I thought so, especially after he tortured and strangled the actress; he’s a sadist. Landa needed Shosanna to run the showing of “Nation’s Pride.” He purposely orders milk for her to torment her about their shared past. That’s also why her tells her there was something else, but he’s forgotten it–to force her to wonder what he was going to do to her.
So, kind of a dumb question.
Assuming that the fairy-tale logic of the movie expired with the ending, would it really be reasonable to assume that decapitating German high command would really end the war? I would assume that with most of the propoganda department gone, there would not be an immediate official response, but that would just give time for shock and uncertainty to spread.
And it someone found one of Landa’s ever-so-meticulously-kept notebooks, indicating that the theater at which the beloved Fuhrer had died might have been owned by a Jewess…
Unless the allies were poised to immediately take advantage of the shock and chaos of the loss (which admittedly they could have been), could this event have galvanized German resistance, and lead to squads of volunteer Germans doing what the Basterds were doing right back to the allies when the allies attempted to occupy Germany? Might it have been that trying to end the war in one fell swoop would instead lead to a long, wasteful, and bloody occupation, in which Allied and Russian forces became increasingly desperate and brutal in their methods to quash insurrection?
I am not extremely familiar with the specific political and military status of late-war Germany. Is my analysis of what might have happened wildly off, or missing important bits of information?
I don’t think you can underestimate the loss of morale that would have followed the loss of der Fuherer. He pretty much was the movement for the Germans at the time.
For what it’s worth, there was a dialect coach specifically credited for Pitt. I don’t know my southern accents very well, but since Tarantino is from the area that Raine is supposed to hail from, and there’s a dialect coach, the limitations if any are probably Pitt’s. To me it was internally consistent and also hilarious in context.
I loved the film, but it is still settling for me. I’d like to see it again.
Absolutely. Truth be told, I felt genuinely sorry for the new father in that scene. Guy didn’t deserve the end he got.
Also - the dialogue from the German’s drinking game was naturalistic enough, well-enough written, that it just sounded like friends playing a drinking game. I wanted to play, too!
Under the Security and Vetting of “The Jew Hunter”, Landa, they very well might have taken his word as sicherheit, and walked right into his trap.
I mean, this was France, after all. Suppose, this was all devise of Landa and an “et tu Brute” overthrow, and murdering the starlet was tying up “loose ends”. Which is truly eminent in the matching ending.
He’s like the German Benedict Arnold, in this alternate ending. It’s what Tarantino wished would have happened, it’s a naievely Democratic view and wish that tyranny would end in the Tyrannus.
Really, I think he (QT) deliberately pulled a bait and switch and meta-distraction on the American audience with the trailers by centering an American Spec Ops as the action component, when in fact, this movie is about a German Sociopath and Hero/Antihero.
I’m pretty sure that decision was the advertising / financial folks, the same that are responsible for slapping BRAD PITT on every movie poster and trailer.
And for once, I’m glad that the trailer misrepresented the movie. The current trailers spoil goddamn fucking EVERYTHING but the last 20 minutes of a movie, these days. So I’m glad I didn’t have a clue what was coming.
For example, the trailer for ‘Funny people’ shows:
There’s this big star, and he thinks he’s gonna die of a disease, but then he finds out he’s not gonna die after all.
Well thanks. That’s the first TWO HOURS of the movie :smack:
I thought so too - and then mocked those expecting non-stop action & piles of bodies, by making the movie-within-the-movie a satire on just that (that is, a movie consisting of nothing but a guy shooting hundreds of soldiers).
By the way, the first 8 or 10 times I heard Brad Pitt’s character say his name, I though he was saying Aldo Ray..
Prior to this film, there was a bit of trivia true about all QT films: there’s a shot looking up from inside the trunk of a car. And from the trailers, I thought this was going to continue, but it was the victim’s POV after a swastika-carving.
And I left the theater thinking: damn…every character we cared about is dead, except for Aldo & Landa. Brutal.
I thought it was fantastic.
Did anyone else think that the other two basterds in the movie theater scene could have pulled off the Italian accent much better than Aldo? I thought that part was quite humorous as Aldo had already declared that he spoke the best Italian.
I also believe that this is QT’s best writing to date. Can’t wait to see it again.
Absolutely…I think Third Best had the best accent. “Bone Jer-no” still cracks me up.
“A-rear-va-dare-chee.”
I also felt sorry for the soldier beaten to death with a baseball bat and scalped after he refused to rat on the other German patrol.
Saw it last night. I sometimes wonder if QT’s films are really all that well thought out from a structural standpoint, especially after the respective messes that were Kill Bill and Death Proof. Nevertheless, this one worked for me. I’m another one who thinks Jackie Brown was his best previous work, and this was at least its equal. Dug the clever (to me at least) Spaghetti Western stylistics, and the dialogue, cinematography and most of the performances were fantastic.
The one aspect of QT’s films I’ve never particularly liked has always been the gratuitous gore, but at least you know you’re going to get that going in. I’m just not wired to enjoy seeing simulations of people getting their brains bashed in or faces sliced up, whether realistic or taken to comic-strip extremes. Like so many directors’ seeming fascination with showing actors vomiting, I just don’t get it.
Anyway, as is my habit, when I got back home I read some of the viewer comments in IMDB. Despite the overall high ratings for the film I was surprised at the number of people who were saying things like “worst film I’ve ever seen”. Really? Seriously? Pure hyperbole, sez I. Even if one happens to consider it excessively slow-paced and obvious (and I don’t, in general), I see no possible criterion by which it could be called a worst film. I’d practically kill to make a film as pretty to look at and with performances that engaging.
The people I’ve heard doing the most complaining about are those who hate reading subtitles – mostly because they can’t read.
That’s absolutely par for the course at IMDb with any new movie.
In all honesty, I wish I had known about the subtitles before the movie. Mainly because I sat too close and too far to the side so I got a headache reading them,
I agree - even if I hated Tarantino (which I don’t) and thought the plot silly (which I also don’t), there was without any objective doubt some very fine acting in that movie by anyone’s standards, and some of the scenes were quite simply luminously beautiful.