Punching Nazis

After I got finished watching Shoah on Saturday night, I was really in the mood for punching some Nazis.

Not killing them. Just punching them.

Why not killing? Only punching?

1) I'm not a murderer.

2) Punching is more personal. 

When you kill someone, usually you're doing it with some kind of weapon as an intermediary. Some people can kill people with their bare hands, but it's not reliable if you want to be sure to get the job done.

Punching someone, though? That's flesh-to-flesh, bone-to-bone. That's your knuckles cracking them straight in the jaw, and hopefully not breaking your own hand in the process. That's visceral and that's where real frustration vents itself.

You can tell by the sound effect they use for it in the movies, that familiar short cracking whip, possibly accompanied by a body thudding to the ground.

Speaking of cracking whips, punching Nazis is one of Indiana Jones' favorite pastimes. Sure, he can pull out his pistol and shoot them, but that's such a remote way of showing someone your disdain. A good fist to the face, and they'll remember it and have to rub it something fierce to make the pain go away. 

So yes, it's no surprise I immediately started watching another movie -- yes, another movie, after more than nine hours of Shoah, and more than 14 hours in real time -- in which Nazis get punched, and then followed that with another the next night. 

The first was Blood & Gold, the vastly underseen 2023 Netflix movie that I've never heard another person talk about even though it's really good. The setup: It's the waning days of World War II -- literally, like the last two days -- and we open on German soldiers led by a sadistic commander hanging a deserter near a small village in the country. Instead of succumbing -- the sadistic commander told him it wouldn't snap his neck right away and would take time to kill him -- the alleged deserter is cut down by a war widow, who runs a farm with her mentally challenged brother. This puts them in the path of the commander and his superior officer, who are in the village looking gold in the home of a Jewish family who died in the gas chamber. 

Peter Thorwarth's movie is shot really well and has a Tarantino adjacent style. If it were done worse, you might even call it a ripoff, but the filmmaking is so good all around that a "loving homage" is the appropriate way to refer to it. It's fast-paced and mid-level violent, just fun enough without being gratuitous, and it gets you out of there in only 98 minutes. What more could I ask for after a nine-hour movie? It made my top ten of 2023 and is really worth seeing.

And are there punched Nazis? 

Oh there are punched Nazis indeed.

There are a number of scenes of close physical gouging and mauling and plenty of punch-like activity, but Thorwarth has enough respect for realism that these read more like "subdue your enemy at any cost" fights than they read like "photogenically punch a Nazi square on the jaw" fights. 

But you can bet those Nazis are punched all right. Clawed at and cut and spat on and gouged at. Plenty roughed up. Will feel it in the morning. 

Sunday night brought chapter 2 in this little informal Nazi-punching double feature, with one of the Nazi punchiest movies out there: Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Speaking of Tarantino. 

I had only seen Inglourious Basterds twice, both of which were in the first year of its existence. But that's certainly no knock on it, as it made my top that year and I think of it as being among my top four Tarantino films, joined by Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight. 

I don't really need to tell you anything about Inglourious Basterds because surely you have seen it. However, I'll tell you about a funny takeaway I had from the film on this viewing, which I wouldn't have been in the position to have when I last saw it in 2010.

Namely, this is by far the closest Quentin Tarantino has to a Wes Anderson movie. However, I'd say if anything, Wes might have been stealing from Quentin.

Although Tarantino's movies have never been without a sense of humor, I think there are moments of absurdity in Inglourious Basterds that feel almost Andersonian in their presentation. Of course, Anderson's movie that is most like this is The Grand Budapest Hotel, which he would not release for another five years. However, Anderson was doing that sort of quirk before Tarantino was, so maybe there is a little bit of mutual respect showing here.

But what we're really here to talk about is the Nazi punching. 

How does Inglourious Basterds fare on that front?

Quite poor, actually.

Oh, plenty of Nazis get theirs -- it's history as revenge fantasy, where essentially the entire top brass of the Third Reich gets taken down in a burning theater, including Hitler riddled with bullets, and then his corpse riddle with some more bullets. 

But actual punching is in short supply. Non-existent, really.

The closest we get is that two of the Basterds, who have gotten into the film premiere, strap on wrist guns that fire through a punching action. Two Nazi guards meet their demise from these wrist guns, and I believe the one played by Eli Roth actually engages in a punch of sorts when he fires it.

Oh, and Aldo Raine does head butt Hans Landa. That's pretty personal -- and something you really have to know how to do without hurting yourself unless you want to walk away with a severe headache.

What's wrong with "what if"?

For the past two weeks, I've borne the burden of being one of the only people I know who's seen Anonymous ... and also one of the only critics who seems to have liked it. It's got exactly a 50 on Metacritic, which is, technically speaking, "mixed or average reviews." But the critics who like it seem sheepish about that fact -- those who don't are a lot bolder, buoyed by the implicit support of millions of snarky moviegoers, many of whom have not even seen it.

The reasons not to like Anonymous write themselves. It's directed by Roland Emmerich, an infamous hack responsible for idiocy like 10,000 B.C. It posits the idea that William Shakespeare did not write his own plays -- not a new idea, but also not a widely accepted one. And it includes numerous suppositions about what could have happened with other characters, many involving scandalous things about Queen Elizabeth -- such as the idea that she had several bastard children.

But it's this last point that people seem to be taking the most issue with, and not specifically because it besmirches Elizabeth's name. The doubts that Shakespeare wrote his own plays go back to before such luminaries and skeptics as Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud, and even the critics who didn't like the film can admit that it's an impressive accomplishment for its much-maligned director, who didn't seem capable of tackling such a subject. No, the critics looking to vent their aimless dislike for the film choose the fact that much of its action is imagined, and based only loosely on historical fact.

I say: So what?

Forget the fact that it's a movie, a work of fiction, and that it exists on the most fundamental level for the purpose of selling tickets. Loose interpretations of the facts, the altering of minor details, the rearranging of events in the chronology ... these things are to be expected in the attempt to make it work better as a narrative. And if done well, they contribute toward distilling the essence of truth, if not always literal truth.

So forget that we could allow this stuff for purely artistic reasons. What about the fact that pretty much every historical movie contains a sizable percentage of "what if"?

Since no one was present to record the conversations that occurred between 16th century noblemen, one must make guesses about the content of those conversations. It's the only way to go, unless you are so paralyzed with fears about inaccuracy that you stick to documenting only the things that exist in some kind of public record. And that would make for a pretty damn boring movie.

I guess what sticks in the craw of this film's detractors is how many liberties were apparently taken. To suggest that one of England's most celebrated queens spawned several fatherless children and jumped from bed to bed seems like sacrilege to some.

But if you parse that argument, it suggests that you should only make conservative guesses about things that may have happened with real people. If you play it safe, you are in the clear. But since when does a good drama play it safe? One of my favorite things about Anonymous is how much balls it has -- not only for its depiction of Elizabeth, but for suggesting that Shakespeare may have been just an opportunistic miscreant, wrapped up in unsavory deeds all the way up to and including actual murder. (This last is not stated outright but merely intimated.)

And why can't we take Shakespeare off this pedestal? I just finished listening to a podcast that's new to my repertoire called The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, where he talks to Anonymous screenwriter John Orloff about not only the incredibly ambitious structure of the script, but plenty of the issues related to the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Orloff, a so-called Oxfordian (which means he doubts the authorship), and Goldsmith, a so-called Stratfordian (which means he doesn't), go at it pretty well regarding some of the contentious facts about the case. In every instance I thought that Orloff -- who has studied this more than Goldsmith, granted -- scored a point off Goldsmith, convincing me even more than his movie did that Shakespeare was not who history says he was. Without going into too many of the specifics, let me just outline a few: 1) It is known that both Shakespeare's parents and his children were illiterate. 2) No document exists from that period that was written in his hand, making him a total anomaly among his contemporaries. 3) The plays imply a knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Latin, and Shakespeare never went to school. 4) A third of his plays take place in Italy and describe it in great detail, though Shakespeare never actually traveled there. 5) All the conditions that likely needed to have been in place for him to write those plays, were actually in place for a nobleman like Edward de Vere, who's played by Rhys Ifans in the movie.

What's more, there's an actual academic theory that de Vere and Elizabeth were lovers, which gives a scholarly justification to even some of the film's most controversial "what if"s.

But let's dial back down to just the idea of "what if"s. We allow "what if"s to enter into many of the movies we love, in two distinctly different ways: 1) What if it did actually happen this way? 2) What if it had actually happened this way? Let's not forget that one of the most celebrated films of the last few years, Inglourious Basterds, includes an alternate reading of World War II that we know did not happen -- it's simply fantasy. Hitler never died in a rain of gunfire at the hands of a couple American commandos who were also setting a movie theater on fire. Yet that film was nominated for best picture and showed up near the top of a number of best-of lists.

But you don't even have to offer wild examples of alternate histories, and you don't even have to go particularly far into the past. One of the most realistic films of the past ten years was 2006's United 93, which imagines what might have happened on board the doomed September 11th flight when the passengers revolted against the terrorists, bringing the aircraft down in a Pennsylvania field. There are only a few things known about what actually did happen -- such as Todd Beamer saying "Let's roll" -- so the rest is up to the imagination of a screenwriter. Sure, that screenwriter (Paul Greengrass) stayed pretty much within the bounds of what "probably" happened -- he didn't suggest that aliens beamed aboard the plane and took out the terrorists.

But is saying that Elizabeth might have had illegitimate children the same thing as saying that aliens intervened with the September 11th attacks? I don't think it is. I think it's very possible that Elizabeth had illegitimate children, and just because we don't know about them doesn't mean we can't infer their existence based on things we do know ... and that we can't write a script in which they do actually exist.

And let's not forget that there is already a very famous movie -- an Oscar winner, in fact -- that imagines a lot of things that Shakespeare might or might not have done. That movie, Shakespeare in Love, was met with almost universal acclaim. There was no controversy about what was depicted, or at least no controversy that reached the layman -- no one ever had a big problem with the idea that Shakespeare might have shaken a bad case of writer's block at the hands of a muse who won his heart.

And you know why that is? Because it was unambiguously positive toward Shakespeare. If you do doubt that Shakespeare wrote his plays -- which I certainly now do, though it does not affect my appreciation of them in the slightest, because I still find it incredibly impressive that someone wrote them -- what's wrong with suggesting that he may have had some unsavory traits? A man who accepted a deal like that, to be a front for works he didn't write, is morally compromised at the very least.

And if you're saying you only want positive interpretations of Shakespeare on film, then you are just being an intellectually dishonest film fan.

Oh, and remember how I briefly mentioned Sigmund Freud earlier? He too is a character in a film releasing in the fall of 2011, which will have to suppose a lot of things about him: David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method.

Okay, so you can't object to the idea that Shakespeare might not have written his plays, and you can't object to Emmerich's execution of the story, and you can't object to the details of the story -- unless you're simply saying you would have made other choices if you yourself were the screenwriter, and that's kind of splitting hairs.

So, like, what's your big problem?

Go see this thing before it whimpers out of theaters for good, with none of your money. Which it's worked harder than most films to deserve.

Faymiss Miss Pellingz

Editor's Note: This is the second in a two-part series of frivolous observations about Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. In fact, this editor's note is by far the least frivolous thing in either posting.

Copy editors around the country were doubtless driven cross-eyed by Quentin Tarantino's chosen misspelling of the title of his latest movie. Accustomed to correcting misspellings, they had to shift gears and make sure the words were spelled incorrectly every time the title appeared in print. What might have been called Inglorious Bastards was instead named Inglourious Basterds, perhaps creating lifelong learned mistakes among the youngest in our viewing population. (Never mind the fact that they're too young to be seeing this film anyway).

Tarantino's reasoning is clear: The film was inspired in part by a 1978 Italian film called The Inglorious Bastards, directed by Enzo Catellari. Tarantino has stressed that it's not a remake of that film -- the plot is quite different -- so misspelling the title was intended both to pay homage to that film, and to differentiate his film from it.

So it got me thinking about what other titles have been famously misspelled in the past, and the reasons behind them. Hey, in my world, that's enough for a posting.

Because it's hard to research this kind of thing from all the titles in the world, I've used my own movie list to help me narrow down my choices. Besides, that way I can also give a reason for the misspelling, having seen the movie. I'm sure this approach will mean I'm missing a couple big ones. If you think of something good I missed, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section.

Alphabetically ...

Title: American Dreamz (2006, Paul Weitz)
Reason for misspelling: It's the name of the American Idol-style singing competition parodied in the movie, which is hosted by the Simon Cowell-like Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant). The Z in the show's name is probably intended to indicate "radness."

Title: Antz (1998, Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson)
Reason for misspelling: The protagonist ant, played by Woody Allen, is named Z. Plus, the aforementioned "radness" probably played a role.

Title: Baadasssss! (2003, Mario Van Peebles)
Reason for misspelling: An homage to Mario Van Peebles' father Melvin's film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), the making of which is the focus of this excellent biopic. That movie could go on this list too, but I haven't seen it, and no movie I haven't seen could possibly have any value. Oh, and if you're googling this, be sure to include that fifth S, or you will never find it.

Title: Boyz N the Hood (1991, John Singleton)
Reason for misspelling: This is the classic in the misspelling department, with far-reaching cultural implications. Not only did it really take the Z ending mainstream -- though here "radness" is not the goal -- but it also paved the way for other inner-city themed films with loose grammatical/typographical titles, such as Menace II Society. (Ebonics-themed titles is a slightly more controversial way of describing it).

Title: The Edukators (2004, Hans Weingartner)
Reason for misspelling: Not entirely clear. There would be a temptation to say it is the German translation of "educator," but it's not -- that is actually "der erzieher." Besides, the actual German title of this film about anarchists who break into the homes of the rich and rearrange their furniture is Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei, which translates to "the fat years are over" or "your days of plenty are numbered."

Title: eXistenZ (1999, David Cronenberg)
Reason for misspelling: It's the name of a virtual reality game in the movie. I can't tell you anything more because I'm cheating here -- I haven't seen it, though I probably should. It's the one movie I thought of without consulting my list.

Title: I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988, Keenen Ivory Wayans)
Reason for misspelling: This hilarious send-up of blaxploitation movies, an early high for the eventually bottom-feeding Wayans, is like a precursor to Boyz N the Hood in terms of words appearing in titles with spellings accented for the street. Plus it also has one of Chris Rock's first appearances on film.

Title: Pet Sematary (1989, Mary Lambert)
Reason for misspelling: The word was misspelled on the handwritten sign for the pet cemetery depicted in Stephen King's novel.

Title: The Pursuit of Happyness (2006, Gabriele Muccino)
Reason for misspelling: Wikipedia sums this one up pretty well: "The title is intentionally misspelled, as it also appears as graffiti in a scene in the film. The misspelled phrase is actually taken from an essay written in 1776 that argued that whites and blacks were created equal. The essay, which was written by Lemuel Haynes, a biracial man living in New England during the Revolution, quoted Thomas Jefferson's well-known sentence from the United States Declaration of Independence, but spelled the last word of the sentence with a y. The sentence, as it appears in Lemuel's essay, is as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-Evident, that all men are created Equal, that they are Endowed By their Creator with Ceartain [sic] unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happyness."

There. I hope this post left you feeling enlightened.

If it did, that would make one of us.

The Coen brothers' latest film

Welcome to the first of two posts timed for the release of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Few would argue that Quentin Tarantino is one of the most influential filmmakers of the last 20 years. Even though his own work is highly influenced by others -- a fact this one-time video store clerk and devout hero worshipper would immediately acknowledge -- there's little doubt that Tarantino's approach to filmmaking engendered a whole generation of imitators, some good, some terrible.

So it's a bit of a surprise, when I watch the trailers for Inglourious Basterds, that I see two of his contemporaries in this footage: the Coen brothers, and Steven Soderbergh.

It's probably Brad Pitt's fault. In fact, for a moment I considered titling this post "The chicken or the Pitt?" Darn it, maybe that would have been more clever.

See, Pitt has appeared prominently in films by each director and/or creative partnership: Burn After Reading for the Coens, Ocean's 11, 12 and 13 for Soderbergh. And it just so happens that all of these films, including Basterds, involve boatloads of quippy dialogue, slapstick criminal activity, winking humor, and a generally buoyant comic sensibility.

When Pitt talks about "killin' Nat-zees" or answers Hitler's "Nein nein nein nein!" with "Yes yes yes yes!," it screams Coens. When he's drinking a flute of champagne in a white tuxedo, and is tackled by a half-dozen guards, it's something straight out of Ocean's 11.

The part where one basterd uses a baseball bat to bash in the head of a defiant Nazi? Well, that one's all Tarantino.

But it does make me think about how actors, and specifically the way they're directed, call to mind the works of other directors. Because this is Pitt being cheeky, and we've seen Pitt being cheeky for the Coens and for Soderbergh, I think of their oeuvres when I see this trailer. However, what if it weren't Brad Pitt, but, say, Clive Owen? Owen hasn't worked for either the Coens or Soderbergh. Would I still see the similarity?

Then there's another question. Is the fact that the movie reminds me of the Coens and Soderbergh a good thing, or a bad thing? I've had my issues with both over the years, though I certainly say that on the whole, I love their work. The same is true for Tarantino. There's something to be said for having a distinct look that is recognizeable as one's own, and there are some directors that clearly have that, for better or worse: Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan and Woody Allen, to name a couple that come to mind. And when I first saw the trailers for the Kill Bill movies, Tarantino oozed out of every frame.

But maybe it's a good thing when you can't immediately identify a movie as belonging to a particular director. That's kind of why I want Tim Burton to surprise us eventually, instead of doing the most obvious thing in the world by making his own version of Alice in Wonderland (even as long-overdue for a cinematic update as that story is). And kind of why I am constantly impressed by a guy like Ang Lee, whose Taking Woodstock (out next week) will be as dissimilar to all this other films as every other film he's directed.

And so maybe this is growth for Tarantino, even though calling something derivative, as I basically have, generally tends to constitute negative commentary. After all, it's his first real period piece. It's also his first movie not set primarily in the United States. Thirdly, it's his first movie in which a person who really existed (Hitler) appears. Maybe these firsts will force him to switch up the musical stylings that have also been his trademark. We'll see how he mines kitsch from period-appropriate 40s music, rather than Kool and the Gang and Stealers Wheel.

And if in the end, it does remind us of the Coens and Soderbergh, well ... there are worse people to be compared to.

Tune in tomorrow for Inglourious Basterds, Post II.