Yes! The last thing Shoshana said to Marcel was something along the lines of “Wait for my cue”. Wait, she’s dead! She can’t give a cue!
I avoided everything to do with this film for precisely this reason - Tarantino is so ‘different’ that I was afraid of setting up my expectations. But, speaking of Ebert - that review has one quote that leaves me puzzled: “A character at the beginning and end, not seen in between, brings the story full circle.” The hell? Who did I miss?
That, without a doubt, was my favorite scene in the film - perhaps my favorite bit of cinematography in any film. Even if Shoshana and Marcel’s film really did suck. No, it did - Shoshana was such an intense character; seeing her go all Elvira/Vincent Price in that bit didn’t do it for me.
Yeah, I’m with Kalhoun on this one. The last time he saw Shoshana was three years previous while she was running away from him and was too far away to shoot. Add to that his “I know what’s better for you than you do” attitude.
Anyhow. I saw this over the weekend and…
Hunh. I still don’t know if I like it or not. But it’s three days later and I’m still thinking about and turning things over in my mind; for me that’s more important than whether or not I liked it. Digger said:
and perhaps that comes closest to how I feel about it. Now that I’ve read so much about the film after the fact I think I’m going to have to go back and watch it again, something I’ve considered only once or twice before.
This was baffling to me too, but after pondering it, I think that Ebert might have been making a play on the word “character.” So by “character” I think he meant the swastika.
Haven’t seen it yet but the trailer looks promising.
I must say I’m a little puzzled by all this stuff about a revenge fantasy and, as a poster in this thread commented, “at last the Germans get what’s coming to them.”
The Germans did get what was coming to them. They lost the war. All the Nazi leaders died miserable and ignominious deaths, many on the end of an Allied rope. So they got what was coming to them in fact and they’ve been getting it in fiction in practically every war movie made since the end of hostilities.
Actually one could say that Tarantino lets Hitler off the hook in this movie by having him die in a Paris cinema. Far more painful for him would be his actual end, his glorious Reich in ruins and the Russians rolling through Berlin. The knowledge that he was a complete and utter failure would have been insufferable to him.
On the other hand, Hitler’s own stated reason for suicide in 1945 was that he wanted to avoid falling into the hands of the Allies and providing entertainment for the “hysterical Jewish masses” who would gloat over his downfall.
Having the giant onscreen image of a Jewish woman towering over him as he faces a hideous fiery death doesn’t sound preferable.
I saw this last Friday afternoon and there was an elderly couple sitting about 10 seats to my right. I said to my girlfriend, “I’m willing to bet they don’t even know what they’re getting into…”
I was right. On the way out, the old gentleman looked right at me and said “Worst movie I’ve ever seen.” I didn’t say anything because I thought it was pretty good.
That was what I thought. The non-historic ending really needed (or so I thought) some sort of “flag” that the film wasn’t set in WWII as we know it- say, Tesla Stormtroopers or Giant Nazi Robots or something to act as a cue to the audience that because the movie isn’t set in “Our” WWII, the ending won’t seem quite so “WTF?”
I think he meant the BJ Novak character, and is making a similar complaint that people here are. I was a bit puzzled by it as well, when all of a sudden he inexplicably shows up in the back of the truck after not being involved at all in the plan, or really the movie for the past two hours.
Isn’t the ending supposed to be kind of WTF? If it was really, obviously different from “our” WWII, there wouldn’t be as much tension, because there wouldn’t be as much of an expectation that the assassination plots would fail.
As much as I like Tarantino movies, I’m increasingly of the opinion that he’s taking the piss and deliberately does that sort of thing (like a WTF ending) just to get people arguing over it’s meaning and symbolism in university coffee shops and pubs and the internet.
The thing was, I expected Hitler & Co. to have to make an early exit, and thus survive the assassination attempt, but have all the other assorted Nazis burned/blown up.
WWII adventures are well known for taking a few liberties in the interests of artistic licence, and I think most of us now are happy with that (for the most part). But there’s “taking liberties” and there’s “rewriting history with no indication the movie was set in an alternate reality.”
I’m not saying it was a bad film, just that making the film appear correct in period detail then pull a “That didn’t happen and everyone knows it” ending out at the end had a negative impact on many people’s movie experience and perhaps wasn’t the best way to deal with that story arc conclusion. Even a post-credits sequence of Hitler et al sitting back in Berlin reading the papers, saying “They didn’t really think we’d be stupid enough to go to that film premiere, did they? I’m so glad we sent those doubles instead!” would have been a much better solution, IMHO.
Here’s the thing, the excitement and the surprise comes from the fact that the whole movie we think we are in mostly-real WWII land. The whole movie I’m guessing whats going to happen to next because in my mind I was thinking, “Well, he can’t actually kill Hitler and Co. a year early.” So I was sure that the two plans were going to end up canceling each other out (i.e. bot hside thinks the other side is bad and they end up killing each other.) Which made the ending even better.
Although now that I think about Shoshanna’s plan failed, didn’t it? While she was all about killing all the Nazis, I think her real target was Landa.
Some of you must have missed the inferential “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France” title that opened the movie. Usually, the “Once upon a time…” phrase precedes a work that is at least partially imaginative.
That, and the presence of a crew of Nazi-scalping Jews, should have signified that the movie and history were likely to be quite divergent.
Well that, and its Tarantino. I’m not surprised that he’d mess around completely with history. Kind of his taking the WW2 movie trope of messing around a little bit with history and taking it up like 5 million notches.
Actually, when I think about it, it was the Basterds plan that failed. If it hadn’t been for them, Shoshana’s plan would have gotten everyone including Landa.
Their whole plan turned out to be, albeit unknowingly, superfluous and counterproductive.
{This might have already been mentioned, but I havent got all the way through the thread, yet}
I think that the some of the violent bits were styled to evoke a positive response, and later you see Hitler practically guffawing during the sniper scenes of that movie, which seem to be shot in a manner to make it appear repulsive that he is laughing at soldiers being killed. It’s even further pushed with Shoshanna laughing at the burning audience in the end.
I think I picked up on Jackson’s voice as I saw his name in the opening credits. Dunno if I would have caught it otherwise, as I’m usually bad about such things.
No, it did - Shoshana was such an intense character; seeing her go all Elvira/Vincent Price in that bit didn’t do it for me.