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Tarantino's Hollow Violence
Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction exposed the absurdity of Hollywood violence, says Lee Siegel. But Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Inglourious Basterds—which grossed $37 million opening weekend—is everything he once tried to parody. So why is everyone still taking him seriously?
The standard defense of Quentin Tarantino’s films is to wearily dismiss the standard criticisms—i.e., they’re movies about movies; the violence is hyped up and out of context; the atmosphere is juvenile—as if they were outdated and banal. But don’t fall for it.
Because such a tactic is like a lawyer defending his client by wearily deriding a “guilty” verdict as uncool: “I know what you’re going to say, members of the jury, that killing a candy-store owner is wrong, heinous, morally repugnant, blah blah blah. Could we just get over it and talk about the defendant’s technically impressive approach to crime, and about his phenomenal knowledge of the history of murder?”
There is a gross disconnect between the proprieties of movie criticism and the assumption behind Tarantino’s work, which is that horrendous violence is casual, manageable, and pretty cool.
In other words, murder is a crime no matter how “old” the judgment sounds. And Tarantino’s films are parochial, disconnected from the imagination, and tediously puerile—crimes against time and money—no matter how often such criticisms are made.
• Paul Cullum: Tarantino's Glorious Nazi
• Lloyd Grove: Tarantino's Star Also a Critic
• Kim Masters: My Father, The Inglourious Basterd
• Caryn James: Heil, Tarantino! His Best Since 'Pulp Fiction'Inglourious Basterds does not even have the virtue, as Tarantino’s early films did, of introducing a new style of Hollywood film making. The film’s intense violence and its fanzine allusions to other films are as passé as the melodrama of Gone With the Wind.
Now I’m no prig. The film’s emptiness has nothing to do with Tarantino’s choice of subject. The Holocaust can take care of itself.
It’s been addressed creatively or foolishly in one work of popular art after another, yet it retains the power to strike us dumb. The right wing's association of Barack Obama with Adolf Hitler is sickeningly obscene, but at least Hitler and the Nazis represent evil for these otherwise twisted people. When they start comparing Rush Limbaugh to Hitler as a compliment to Limbaugh, then memory of the Holocaust will have lost whatever moral force (the irony of that!) it still possesses.
In fact, the only aspect of Inglourious Basterds that I found original had to do with its commentary—deliberate or not—on the way the Holocaust has been used in Hollywood.
Critics, even some of those who didn’t like the film, are greatly impressed by what they consider Tarantino’s bold reformulation of Jews as the brutal victors and the Nazis as their victims. No need to be impressed. By the end of just about every Hollywood film about the war against the Nazis, you are left not with the devastating revelation of the tens of million of people killed in that conflict—soldiers and civilians—but with the uplifting impression that the Nazis were actually thwarted and that goodness and decency triumphed. Hollywood has been making Inglourious Basterds for more than 70 years.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
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Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
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Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
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Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
QT never parodied violence like Kubrick did with "A Clockwork Orange."
Whereas Kubrick was trying to have his audience self-reflect on the growing acceptance of cinematic violence, Tarantino revels in it. "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" did nothing but celebrate violence. That's why people didn't like "Jackie Brown," because it wasn't violent enough.
"Inglourious" only continues this trend, except it takes up a notch to true ridiculousness. And it provides a giddy outlet on the most perilous regimes in modern history. He's laughing at the Third Reich, and we are too.
Read Roger Ebert's review of every Tarantino film. They're not supposed to have film courses taught about them. They're pure entertainment. Only "Jackie Brown" attempted to exceed expectations and he got riddled with critical bullets for it. So, he waits six years and comes out with the most over-the-top action film you could conceive of in "Kill Bill."
He's been trying to make this film since before "Kill Bill," you know. So, he initially tried to follow up his only "serious" film with one where the entire Nazi leadership structure is murdered at a movie theater.
I agree with Stancher, QT isn't expecting his films to be in the halls of cinema verite in 20 years. It appears you're more angry that people are taking bits of "bastards" making the obvious allusions and thinking QT is a genius. I just don't agree on that point. His films aren't really about anything, Ebert mentioned that himself in his Bastards review. When a film isn't about anything what is it? It's Seinfeld, a show about nothing. It's not a painting but a clown on the street.
QT recently did a list of his top 20 films since 1992 and every film was more about entertainment than a message. I mean his favorite film was "battle royal" which clearly was trying to kill children in the most interesting ways than say anything about social behavior.
"Tarantino's films are parochial, disconnected from the imagination, and tediously puerile"
Relax, Lee Siegel. Tarantino films are fun to watch. End of story.
Exactly right.
And Pulp Fiction is considered one of the best films ever made, with the briefcase being the modern day Rosebud.
god help us if what you say is true.
If you know movies then it is true.
quite the opposite, JDK-JDK.
while it is true that pulp fiction was technically (in the sense of technique) excellent, and has many things to commend it, to say it is "one of the best films ever made" demonstrates you do not know enough about film.
unless of course you meant one of the best (1000) films ever made, in which case there would be widespread agreement. i guess this is a matter of exclusivity.
hithere3,
According to the American Film Institute, Pulp Fiction is the 94th greatest film ever made.
Correction MondoBizzaro, 94th greatest AMERICAN film ever made. It does have 96% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is very very good. It is a great movie. It is an even greater movie for those of us that came of age during the 90s.
even 94th among american films, if those rankings are reasonable, somehow does not seem to justify JDK-JDK's effusive description.
Good come back, piktor! No response is better than stubbornly refusing to think about anything!
From Lee Siegel: "I would like to challenge him to a fight that will decide the validity of hollow, movie-think violence. More particularly, I would like to knock his fucking teeth out of his mouth, break the bridge of his nose and push it up into his head. To hell with seven types of ambiguity,.." and more blah blah.
I did not get anywhere with this review, other than an agitated author with no real point or worthy conclusion.
Reviewers in general make me sick. They seem to enjoy dilapidating other's work that took years to make with their cursing and their smug, destructive, unenlightening diatribes.
Piktor, if reviewers in general make you sick, why bother reading them? And, if you insist on nauseating yourself, rather than just limply going "blah blah blah" why don't you try to interact with their ideas rather than outright dismissing them?
They are fun to watch and for film affecianados they are a trip with one who appreciates the medium. Enjoy and have a slice day.
piktor gets 5 points for using "puerile" instead of childish.
Get your French on!
I truly feel sorry for Mr. Seigel.
The typical liberal response to 'Inglourious Basterds' has been--almost to a T, to use Mr. Seigel's phrase--exactly like this. But to assign any kind of broader political statement to 'Inglourious Basterds' is absolute folly and, more to the point, an insult to everyone's intelligence.
Mr. Seigel has deftly and easily made it impossible to offer any kind of true criticism of this film. Like most lazy and irresponsible critics, Mr. Seigel has reviewed Tarantino the man, not Tarantino the filmmaker.
Reading this article I began to wonder if Mr. Seigel had even seen the film. 'Inglourious Basterds' is not about the Holocaust, and it's not about serious history; it's not a social document or a realist's entry into an existing genre. This is not the boredom and self-important work of Spielberg or Polanski or any other filmmaker who's made films about the Holocaust like William Friedkin makes cop fims. Boring? Plotless? These are words to describe 'Inglourious Basterds'? Hardly. 'Basterds' is Tarantino's most densely plotted film, more plotted even than his adaptation of a goddamn Elmore Leonard novel.
Mr. Seigel comes off as a Tarantino hater, not an actual critic. Maybe he should watch the movie a second time, which is another way of saying he SHOULD ACTUALLY WATCH THE MOVIE.
Oh, and all those curse words really made me take him seriously as a critic.
The best part about all the 'Basterds' discussion is that it more or less proves Tarantino is one of America's best and most interesting contemporary filmmakers. Who else inspires such derision and idolatry?
The film, by dint of existence, is a social document. He has taken what is still a politically charged topic -- the Holocaust -- and creates a wild fantasy about its victims as avenging angels of death. To say that the film isn't realistic misses the point; to assume that because Tarantino takes a more fantastic approach to the subject that the film isn't self important makes Siegel's point for him (and probably in a better way than Siegel himself has).
What exactly does "typical liberal" mean? If you're one of those people who believes all hollywood/newspaper/critic types are liberal, then how do you explain the film's widespread praise? Or are you going to say that liberals represent Lee and, say the New Yorker in this case, and just ignore the many obviously liberal dissenters? I'm tempted to say that something to the effect of "this is a typically foolish conservative declaring anything he disagrees with as liberal, facts be damned", but I won't because, well I don't know you or what you think. But you'd better think harder next time.
No problem, mightyCW, I'll say it for you:
"this is a typically foolish conservative declaring anything he disagrees with as liberal, facts be damned"
ROFLMAO
But, doesn't anyone else think that our country's obsession with Nazis and Hitler is weird and perverse and also increasing/worsening with each passing year? Wonder why that is??
I agree 110%. I read seigel's review of Gran Turismo where he gives away the ending with no warning. This guy is a hack, and to critisize one of america's true film makers who isn't just doing franchises or boring moview about old people falling in love is rediculous. I am sure he has no credentials but whatever ones he thinks he may have should be removed.
We gotta find out whose cousin he is...
"Yet the outrageously explicit violence-originally Tarantino's commentary on the convention of American movie violence, remember?" - Honestly, I would be hard pressed to even give Tarantino the benefit of this little shred of doubt.
Bravo Mr. Siegel.I have not read a better summation on this man's very negative work.
I really doubt that Tarantino has any idea what he is really doing or why. He is a sick little man who is clever and got lucky.
One of the most chilling phrases I have ever heard regarding what is far too many people's thinking about Tarantino's films is:
"It's the best art film I have ever seen."
Well, there you go.
Bravo, Lee Siegel and for taking head-on the Tarantino mythos. Although I have yet to see IB, I do feel that QT has played out his hand a couple of pictures ago. Kill Bill although pretty fun to watch in spots felt like a hollow exercise in film technique which hid it's glorification of ultra-violence behind a veneer of pseudo-feminist revenge fantasy played-out to mythic proportions, even adding some anime-style animation to the mix lest we, (wink, wink), miss the point.
Really though the Grindhouse movie "Death Proof" pretty much distilled the Tarantino aesthetic down to it's essence;
- an "exercise" in 70's exploitation slumming, which boasted scratched film and "missing scenes" along with the fake promos and cheesy coming attractions replete with bad music
etc. Apparently all of this stands for some sort of genius.
Along the way we were treated to the patented Tarantino dialogue which has become a tedious exercise in belabored
pop culture references amidst the protagonists which again apparently stands for character development and story, all of which is a tedious setup for the violence to come.
His latest excursion seems particularly glib and distasteful. Scalping Nazis sounds repugnant no matter how you spin it.
Using the holocaust as his latest playground is a callow, cynical exercise in creating meta-trash.
Agreed.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
One man's meta-trash is another man's treasure.
I'm confused.
When did Quentin Tarantino ever profess to merely "parody" movie violence rather than simply purvey it?
Or did you just make that up?
Hmmm....
Part of the post-post-modern experience is the always already ironic. QT's violence is and has always been self-reflexive, expecting you as audience member to question the violence you see, not just sit back and absorb it as natural, inevitable, and good. By self-consciously making the violence appear natural, inevitable, and good, it only emphasizes it's ridiculousness.
Compared to the Saw series or every one of the other "realistic" brutal elaborate capture, torture and kill movies that have been so common this decade, QT much more echoes Kubrick than any of the makers of those heartless exploitive films.
If you take QT seriously and not ironically, then you just don't get it. He's smart enough to realize that violence sells and smart enough to exploit our demand while simultaneously showing us how ridiculous we are for wanting it. Sound selfish? Welcome to the postmodern condition of the always already ironic.
This is an escape fantasy more than anything else - a "what if..." exercise played out ad absurdum. In case you don't recall, Hitler did not in fact die in a blazing French cinema. You can't take QT so seriously - appreciate his technique, his banter, his allusions, and his over-the-top-ness, and get over yourself.
I might also add that for as much as Siegel underestimates the value of QT's films, I do think QT overestimates them by about the same amount. Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds have an arthouse niche (grindhouse...not so much) - ain't nothing wrong with that.
Agreed with some people: Since when were his first couple movies "parodies" of movie violence? He uses violence when he needs to, whether as comedy or as a serious plot mover, but he's never used it as "parody" until Kill Bill.
And am I alone in thinking "Inglourious Basterds" wasn't half as violent as it could have been? Outside of some scalping shots and the squirm-inducing final scene, is anyone really bothered by people getting shot anymore? Grow a pair.
Shitty article, misleading and controversy-seeking headline.
"Now I'm no prig..." Chuckle, giggle, belly laugh, snort.
Dude, take a chill pill, will ya? Don't try and overanalyze this stuff. You're giving me a headache.
Tarentino is who he is. After all this time and all those films, you have to go into his movies knowing what he's aiming for. That is, his idea of comic-book violence.
Sure, this movie has an absolutely absurdist ending, but hey, it's his movie and he's entitled to that ending. I came out wanting more and I certainly expect that the Blu-Ray director's cut will be fantastic.
It was (as all QT films are) a black comedy! Talk of the Holocaust and extreme violence misses the point. I walked out of the theater thinking of "The Producers" not "Schindler's List"! Except for the mention of Tim Roth in "Rob Roy" this reviewer just did not get the film or didn't want to.
after the first scene when the german let the girl go (how frigging unlikely given that he just machine gunned an entire family) i was wishing that the nazi's would win!
this was a fabulous movie, don't listen to this review. the ending makes the movie.
Why is the Daily Beast dedicated to chipping away at this movie, and why does it so consistently miss the mark? It sounds like Siegel's biggest complaint isn't about Basterds itself or any other of Tarantino's movies, but how critics respond. Great, whatever, talk about it all you want, but you should put that article under another headline.
And as someone else mentioned, I didn't think this movie was anywhere near as gory as it's been made out to be, by you and others. Like Deathproof before it, I found his use of action just under what I'd like. But I'd rather be left wanting a little more. And how dare you so offhandedly dismiss Waltz's outstanding performance as an aping of Tim Roth in Rob Roy. He carried this movie alongside Ms. Laurent. He built the tension so well in the outstanding first scene, which I may remind you went at least ten minutes before a single shot was fired. Hollow violence my ass.
Honestly, I love Tarantino. In my 30s I was lined up like a lemming to see "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction."
Currently this middle-aged geek has had it with the blood. I never thought I'd be saying this, but recent movies like "The Signal" and the latest Clive Barker gorefest with Vinnie Jones have pushed me over the edge.
We have enough real death and misery on TV every night...why should I pay for "ironic violence?" I'm beginning to think that there should be a DSM diagnosis for folks that do.
Much as I think the commentators here write more to defend Tarantino than actually think about his films, they do have a point: this is a badly written, badly argued article. Tarantino has never parodied Hollywood violence, he has embraced it and amplified it because he likes violence.
Then there's this nonsensical graf: "He is the only Hollywood director I know of who receives, in lengthily solemn reviews, involved analysis of his tracking shots, camera angles, and the like."
Really? You aren't familiar with directors like Martin Scorsese? Paul Thomas Anderson? Wes Anderson? Ang Lee? Brian De Palma (back when people still watched his films)? Alfonso Cuaron? Robert Altman?
"He's pure box office, but some critics talk about him as though he were Godard."
Well, he does reference Godard a lot -- his production company, A Band Apart, is a direct reference to a Godard film. He makes films in the same cinephilic tradition as the early French New Wave filmmakers. I don't much like his work, but I recognize that the Godard comparison is apt. And nor is Tarantino box office gold -- "Basterds" opened to about $36 million this weekend, his biggest opening ever, which is hardly in the realm of Bay, Spielberg, etc. This article is a case of the writer overstating his case to make his point about Tarantino's violence seem fresh or more trenchant than it is.
Interminable dialogue and relentless violence? I don't know what movie Lee Siegel watched, but I don't recognize Inglorious Basterds in his review.
Frankly, I thought it was the feel-good hit of the summer. My friends and I enjoyed it immensely and it was way less violent than I anticipated.
I agree with many others have said here, for example that this is not a "holocaust film" and Waltz had me on the edge of my seat.
Suspenseful and fun.
Tarantino's films are the Emperor's New Clothes. They are mindless and mindbending. Siegel uses the phrase, "...overdone, exploitative, insincere, and decontextualized violence." That says it all.
Geez, I'm just an irregular movie-goer, not a Tarantino acolyte, and couldn't identify one movie reference from another in any movie. Siegel just seems intent on showing-off his film fan credentials, like I care, and got the whole movie wrong. I think he went in hating the movie before he even saw it. And, I usually hate most movies (won't expound here) but I loved IB, which was a total shock, and am highly recommending it. Siegel, get over yourself.
This guy doesn't get Tarrantino.
I would rather knock the teeth out of the film makers that made crap like "GI Joe" and "Transformers." They are the ones that kill the art of film making. Keep up the good work QT.
Granted some films are art, but the lions share are just stories nothing more nothing less. If you went into Transformers or G.I. Joe expecting art than someone should knock your teeth out while trying to knock some sense into you. What would you expect of movies based on mediocre cartoons/toy lines from the 80's.
It's too popular to dismiss Quentin Tarantino these days, the deeper I move into hipster circles the longer and louder the complaints become. I feel like I can guess the age and the location of a reviewer depending on what he decides to complain about in this film.
"As Tarantino's Basterds and his Nazis shoot, scalp, strangle, and incinerate their way through the film"
There are literally only 4 scenes of what could be described as "violent action" in the movie, and this reviewer just gave away the action in all of them.
This movie was almost disappointing in the low level of violence within it. To call it a violent movie would be to take a very small numbers of scenes and over-inflate their importance in the overall narrative. But keep in mind that it's a movie about WW2, when the weapons were so brutally destructive that to compare them to today's more modern weapons would be to make the best guns of our ere look like cap guns.
This reviewer missed the movie, if this is his actual submitted review.
"almost disappointing"?
i feel sorry for you.
Um, why? 'Almost' is a strong enough qualifier to make it clear that I did enjoy the movie. When I wrote that, I wasn't still in the theater; I was looking back through the haze of memory. Pound for pound, this movie had maybe 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of violent action as, say, Kill Bill. It barely had more violence than Reservoir Dogs. For the reviewer or anyone to call it a violent movie is a mischaracterization.
Well one things for sure, I easily got through the movie and was begging for more while I could barely get through this review.
AMEN!!!!!!
Thank you Lee! Monday hasn't even ended yet and already you have given me the week's best example of rampant douchebaggery gone unchecked.
Nice!
Thank you.
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