The Asphalt Jungle

The Best of 2009 - #3

February 17th, 2010 by Raj Ranade

The real world through a cracked lens.

Raj:
Inglourious Basterds (dir. by Quentin Tarantino) - Take a second to think about just how damned bizarre this film really is. There’s a big-name movie star in the cast, but he plays a subordinate role to a German actor and a French actress, both of whom have never actually had a role in an American production. Ostensibly billed as a World War II film filtered through the form of the spaghetti western (a weird enough concept), the film mostly consists of 15-to-20 minute conversations before a climax that is more conventional cinematically but less conventional by any other standard, particularly in its ignoring of the facts of one of history’s most sensitive events. Did I mention that at least half of the thing is in German or French?

This thing made 300 million dollars worldwide! Now, I’m not one to normally care about box office numbers, but it takes a tremendous amount of talent to get an average American audience to ignore every stupid quibble they might have about “subtitles” or “too much talkiness” and enjoy a film like this, and Quentin Tarantino’s crowning achievement as a filmmaker is bursting with that kind of talent from every seam. One of the main keys to Tarantino’s success here, I think, is the newfound discipline of his writing. I enjoy Tarantino’s digressions into pop-culture and oddities of human behavior as much as the next guy, but I enjoy them far more when they pay off through an intricate structure that takes one scene’s non-sequitur and makes it the entire basis of another scene. Every word here counts in a way that it hasn’t in many of Tarantino’s past pictures.

This film is also the fullest testament to Tarantino’s aptitude for casting the perfect person and eliciting the perfect performance. Tarantino’s past movies have certainly rehabilitated actors that were once great (John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, David Carradine), but here he’s finding and building stars from scratch. I have nothing more to say about Christoph Waltz’s brilliant performance than Fareed and every awards bodies already have, but he’s not the only person doing exemplary work here. Melanie Laurent is a master of displaying suppressed emotion, Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger exude old-time movie star class and charm, Til Schweiger and Jacky Ido have Jarmuschian hitman cool, and Daniel Bruhl is wonderful at displaying false modesty and petulant self-importance.

What’s most important here, though, is Tarantino’s return to moral seriousness in filmmaking. Many have discussed Tarantino’s ideas of cinematic revenge for historical wrongs, but equally notable is the nuanced moral depiction of revenge. Some critics think the film is a childish revenge fantasy, which isn’t all wrong - the cathartic joy of revenge is certainly on full display here. But it’s more complicated than that alone - caricatures of Hitler and Goebbels aside, the individual foot soldiers here as human and sometimes even noble as any seen on American film. Consider the noble officer, refusing to betray his fellow men in the field to the Basterds, or the new father trying to bring an autograph home to his newborn son. These men are killed by the Basterds, a veritable terrorist cell that straps on bombs and enters a movie theater with a fair number of civilians. Certainly, Tarantino isn’t a Nazi sympathizer - we’re meant to find exhilaration in the revenge taken against these historical monsters. But that inglorious revenge is meant to sting - we’re meant to see corroded souls in our heroes (not to mention disturbing historical echoes of the Nazis themselves) and recoil a bit at that off-putting sight. Acknowledging both the joy and poisonous terror that can be found in revenge simultaneously is something not a lot of filmmakers can pull off, but Tarantino is at the height of his abilities here. “Basterds” has catapulted Tarantino out of the realm of brilliantly-stylized camp-pastiche filmmakers into the first class of auteurs that reckon seriously with our world, all without losing any of his signature flair. It’s a truly inspiring story of cinematic rebirth.

Fareed:

Johnny Mad Dog (dir. by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire) - It is a cliché to declare that cinema, at its best, is the most edifying and transformative artistic medium. A film like “Johnny Mad Dog” powerfully reveals the truth behind this general statement, providing an unfettered glimpse at a modern-day tragedy - the child soldier. It forces the audience to confront head-on a reality where a system robs children of their innocence by indoctrinating them into an ideology where only violence allows for a modicum of power. That it does this all with a startling finesse, makes this harsh film a stunning example of cinema at its most powerful.

“Johnny Mad Dog” takes the child soldier, and dramatically reconfigures a figure that has long been depicted as a monstrous, brainwashed stereotype in contemporary film. While the fighters indeed commit monstrous acts, “Johnny Mad Dog” reminds us that they are not monstrosities. It does this by focusing upon moments where these young fighters reveal that they are still at heart children - whether by showcasing their limited world view or their simple desires. By subtly emphasizing these moments of humanity, the film boldly illustrates how much these children have lost. In capturing these children and teenagers with such a deep-rooted sympathy, the film powerfully exposes the horror of their plight.

What makes “Johnny Mad Dog” so affecting is the superb execution of every level of the film. In terms of performance, the entire young ensemble acts with the raw energy and authenticity of documentary. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire sharply edits the entire experience so that the viewer experiences both the chaos of their struggle as well as the frightening adrenaline and clarity of battle. Sauvaire’s film starts off with fragments of a massacre, constantly cutting to black. This visual technique serves as a moment of meta-commentary concerning the film’s trajectory, which moves towards complete view of a phenomenon that most Western audiences see only through fragments of misconception. Often, the filmmaker confidently transcends documentary realism to wallow in surreal moments during the life of the soldiers. Such starkly beautiful and often uncanny moments reinforce the very real devastation’s nightmarish qualities.

This driving intelligence on the part of filmmaker Sauvaire continues into the very last frame, when his film that has stood as a testament to film’s ability to enlighten, transforms into a quiet lament about the art form’s limits. It was this element of the exquisitely crafted film that resonated with me upon my first viewing in July.  “This tour de force continually challenges the apathy of the western viewer with unrestrained intensity. In its finale, a girl points a gun directly to the camera. Fearlessly breaking the 4th wall, the last image speaks directly to the distant spectator. Her aggressive though ultimately harmless affront against the viewer encapsulates a film aware of the cinematic medium’s power to provoke while acknowledging its fundamental impotence at effecting real change. This direct confrontation stands as a devastating and intelligent finale to what is an uncompromising and wholly unforgettable film.”

Entry Filed under: Best of 2009