Inglourious Basterds strikes a chord in Israel

October 5, 2009 - 12:17 PM by · 7 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies 

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.

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Tarantino takes a stab at Israel

September 16, 2009 - 11:32 AM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Movies, Pop Culture, War 

Quentin Tarantino in Tel Aviv tries to get a waiter's attention. (Photo: AP)

Quentin Tarantino in Tel Aviv tries to get a waiter's attention. (Photo: AP)

There didn’t seem to be an influx of shady men in black suits rolling their own smokes, but director Quentin Tarantino’s visit to Israel this week still piqued a wave of interest.

The lauded filmmaker was making his first trip here to promote the Israeli premiere of his latest film “Inglourious Basterds,” his typically violent, quirky World Warr II-based epic that depicts a fictional Jewish-American band of vigilantes who take revenge on Nazis

Wearing an AC/DC shirt, Tarantino met reporters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and said that the most important part of his visit was to gauge the Israeli audience’s reaction to the boundary-breaking film.

In an AP report, Tarantino called the bloodbath of the Nazi characters a different brand of World War II film.

“To me, taboos are made to be broken. They’re meant to be pushed over,” Tarantino said. “One of the things that I think is a drag a little bit about movies dealing with World War II for the last 20 years is that … all the movies have really focused in on the victimization of World War II.”

“I’ll be seeing it for the first time in an Israeli cinema. I’ll be seeing it for the first time with an Israeli audience,” Tarantino said. “I’m interested to see, ‘OK, are there laughs here? Does the suspense work here as well as it works somewhere else?’”

Appearing with Christoph Waltz, who plays a Nazi in the film, and Lawrence Bender, the film’s producer, Tarantino insisted that the film was an adventure story and not a Holocaust film.

It’s a bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission movie.” In writing it, he said, “I wasn’t influenced by Holocaust movies, I was influenced by adventure films.”

The Jerusalem Post reported that when asked why he made the character of the Nazi colonel played by Waltz (and nicknamed the Jew Hunter) so charming, Tarantino said, “I don’t judge my characters. I’m always surprised by my characters. Each of them has his reasons why. There are no heroes or villains [in the film].”

When a reporter wanted to know what the moral of his film was, Tarantino laughed. “I’m not a moralist. I don’t believe in morals.”

We Israelis are a tad touchy on the Holocaust subject, so Tarantino, who also visited Yad Vashem on his stay here, may be in for a few surprises at the screening on Thursday. However, most reviews agree that the overly gory film is more of an adventure film that won’t offend an Holocaust sensibilities.

Tarantino might also be surprised to discover, if he ventures out to a restaurant or orders room service, that most milk shakes on menus here actually cost more than $5 – and they’re not such “f***** good shakes”

“Garcon!!”

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