One glorious bastard

As Nice Guy Eddie so eloquently put it, 'first things f**king last'; I am going to spell it right, I'm afraid. Firstly (the admittedly pretenious reason), this is because as an erswtwhile education professional, I just can't knowingly and deliberately misspell it, having too much love, awe and fear of the English language for that. Secondly (the 'just because I'm odd' reason), 'bastard' is just a lovely word, full of hard angles and taking no nonsense, and putting an 'e' at the end emasculates it unforgiveably, mangling its sound and making it just herd; it may not be right up there with my all-time favourite words (like 'rumble' and 'squirt') but it has its unquestionable charm.

Anyway, we'll get to that film in a while, but first let me say that my all time trinity of unholy movies is 'The untouchables', 'The usual suspects' and 'Reservoir dogs', probably in that order. 'Dogs' blew me away (and most of its cast, which reminds me of a joke: where did the film 'Castaway' gets its name? because they just kept Tom Hanks and threw the rest of the castaway). It was one of those rare movies (basically along with the other two named above) which I saw on my own and then brought a succession of other people to see over the next few weeks, usually just to shut me up. It was so different and utterly cool, and mixed violence, music, great dialogue and humour in a way I had never seen before. The trailer below actually captures its essence nicely, if there is anyone out there who has not seen it yet (shame on you if so):

I really loved that film and it made the kind of impact very few films have. I bought the soundtrack, the screenplay, and almost all DVD versions; I know the dialogue mostly by heart (the critical evidence: 'Let's go to work' featured in both the introduction to my doctoral thesis and my wedding speech). This movie matters to me, seriously.

After that (the film, not the thesis or the wedding), it went progressively downhill for me. 'Pulp fiction' was no doubt good, in fact very very good, but I never rated it higher than 'dogs', except maybe for Jules, who was the best thing in it and possible Quentin's finest creation. I found 'Jackie Brown' a bit drawn out, frankly, and neither 'Kill Bill' (both seen in cinema) did much for me; I lost interest in 'Death proof' around half way through when watching it on Sky, and never went back to it. I believed (as did many) that the self-indulgence and pop-cultural obsessions has gotten the upper hand and that the hard-boiled thrillermaker of 'Dogs' was 'dead as Dillinger' (thanks Joe).

So, reading the early (Cannes-era) mixed reviews of 'Inglorious Bastards' (see, Quinten, I refuse to play your game!) didn't fill me with enthusiasm, but I still went along a few nights ago to see it, not expecting a lot, and I got more than I was expecting, basically. It is obviously no 'Dogs', and 'Pulp Fiction' is a lot better overall, but those are high benchmarks, and it absolutely cuts the ears off the others and sings softly into them before tossing them casually aside.

Now, I did recently read Beevor's 'D-day', so I do know for a fact that it is not completely historically accurate (I don't even know where to start on that one!), but that is not the point, although some subjects are probably a little sacred to be screwing around with too lightly (the true significance, the fundamentally unreducable horror, behind what Nazis like Landa are doing is never really acknowledged). However, if it is possible to reluctantly put this aside, leaving aside the question of whether one can or should, the film just works as great fantasy entertainment.

Nonetheless, it was far less fantastic than I was expecting, stylistically for example, than the 'Kills Bills', and had a certain (theatrical) historical quality which suited the subject era. The thrillery bits were appropriately thrilling (especially the tension of the opening), the linguistic gymnastics were at least different (and I liked the way the subtitles sometimes went wonky, translating 'merci' as 'merci' several times), and the acting ranged from the very good (mostly the Europeans) to the thoroughly enjoyable (I believe this is my favourite Brad Pitt performance ever, and his attempt at Italian in the cinema was a classic). I also must admit that I watched Pitt's final effort at preplastic surgery through my fingers; the difference to Dogs' scene where the camera tracked away from the ear-removal was notable, as Quentin has grown over the years to embrace his inner sadist fully.

Anyway, to lead into the inevitable clips, I offer firstly a glimpse of the aforementioned opening scene, showing the excellent Christoph Waltz as Colonel Landa of the SS (too many critics have praised this great performance to leave me anything useful left to contribute bar my complete agreement):

and, secondly, a trailer with appropriately European subtitles:

Yes, I have read all the reviews, and yes I know and understand what is wrong with it, and I am not sure if I will watch it half as often as 'Dogs' (although I know I do want to see it again), but it entertained, and amused, and thrilled, and was different but in a good way, and I don't need much more from Quentin; that is what he is good at, and we should expect no more than for him to do it as well as he can. For the serious movies, we have different guys who will do it much better than he can.

Its just that, for a while there he seemed to lose his way, and walked the earth like Caine from 'Kung fu', having adventures which were not always succesful (for, as we all know, the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and he tyranny of evil men), and talking increasing amounts of self-absorbed egotistical immature shite in interviews. Now, though, even if briefly, he seems to have found his path anew, just like Jules, and, once again, he is his own glorious bastard.