16 Aug Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds, WWII Movie starring Brad Pitt
(2009) I do watch a lot of World War II movies: my running list of the ones I’ve seen in the past year and a half, just since I started this project.
When I’m driving in my car I also listen to World War II audio books. I get them from the Roswell Library, sometimes ordering them ahead from branches all over Fulton County.
The most recent was Soldiers and Slaves by Roger Cohen. Cohen tells two stories in meticulous detail, running side by side. The first was about the family of Mordecai Hauer who lived a good life in Hungary until the Nazis, i.e. Adolf Eichmann, came to town.
Eichmann had all the Jewish families gathered together and explained to them that they would be taken en masse to a wonderful resort-like camp where they would all be together. The Jews, on the most part, obediently went along. Of course, the armed guards were persuasive. Anyone who objected was marked for murder. Once they arrived at the concentration camp, most of Hauer’s family went to the left and he to the right. Hauer didn’t know it then, but “to the left” meant to be gassed immediately.
The second story told in parallel was of a group of American GI’s who were captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. Once they arrived at the Stalag, the boys who were Jewish, had Jewish names, or looked Jewish were separated out and sent to Berga, a small town in East Germany.
At Berga they were forced into slave labor in a dusty tunnel, slated to be built into an underground Nazi storage center. Their treatment was inhumane, from starvation to beatings. The goal was “Work to the death.” Our GI’s began to work alongside the Jews from the concentration camps, among them Hauer … those who still had enough strength (and will to live) left to work.
The GI’s were captured in December of 1944. The war was almost over, but not for them. Their worst experience, a Death March, ended with an American tank coming over the next hill. The Americans couldn’t believe these shrunken men were “ours.”
I was halfway through listening to this story when I flew to New England to interview Charlie Huntoon. At the airport, I bought Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb. This was the account of Eichmann’s crimes and capture, years after the war, from his hiding place in Argentina.
So these are the images I have been wrestling with in the past month. I am aghast at how successful the German leadership was in passing down the license to their soldiers and guards to be brutal … so heartless.
Then comes “Inglourious Basterds,” the 2009 movie with Brad Pitt and directed by Quentin Tarantino. I’ve been looking forward to watching the movie because of its reported OSS connection. It does not do justice to the OSS, as Charles Pinck, President of the OSS Society, wrote in the Washington Post. Rather, it basterdizes their efforts. All in the name of great cinema I suppose.
So discount the fact that Brad Pitt’s character mentions the OSS. That’s not the point of the story. It’s all about revenge. It’s all about killing Gnat-zee’s.
You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’. (Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine)
I started to watch “Inglourious Basterds” while I walked on the treadmill. After 15 minutes, I had to stop. I was feeling too much anxiety, and besides that, I couldn’t read the English subtitles on my small TV.
Even on my bigger television set, it was hard to read the small yellow subtitles so I watched the whole movie on the edge of a hassock right up front.
The suspense in Part I was masterfully created. Christopher Waltz played the #1 most sickening and detestable Nazi in the entire movie. He won an Oscar for his performance.
The rest of the story involved a plot to kill the Nazi elite… not a good word for any of them. And although the ending was a fantasy … considering the mood I was in, it was glourious.
Update October 18, 2012: A documentary titled “The Real Inglorious Bastards” has just been released. It’s all about a real OSS mission, and you can read about it here.
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