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Tarantino apparently has this story he tells about writing the script, and he gets to a point where he writes himself into a corner and he can't figure out what to do, so he just says, oh, I'll kill Hitler.
Well, I'm sorry, I don't believe that.
Yeah, that's the kind of story that Tarantino tells when he doesn't want to tell the real story.
Yeah, sorry, I don't believe that for a moment.
One day we will learn.
He's in his 60s now.
He will retire one day and he will write memoirs and I will read through every fucking page of that.
Sure.
What it suggests to me, really, is this subversion of, as you say, it's marketed in America as a Brad Pitt war movie.
Maybe with an ironic twist, but it's that's what the posters look like.
It looks like, you know, an action movie set during World War Two where Brad Pitt, you know, fights Nazis.
You could put you could put the Brad Pitt.
There's the Brad Pitt tank movie.
I think it's called Fury or something.
You could put like screenshots from that from the ads from that and screenshots from the ads for Inglorious Bastards side by side and not tell which movie was which.
Yeah.
But the film internally subverts that.
While it is completely on the side of the bastards, as I say, it's uncompromising in its support for their quite horrific violence.
Because ultimately, you know, everybody they attack is a fucking Nazi.
So the film doesn't, there's no, I never felt the slightest bit moralized at any stage.
Like, you know, Oh, isn't war terrible?
It never does that.
The closest it gets, I suppose, is with the young soldier in the beer cellar.
Yeah, I was going to say Maximilian's dad is probably the one.
But even he, I mean, he's shown to kill the waitress in the bar.
And he's he's he's about to kill Bridget von Hammersmark.
You know, he's he's still dangerous.
He's still ultimately a Nazi with a machine gun.
And he needs to be he needs to be put down the film.
I never got the feeling that the film was engaging in any of, as I say, that sort of faux nuance and and moral.
I think there's a difference between I think there's a difference between like having sympathy for someone and kind of being on their side.
Yeah.
I think the film is very aware of that.
And that's a very deliberate Yeah, because that's exactly the sort of, you know, crucial moral distinction that is always completely elided in these sorts of simplistic depictions.
And yeah, you can't be on his side.
And in the situation of war, that means you've got to kill him.
And you're in a situation of war because he's in a country he shouldn't be in.
You know, ultimately, the film is very clear eyed about that.
And I really appreciated that.
As I say, the film is unequivocal about being on the bastard's side, but ultimately, they're kind of superfluous.
Ultimately, history is not in the hands of this group of guys, white guys, sat around... Well, no, I mean, again, it's ambiguous.
One of the men sat around the table is Jewish.
One of the men sat around the table claims Apache heritage.
We can treat that how we want to treat it, regardless.
But it's ultimately a group of guys sat around a table thinking they're deciding which way the world will turn, what the history books will read, but what the film is actually saying that no, it's not in their hands, it's in the hands of this Jewish woman.
Yeah.
And of course, that ties in with Tarantino's perennial fascination with revenge.
And I think that might be how he gets to the point where he makes a series of movies that are about marginalized people, women or people of color, because he is perennially fascinated by revenge.
And maybe it leads him to the people who most deserve a bit of revenge.
Yeah.
I mean, look, the revenge flick is basically built on like we're going to show a bunch of like tortures or terrible things done to people.
And we as an audience want to feel morally justified for enjoying that.
Right.
And so the traditional thing is you find that you create a rape victim or you create somebody who's a victim of a crime or you create, you know, like those sorts of things and then watch them blow a bunch of people away.
That's the exploitation.
version of this, right?
Which Tarantino grew up with.
But Tarantino's answer to that is, well, with my sensibility and my budget, like, let's show a Jewish woman who was almost murdered by the Sherlock Holmes of the Nazis and show how she actually burns his motherfuckers alive.