Bastardizing history

When recently I riffed on Inglorious Basterds, and called it sick, because it distorts history in such a way to actually be dangerous, I was expecting at least one comment to the effect that I shouldn’t judge it until I’ve seen it. Well, it seems we got away Scott free on that score. So to speak.

Anyway, I’ve seen the damned thing now. And it’s fair to say I left the cinema with mixed feelings. On the positive side of the ledger. Tarantino’s film is 75% in French and German, is two-and-a-half hours long, and yet has been in the top ten US box office for several weeks. That alone is an astounding achievement. And in terms of pure cinema, what director working today can match Tarantino, when it comes to scripting, staging, casting, lighting and shooting a scene? You sit and watch with sweaty palms as these set pieces – like the basement scene – unfold. They go on for an uncomfortably long period of time until you’re almost gasping for air, wondering “where the hell is this going?” Even as risible as I found the premise of the film, I still got caught up in the suspense at times. That’s surely not an accident, the man is gifted. Also, everyone is raving about the performance of Christoph Waltz as the ‘Jew hunter’, and rightly so. It is a study in well-oiled, charismatic evil.

And yet. And yet it’s all so absolutely ludicrous. Whereas his urban crime stories turn on tightly constructed plots, you could drive a Sherman tank through the holes in this tale. (More after the jump…)

That’s if you accept the ludicrous premise it the film is founded upon. Like, could eight American soldiers, no matter how brutal their tactics, really inspire fear in the entire German wehrmacht? Or, with the Nazi high command all present at a film premiere in a Parisian cinema, wouldn’t you think they’d at least post a few guards ‘front of house’, once the film began?

And where does one start with historical inaccuracies? The ridiculous stereotyping of the British? Mike Myers, whose posh Brit accent is only slightly less execrable than his off base Scottish brogue, is bareheaded when he salutes a fellow officer. This small detail has been the giveaway for shoddy research in many an unrealistic war movie. History buffs know well to look for Brits saluting without their hats on. The other British officer in the scene, who reveals that he was a film critic in civilian life, says he hasn’t had a chance to see any German cinema since 1941. Memo to Tarantino. The British entered the war in 1939, two years ahead of the United States. And I do a better Churchill impersonation than whoever that was sitting in the corner. Meanwhile, in German occupied Paris, Joseph Goebbels is shown needing a translator in French. In fact, he spoke French fluently. Hitler barely ventured out of Germany for the duration of the war, travelling only once to Paris, directly after it had fallen to the Blitzkrieg.

And so on we go.

But far more importantly than British military protocol or the like. A rag tag army of Jewish commandoes did not kill off the Nazi high command, including Hitler, in a surprise attack in 1944. The war dragged on in Europe for another year after D-Day, with millions more killed. The Nazis, even as it was apparent they were losing militarily, stepped up their efforts to exterminate as many Jews as they could.

Tarantino’s film could have been saved with a post-script, perhaps voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, who provided links between other scenes. “If only it could have been this way, millions of lives could have been saved, and the Nazi evil thwarted. But that’s not what happened.” And so on. Better that way than even one person leaving the theatre thinking they’ve just had a history lesson.