Inglourious Basterds strikes a chord in Israel

October 5, 2009 - 12:17 PM by David · 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.

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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