Glorification of violence and unnecessary reanimation of old hostilities!

Rating: 1/10 (14 September 2009)

Yesterday, watched "Inglorious Basterds" together with my boyfriend and as a German, I really have to comment about it! My expectations were really quite high because I had read that all the characters would be portrayed by actors of the matching nationality, which I regarded as a brilliant idea! I also knew that the story wouldn't be historically correct, but I didn't bother. In my opinion, the cinema is free to alter history, as long as it's good entertainment.
Well, the movie started with the scene about the French guy being visited by SS Colonel Landa - brilliant acting, especially on the part of Christoph Waltz, good story and I loved the switching of languages. (I was a little bit disappointed though that the Americans didn't speak English in the German version, but also German - why not be consistent and let every character speak their mother tongue? - Perhaps that would be to daring for a mainstream movie and you can't expect the average audience to read that many subtitles? I would have appreciated it to hear English spoken in the movie!) Anyway, so far I enjoyed the movie, but the moment those "Inglorious Basterds" entered the screen, that soon changed. Brad Pitt's speech full of hatred already made me frown. Take Nazi's scalps? Be as brutal as possible? - Excuse me, are those the guys I am supposed to sympathize with? - Okay, I thought, it's a Quentin Tarantino movie, so you're bound to hear a lot of language and and see graphic violence. I really enjoyed the plot line with the Jewish cinema owner and the Nazi officer / actor and the whole movie would have been brilliant, if they had just made this the main plot and left out the whole stupid Inglorious Basterds thing! What really gave me the creeps was this scene with the German soldier being beaten to death with a baseball batter. Don't get me wrong, I'm not generally against portraying violence in movies, but it always depends on the context! And it's really unacceptable to portray this violent execution as fun, with cheering and laughing people around, without ever questioning if this is the right thing to do. The "Inglorious Basterds" are the characters the audience is supposed to sympathize with because, obviously, they don't want to be on the side of the bad Nazis, though you see them committing much less bloody crimes on screen than the Basterds. Therefore the audience is supposed to enjoy the beating and take it as a righteous action! Pure mischievous joy! I can see all those teenagers laughing who the next day on the school ground stand by a fight, film it with their mobile phone and then upload it on youtube to have a laugh with millions of users who are just as stupid as themselves! I really couldn't believe it! Come on, in which century are we living, Americans? - Do you first need to have your very own Third Reich before you finally get the fact that such violence is NEVER EVER justified? When will you get it that you stop being the good guys the moment you take up the methods of the bad guys and use them against them? - It's the same all over: Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Inglorious Basterds! It is NOT funny to kill and mutilate people, whatever it is they did! Of course movies can portray people who think killing is funny, but they should never portray them as being good and right! And especially not in the context of the Third Reich! And by the way, does there have to be a "funny" insult against Germans every five minutes? - Why do you so reanimate the old hostilities of World War II? I thought we were over that! In Germany, we have learned our lesson of tolerance and peacefulness. Everyone who enjoys the movie has proved they haven't learned it yet!
Though I certainly don't sympathize with Nazis, the truest moment of the movie was the scene at the premiere of the movie "Stolz der Nation". Three American members of the "Basterds" tried to pretend to be Italians because they thought the Nazis wouldn't notice that they can't really speak Italian. But then Nazi officer Landa turned out to speak Italian fluently, to which Brad Pitt's character could only reply "Grazie". I just thought: "Serves you right, ignorant Americans!" I mean, they have no clue about Germans or Italians or Frenchmen, but they just think they can go into some other countries and kill a lot of people and have fun making a bloody mess in the presumed name of justice.
It's really a pity that a movie with such brilliant ideas has to be so awful, just because it glorifies violence and encourages intolerance! Inglorious Basterds certainly didn't improve my opinion about America and it certainly doesn't improve anybody's opinion about Germany. In recent years, Germany has produced sensitive storys about conflicts of conscience like "The Reader" - the U.S. gives us senseless beating and cheering about violence! Congratulation, Tarantino, for your contribution to international understanding! :(