agent of the guerrilla resistance. But other than as contrast with and escape from reality, Ofelia’s fantasy barely interacts with her real life. So the two stories mostly remain separate, neither one of them very compelling... Nor am I sure what to make of the names of the female characters: Carmen (the gypsy factory girl who seduces a soldier, only to fall in love with a bullfighter); Ofelia (Hamlet’s potential bride who met her untimely death)... How far am I to take the significance of their names? And does that mean that the girl’s fantasy is a death wish, suicidal ideation, a mortal hallucination? I can’t make sense of it all...

Jacob’s Ladder

Have you ever seen the movie Jacob’s Ladder (1990)? A friend of mine told me I should watch it. It’s one of those psychological thrillers known in French as a mindfuck. Man, what a film! You never know what’s real and what’s nightmare. We start in the Mekong Delta, 1971, and suddenly the platoon is under fire, but not from the Viet Cong. And then, suddenly, we’re on the C Train, NYC, Bergen Street, B’klyn, and Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is unable to find an exit that’s still open, he crosses the tracks, and nearly gets hit by a train, with faceless passengers inside! When he finally comes home we learn that he has a gorgeous little girlfriend called Jezebel (Alexandra Peña), he works as a postman along Nostrand Avenue. (That’s right where I lived!!!) Gradually more and more weird things are happening to Jacob. He’s seeing the most bizarre creatures, he’s hallucinating, he’s going through hell, he’s afraid he’s going paranoid, he collapses at a party, running a terrible fever. Then he wakes up from a nightmare, finding himself in bed with his wife Sarah... his eldest son Gabe is still alive ... he never went to Vietnam ... But wait, no-o-o-o-o, he didn’t wake up from a nightmare ... The nightmare is real!

Jacob is eventually approached by someone who claims to have been a chemist involved in experiments in Vietnam to increase the soldiers’ aggression by means of some type of drug called “The Ladder”. At the funeral of one of his war buddies, he learns that his surviving platoon mates suffer similar hallucinatory nightmares. They decide to file a law suit against the government. But soon his friends from Nam back out and their lawyer tells him there’s no proof they ever went to Vietnam! Things really start to get interesting when he’s coming out of the supreme court building and he’s kidnapped by guys in suits. He’s tortured ... with his girlfriend Jezebel right there! Close toward the end we see him walk up a staircase with his son Gabe... But then we see his dead body still in Vietnam... Apparently we are to understand that everything we saw before was merely a dying hallucination, a purging vision in which Jacob lets go of his earthly attachments before he ascends the eponymous Ladder to heaven... bummer... Still, I’d recommend this movie to everyone who wants to scare themselves silly. But then again, I just gave away the ending... Hmmm...

The Hurt Locker

“War is a drug” ... is how The Hurt Locker opens. We’re in Bagdad, the War in Iraq, a bomb threat, U.S. military occupation. I hate the documentary-style camera dangling. We follow a team of soldiers responsible for disarming IEDs (improvised explosive devices, i.e., bombs). It’s ten minutes of awkward tension and panic ... and then ... BOOM! Someone dies. Repeat: tension, panic, boom, death. After about half an hour, the story starts to explore the relations between the members of the team and of the soldiers with locals. The new team leader Sgt. James is all brazenly cool. He’s a cowboy in a bombsuit. He’s a wild one. He’s also the only one attempting to befriend locals. Sgt. Sanborn is the intelligence guy, a control freak who wants to do everything by the book. He despises James’ recklessness – even though he learns to admire what he believes is James’ courage. Then there’s Specialist Eldridge, who blames himself for causing the death of his previous team leader and later of the field psychiatrist. He’s scared of dying and questions the purpose of their mission.

It surprises me that this movie has won so much praise and so many awards. Not that it’s outright bad, but I just feel that it’s not that much of a good film. I guess that Americans still need to see war movies to wrap their heads around the realities of war... the atrocities ... the horror ... the death dealing desperation... Hurt Locker is touted as the first movie about the Iraq War, and is praised for its realism. I can’t vouch for its accurate depiction of the situation in Iraq (veterans have complained sufficiently to make me question its realism), but there are also people who actually came out of this movie feeling that it glorifies warfare! Apocalypse Now was also meant to criticize war, the Vietnam War in particular, but still most people watch that movie for its awesome effects and memorize its cool dialogue. (“I Love the smell of napalm in the morning!” “The horror, the horror.” “Charlie don’t surf.”) The military occupation of Iraq commenced seven years ago, now. Do Americans still need to be reminded how many unnecessary deaths their occupation causes on both sides? And do we need the Academy Awards to remind us to watch Hurt Locker?

The Leopard

Recently, when going through boxes from storage, I found back my VHS copy of The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963, based on the novel by Tomassi). I have long been an admirer of Italian cinematographer Luchino Visconti (Boccaccio ‘70, The Damned, Death in Venice), yet I haven’t seen this film in maybe fifteen years. So, it was about time I revisited this jewel. It features an incredible international cast including Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Terence Hill. Enjoy the rich Technicolor, the luscious lights, the sumptuously saturated colors, the thick shadows, and the overwhelming straw yellow, sand and dust, and the parched earth of the island’s countryside! Marvel at the period detail, the rococo ballrooms, the splendid catholic costumes, the hilarious mustaches! We even view a “déjeuner sur l’herbe (lunch on the grass),” very much like an impressionist painting (well, save Manet’s scandalous female nude).

Set in Sicily during the Risorgimento (19th-century Italian unification), the three-hour historical epic chronicles the decline of the local nobility. When the story begins, an aristocratic family prayer is rudely interrupted as a dead soldier is found in the estate’s garden: Garibaldi’s revolutionary forces have landed in Sicily, in Prince Salina’s backyard! These are times of revolution and resistance ... “brutti tempi” ... On the barricades and in the streets idealistic fervor battles with murderous defiance, tricolor nationalism struggles to overcome parochial loyalties, republican forces fight royalist troops, leopards and lions replaced by jackals and hyenas. The local prince demonstrates persistence in the face of fear and terror ... “Se volgiamo che tutto rimanga com’ è, bisogna che tutto cambi (If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change),” a young hothead idealist proclaims. But soon the Bourbon royal house must flee Sicily and make way for the Savoy Vittorio Emanuele.

The heart of the story revolves around the marriage of Don Tancredi, the hothead idealist nephew of Prince Salinas, with Angelica, the daughter of the local homo novo (“nouveau riche” or upstart, if you prefer), Don Calogero. The wedding symbolizes the new order: the marriage of the old nobility with the newly rich. Meanwhile, we witness the Sicilian aristocrats struggle in languishing anxiety with their uncertain future, with their age-old distrust for Northern Italians. What will happen to the Church in a Republic? Will it lose its riches and its hold over the poor (which it bribes with alms and scares with infernal damnation)? Should the nobility deal with the bourgeois Liberals in order to survive? Can a leopard change its spots to save its skin?

Claudia Cardinale’s first entrance, however, is absolutely phenomenal ... She is for all I know female beauty epitomized! The whole room is dumbfounded in admiring silence ... What a stunningly breathtaking beauty! She is such a seductively sly wench, she could get any man to do exactly as she wishes, have them grovel at her feet in obedient adoration. (And I would be first in line!) What a beauty, Angelica! (And what an appropriate name, for such a devil in disguise!) Just as all present at the traditional first night dinner in the Donnafugata estate, an opulent affair, we gawk at this divine demoness, this evil temptress with her heaving bossom, flirting delightfully with Tancredi! What an undying beauty!

The last forty-five minutes of the movie is one of the most magnificent cinematic experiences you’ve ever had: a lavish, glorious, conspicuous ball to celebrate as if for one last time an age that has passed. An Elegy for Nobility, if you will. It is also Angelica’s beaming debut into aristocratic high society. The prince reasons that all the cousin marriages have been morally degenerating his noble lineage. It’s good, in other words, that new blood is coming into his aristocratic house. But what is really happening is that he is madly lusting after Angelica, despite his upright formality. He keeps telling her how beautiful she is, he’s entirely captivated, thoroughly under her spell. So, he contemplates death and his own mortality. The Age of the Nobility has died – and this angelic vision of sexual desires run rampant embodies a new, modern age that has just begun. Angelica knows exactly how to take advantage with her seductive charm. “Nobody could ever resist your beauty,” the Prince tells her. Amen.