Inglourious Basterds strikes a chord in Israel

October 5, 2009 - 12:17 PM by David

Nazi scalper Brad Pitt talks to his Jewish revenge recruits in Inglourious Basterds.

Nazi scalper Brad Pitt talks to his Jewish revenge recruits in Inglourious Basterds.

I finally got a chance to go to the movies on Saturday night in Jerusalem and see Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. I’ve been troubled ever since.

It’s not that I didn’t immensely enjoy the over-the-top Tarantino blood and dialogue trademark and the standout performances by Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz as ‘The Jew Hunter.’ I could even turn a blind eye to the Holocaust revisionism for the sake of comic book adventure heroic Jews who give Hitler and company what they deserve.

What proved most unsettling, more than the scalpings and crushed skulls via baseball bats, was the audience reaction at the screening. A good percentage of the sold-out crowd consisted of teenage Israelis and young American, religious students apparently studying here for a year.

Whenever another Nazi got his just reward, the crowd broke out in lustly cheers as if Alex Rodriguez had just hit another one out of the park. I know they’re heartless Nazis, but I felt like I was at a Kach rally.

On the one hand, it was liberating to be the avengers of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, but on the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t have been so happy about it.

It turns out that my colleague Dina Kraft over at The Faster Times related to the same issue in her much better post .

It is this ingrained Holocaust consciousness that colors Israelis’ alternating repulsion, delight, and fascination with the movie hailed abroad as “Kosher Porn,” a fantastical universe of Jewish revenge on the Nazis. It’s been playing to packed theatres and in some cities seats need to be ordered at least a day in advance. The audiences heartily cheer, clap and laugh through their cinematic ride with a band of Nazi-scalping U.S. Jewish soldiers alongside the accompanying parallel plot of a beautiful, blond Jewess plotting her final revenge.

Kraft quoted some of the viewers walking out of the screening, who had differing opinions on what they had just seen.

It was a pale, shaken-looking Erez Makovy, 31, who emerged from a darkened 500-seat theatre, filled to capacity. The crowd had gone silent watching the carnage climax in which the Nazi leadership is devoured by flames and automatic gunfire. But it broke into loud applause when Brad Pitt’s swash-buckling U.S. lieutenant character carved what became a trademark swastika into the forehead of the S.S. officer who serves as the film’s villain in chief.

“The movie left me with a bitter taste in my mouth,” said Makovy, a musician who was disturbed by the audiences’ cheers.

His friend, Itai Zangi, 27, a music producer, however, was among the laugh-out-loud, clapping masses. “It’s nice to be on the winning side, for once. I liked that he (Tarantino) turned things totally upside down.”

Nearby, also contemplating the experience, was Hila Schuman, a 32-year-old biologist. “It’s a bit too over-the-top. For Israelis, it’s hard to take a story out of the context we know so well. So we’re left asking: Is this a parody? Is it serious? … Or is this just what revenge would look like on LSD.”

As the film goes to DVD in the coming months, more Israelis will be able to ponder the same questions.

Tags: , , , , • Category: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies 

Comments

7 Comments on Inglourious Basterds strikes a chord in Israel

  1. Joel Katz on Mon, Oct 5th 2009 2:52 PM

    2. I also happened to see the film last night here in Modi’in. Fortunately, it was a mixed crowd – but we did have the few teens who cheered at times.

    One thing that certainly was different viewing the film here in Israel: reading the Hebrew subtitles of the German and French dialogue (this version had no English subtitles).

  2. Larry In L.A. on Wed, Oct 7th 2009 6:15 PM

    3. Well David, your cinematic sentiments aside, I deeply, deeply resent fans of Alex Rodriguez’s home runs being equated with the Kach movement. And at this time of year, how could you? This will be unsettling to me every time I watch Alex (or any Yankee, for that matter) hit a ‘tater over the next (hopefully) three series in which they’ll be playing. Hurt, I am hurt deeply. Why couldn’t you have said Jason Bay? Your deep hatred of the Yankees, obviously, has gotten the better of you. Then again, finally a year and a Yankee team that is worth being afraid of (for you) and worth trying to believe in (for me).

  3. leo solomon on Wed, Oct 7th 2009 7:39 PM

    4. For those who don’t know- some years ago Michael Elkin ( member of the o.s.s.,kibbutznick,broadcaster for the bbc world service ,columnnist for the jerusalem report magazine)wrote a book called” Forged in Fury” which dealt with a group of jewish :survivors ,soldiers from britain’s jewish brigade and jewish soldiers from the american army -who did seek revenge for the holocaust.

  4. Maskil on Thu, Oct 8th 2009 4:25 PM

    5. I guess we need to ask whether it’s good entertainment or not. It has no value as “therapy”, because this is quite simply not the way things were. Cheer all you want, but at the end of the day “they” won and we lost.

    Fighting the 2nd World War All Over Again
    http://blog.maskil.info/2009/09/fighting-2nd-world-war-again/

  5. Yitzchak on Sun, Oct 11th 2009 9:25 AM

    6. The main reason I want to see this movie is precisely to see Nazi heads bashed in and scalped….

  6. Maskil on Mon, Oct 12th 2009 12:55 PM

    7. @leo solomon. Thanks for raising that. I mentioned the book in my blog post (see above), but sadly it’s now out of print. 2nd-hand copies are still obtainable, though.

    Forged in Fury

  7. Gaston on Tue, Nov 3rd 2009 6:30 PM

    8. Although hating Nazis and loving Tarantino, but this movie most definitely fails to be therapy, revenge or blunt entertainment. It lacks sensitivity to the theme holocaust and to the victims.

    If you hail the senseless brutality on screen then you are not better than the people in Germany of the 1930s who have supported those crimes. Then history has taught you nothing and you did not get the lesson that we have to watch out that such things never happen again.

    The real issue is not about revenge or creating the cinematic illusion of revenge, it is the need to stay sane and to prevent hatred and cruelty in all forms and places. “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next”; if you find those scenes mentioned above funny you should really ask yourself in what way you are better than those nazis.

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