May 2, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we dive into Quentin Tarantino’s violent alternate history film Inglourious Basterds (2009). From Christoph Waltz’s unforgettable performance as the terrifying Hans Landa to the film’s masterful tension, spaghetti-western style, and cathartic violence, we break down why this crazy WWII fantasy still captivates audiences. We also explore Tarantino’s bold music choices, and what makes alternate history so tricky — and thrilling — when it’s done right.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the reviewer. We're your hosts.
I'm Sam. And I'm Marija.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Fongiorno. Welcome back to Rosie the
Reviewer. This week, we're talking about
Inglourious Basterds, which cameout in 2009.
(00:21):
It was directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, and it was
his highest grossing film up to that point.
I believe it got exceeded by Django Unchained a little while
later. It was nominated for eight
Academy Awards and won one, which was best supporting actor
for Christophe Waltz, which is probably a surprise to nobody
who watched it. And it's an alternate history of
the Second World War, in which Hitler is assassinated in 1940
(00:44):
for by a group of commandos and a Jewish cinema owner.
What did you think of this movie?
I was kind of surprised by this movie because I was ready to not
like it, so I had low expectations, not in the sense
that it was going to be a bad movie, but that it wasn't going
to be Micro 15. But I actually really enjoyed
(01:04):
it. The acting is pretty amazing,
and especially by Crystal Waltz,as you've just mentioned,
there's some interesting characters in there, some female
actors in this as well, which I like.
The music's interesting. The tension building,
specifically in this movie is amazing.
There's a couple moments where you're just completely waiting
(01:25):
for something to happen, and I think that's really hard to do.
So I thought that was kind of cool, and it made me think about
whether or not I like alternative history.
And I'll tell you at the very end of this episode whether I do
or not. How about you?
Yeah, I think I saw this in the cinema when it came out, and
(01:46):
it's very visually shocking. The sound mixing in the music is
really effective, quite violent.Obviously.
It's kind of Tarantino's magnum opus, really.
He spent a long time writing this, from what I've read, and
the first scene in the movie, which we'll talk about in a
little while, is supposedly his favorite thing he's ever
written. And it's a very Tarantino esque
(02:06):
movie. It's kind of a spaghetti western
set during World War 2, super violent.
There's always something cathartic and fun about watching
Nazis get brutally murdered. So it's kind of a fun ride of a
movie. Obviously an alternate history,
so not even aiming at being historically accurate in any
way, but a fun watch I would say.
(02:26):
I've seen it a couple of times. I always enjoy myself.
So this was my first time watching it.
I've only seen two other Quentin.
Well, three actually. Quentin Tarantino movies, I've
seen Kill Bill, I've seen most famous one.
What's it called? Pulse fiction.
Thank you. And I've seen Once Upon a Time
in Hollywood and that's all I'veseen by him.
(02:47):
It's not usually something I'd go for, but I kind of like in
this movie, he kind of said especially the Nazi stereotype
and just kind of flips it on hishead a little bit, like to the
extreme, but in a really effective, terrifying way.
And I really like it. So I'm excited to talk about
that actually. Yeah, supposedly he started
(03:09):
working on this before he wrote Kill Bill.
And originally the main female character in this movie,
Shoshanna, was supposed to be a sort of Jewish serial killer,
but like a serial killer of Nazis, and every time she killed
one, she would scratch them off her list.
And then he wrote Kill Bill and kind of use that concept.
So he had to rework the character of Shoshanna in this
(03:30):
movie. But it's interesting to think
about how all of his Tarantino cannon bits and pieces fit
together in his mind. Yeah, I don't know if this has
put me on to wanting to watch more Quentin Tarantino.
I don't think so. But if he ever does another
World War 2 movie, I'll watch itI think.
He definitely has a really specific style.
(03:50):
You either like him or you don't.
Yeah, and I'm kind of somewhere in the middle.
I like him, but only in like small doses, like not all the
time. That's.
Fair, Yeah. And I know you said you weren't
going to make this joke, but it's it's about time that we
watched Inglorious Basterds because when we tried to watch,
this was the movie you kept getting it confused with because
it also stars Brad Pitt doing some kind of accent.
(04:13):
I mean, that's the only comparison to make really
perfect. It's the only common demeanor of
those two movies. Although I guess maybe the
violence is about movies. I guess I'm kind of excused from
being really stupid just on thisone occasion, but I also didn't
realize that Inglorious was spelt wrong for the longest of
(04:35):
times, so maybe I am a bit stuck.
Yeah, well, it's both. Both words, if anyone hasn't
seen it written down, both wordsin the title are spelled
incorrectly. The title itself is taken from a
movie that came out in 1978. I think it's an Italian movie,
but the plot doesn't really haveanything to do with this movie.
I think Tarantino just liked thetitle.
(04:55):
Imagine just be like, that's a cool title.
Let's use it. Yeah, yeah, cool.
So let's get into the plot. We open with, as you said
before, Quentin Tarantino's favorite scene is ever made.
(05:17):
But we opened kind of with an old fashioned movie opening.
We just see a bunch of like actors and and directors and all
that sort of shit with no imageson the screen.
And then we opened with the first scene.
Yeah, the credits go by at the beginning, which is kind of
novel in a modern movie. Yes, and also he does something
in this movie to structure it. He kind of has chapters of this
(05:41):
movie, which I thought was an interesting man, kind of guiding
you along the story. So a bit of a strange opening.
But also remember, listen to I guess of spaghetti westerns is
what he's trying to kind of emulate, I think with this.
Yeah, it's quite fun. The music's fun too.
But then once that's then we open on a French farm in 1931,
(06:03):
where we meet French farmer Perrier La Petite and his three
daughters as they readied themselves for the arrival of a
very notorious s s Colonel Hans Landa at the crystal balls.
This is the role he received an Oscar for and his man.
This scene is interesting to me because it takes a very long
time for him to arrive. You see him in the distance and
(06:25):
then it's like a good 30 secondsbefore he's there.
There. It's like, what's this guy going
to do? So when he does arrive, he gets
invited reluctantly into the house where we find out that the
La Petites are hiding into his family underneath the
floorboards. And Landa has this conversation
(06:46):
that you instantly know that he knows, but he just stretches it
out so long. It's just very dense.
He sets it up as a little bit ofa he kind of pretends that
they're leaving, and then he shoots everybody underneath the
floorboards, at least almost everybody.
But one of the girls is hiding is called Shanna, played by
(07:07):
Melanie Laurel. She manages to flee to safety.
I feel like he almost lets her go.
Yeah, he gets a really gross, morbid thrill out of the chase,
I think. Yeah, he's called the Jew
killers, what they call them, right?
Or the Jew hunter. The Jew Hunter and he talks
about that's his nickname and heearned it.
(07:28):
And then and then and then that comes up later in the movie
where then he talks about how well, who can control who gives
them a nickname, etcetera, etcetera, and it pops back up
again. And also what they do when this
first scene is drink milk. They do drink milk.
It's plot relevant milk. That's why it had to be
mentioned. But how long is the scene?
(07:49):
It's so tense. It's really long.
I was writing the notes for this, and as I've said, I've
seen the movie before, so I justsort of jotted out some of the
bullet points that I knew. And all of this scene was one
bullet point because I was like,yeah, he comes to the farm, he
shoots everyone under the floorboards, the girl escapes,
and then the scene goes on for ages.
(08:09):
And I was like, Jesus Christ, this is such a long, tense
scene. I mean, it's great, but it's
very tense. I wonder though, it must be so
hard to act this scene. Also for the for the name
Manocha, who plays a farmer, because he ultimately has to
make a choice. Obviously he's hiding these
people on there and need his floorboards, but also he's got
(08:31):
his daughters and he has to makea choice whether to give up the
Jewish family or give up his ownfamily.
And he ultimately saves his own family.
So it's pretty, pretty tough scene to watch.
Yeah, for sure. And you really get a sense of
Landa as this guy who just likesto fuck with people.
He shows up and he's having thisentire conversation in English
(08:54):
and he's like, hey, so are therepeople hiding under the
floorboards? I assume they don't speak
English because I don't hear anynoise under there.
And then he's like, now I'm going to switch back to French
and we're going to act like everything is fine and blah blah
blah is so very super villain esque.
He makes it as terrible as possible.
Yeah, and he also pretends to bereasonable, but he's not.
(09:15):
But he makes himself sound like he's just this honest guy when
he's just a Nazi. Yeah.
He's definitely a cartoonishly evil Nazi for sure, right?
So we skip forward a couple of years to 1944.
American Lieutenant Aldo Rain, played by Brad Pitt, doing just
just the glorious Southern accent of some kind, recruits
(09:38):
Jewish American soldiers to joinhis Nazi killing commando unit.
He does this little monologue that was pretty much the
entirety of the first trailer that came out for this movie.
I think I remember this super vividly where he's explaining to
them that they're going to be killing Nazis and he says each
and every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps and I
want my scalps. This accent is just hilariously
(10:01):
funny to me. He's probably the most comical
of all the characters in this movie.
He's kind of ridiculous. You can tell he's having a great
time. Yes, it seems like a dream role
to be able to play just this over the top, very masculine and
a really silly range character. Right.
(10:23):
And we don't know anything aboutthis guy really.
He doesn't have a character background.
He's just a sort of archetypal red blooded American man who
wants to brutally kill Nazis. And he's having a good time and
we're having a good time. Sometimes I forget what Brett
was, a big actor, and then he does roles like this and I'm
(10:43):
like, Oh yeah, This is why. Because he's really quite suited
for this kind of role. I think.
So One of the Inglorious Bashart's victims is with Adolf
Hitler, played by Martin Rutka, and he's been ammersed by the
bathwich, but he's the only one of his little group of soldiers
(11:03):
to survive. So he explains what has happened
to him and we get introduced viahis storytelling basically to
Hugo Stiglitz, played by Till's fighter, and Donny the Bergyu
Donovich, played by Eli Roth. And these characters are
ridiculous and funny. Yeah, Hugo Stiglitz is the guy
(11:25):
who was a German soldier and then went crazy and killed a
bunch of members of the Gestapo,I think.
And Donnie the Bear, Judanowitz is the one that you saw in all
the movie posters, who was carrying the baseball bat and
was doing a lot of Nazi murdering.
Yeah, I would not want to run into any of these guys in the
dark. They're kind of terrified but
(11:45):
also having a good time. So it's really strange, like
most scary, but they're laughingabout it.
So it's also where we see the bear to exit The Cave with the
really ominous music. Yes, it's very good.
I would be terrified if I was a German.
One of the things they liked about Eli Roth's performance is
(12:07):
that his character is supposed to be this big bruiser, but he's
the one who has the most obviousemotional reaction to killing
Nazis, if that makes sense. You can tell that he feels very
deeply what's been happening with the Holocaust and this, the
revenge is very personal to him.And I feel like you get that
(12:29):
sense when pretty much every time you see him actually
killing Nazis. So I did enjoy that you did get
that sense from his performance.Did you read the trivia about
his baseball bat? About the names on it?
No, one of them is Anne Frank. Now he's got like he's taking
his revenge for all the murder Jews.
Yeah, hilariously, I don't thinkAnne Frank was dead yet when
(12:53):
it's happening, but you know. Alternative history after all,
so. Yeah, they're like, let's kill
Anne Frank off earlier so we canput her on the baseball bat.
Yeah, grim. Anyway, so Shoshanna, who
survived the massacre in the first scene, she now runs a
cinema under an assumed name in Paris.
And she's out there one night working on the marquee.
(13:16):
And a famous German sniper namedFrederick Zoeller, played by
Daniel Bruhl, shows an interest in her, and it gets flirty.
And she obviously has no interest in return.
And the next day, Gestapo officer Dieter Hellstrom, played
by August Diehl, picks her up and takes her to see Joseph
Goebbels, played by Sylvester Graf, who wants to set up a
special screening of Zohler's movie in her theater.
(13:37):
So Zohler being the same as sniper, he supposedly killed 300
guys from a bell tower. One day, Goebbels is making a
propaganda movie about him wherehe plays himself.
And so Zoeller's like, I'm goingto do this girl.
I'm sweet on a favor and get this screening to happen at her
cinema. So they're all having this
little lunch together. Sylvester Grothe, who plays
(13:58):
Grebels, is great. I don't know what it is about
his performance, but he puts thehair on the back of your neck on
end. But he's also very like Zane and
Petty and just a gross person onlike a regular level as well,
not just as on a Nazi level. And they're all sitting there in
this restaurant. And then Landa turns up and he
and Shoshanna recognize each other.
(14:19):
And this is where the glass of milk turns up again, because
Landa sits down to chat with herand orders her a glass of milk.
He's like, I know who you are and I'm not gonna say anything
out loud, but I want you to knowthat I know.
Yeah, for the longest time in this scene, I don't know if I
wasn't paying attention, but I didn't realize it was so shadow
for a bit until that scene with the milk up.
(14:43):
And I was like, oh, wait a second.
Oh, fine. I'm not sure if you're supposed
to be really surprised by that or not.
Obviously you've seen it, or rather a couple times.
I don't know if you can rememberthe first time you watched it if
you pick it out right away. I do like the fact that we get
gobbles or gobbles in this movie, and we got to see
(15:05):
propaganda within a propaganda movie in a way.
Like, it's so interesting to have an actual propaganda movie
within a movie. Yeah.
Quite good. Yeah.
So Susanna and her boyfriend andprojectionist Marcel, played by
Jackie. I know it's a plot to burn on
the cinema when all the Nazis come for the premiere of the at
(15:28):
the same time. General Ed Fennec, played by
Mike Myers, who I did not recognize at all.
I didn't see it. A priest, Lieutenant Archie
Hickox, played by Michael Fassbender, on a mission you
will undertake to assist the bastards in infiltrating the
movie premiere for an attack of their own.
So there's two parties now plotting to kill all the Nazis.
(15:50):
Yeah, and every famous person ever is in this movie. 2 I.
Just did not recognize Mike. I knew he was in it, but even
then I did not recognize him. He's definitely doing a very
like upper Crest British accent as well.
I did like a microfast banner inthis.
It's just so interesting to haveso many different stereotypes of
(16:12):
all these different kinds of characters in one movie.
It only works in a kind of over the top, right?
If you do it in a serious way, it'll just fall apart.
I think that's quite quite fun. For sure, everyone has to commit
to the hung in cheek camping. And so it doesn't work.
Yeah. So Rain Stiglitz and Corporal
Vilhelmicke, played by Getty andBrickhard, make contact with a
(16:35):
double agent, famous actress Bridget von Hammersmark, played
by Diane Kruger. They meet her in this basement
bar, and she's playing a game with a bunch of German soldiers
that she's just met. And it's this game where you
write a famous person on a card,and then you pass it to the
person next to you, and they have to put the card on their
forehead. And then they have to try and
(16:55):
guess who they have on their forehead.
And as the other people come in to meet her, the card that
they're trying to guess is Carl May, who was this writer from
the 19th century who wrote a bunch of quote UN quote, Cowboys
and Indians books that were supposedly based on his own
stories, but he had never actually been to the US.
And it was all completely nonsense, but I just loved it.
(17:15):
It was a little Carl May reference because Germans like
Hitler really loved Carl May Germans are our big Carl May
fans. So.
And unfortunately, the group of them, the bastards and Bridget
on Hammer's Mark, are sitting around talking about their plan.
But Hellstrom, who was the one who picked up Shoshanna in the
previous scene, so we've met himbefore.
(17:36):
He happens to be in the bar, andhe detects Hickox's strange
accent. He's like, that's weird German,
like, where are you from? And he's kind of picking at him
and trying to figure him out. And eventually their cover is
totally blown. And their cover is blown kind of
interestingly, specifically by the way, down to the numbers, 3,
because Germans do differently to other Europeans and to
(17:59):
Americans or to Englishmen, I believe, because he's English,
but he's supposed to be German. So he does it the wrong way.
And that's what tips him up. And I love stuff like that, you
know, because we saw some of that in masses of the air as
well. And they call me reference.
We've seen it before. I want to say her last funny
World War 2 movie. I'm just blanking on her name.
(18:20):
It's like a Waikiki 1. Yeah, Georgia Rabbit.
Yeah. So there's one of those as well.
So it's so funny, but obviously this is an older movie, so
Prince and Tarantino was first. Yeah, to do it.
I'm probably not the only one. I'm just saying.
Yeah, dubious friend of the pod,Carl May.
(18:40):
Yeah, so when that cover was blown, chaos and series because
everybody except Von Hammers, Mark and Master Sergeant Graham,
played by Alexander Failing, arebrutally shot and murdered.
And he was just there celebrating the birth of his son
Max. It was just a little fun like
that for him, but so he surprised.
(19:02):
He's standing behind the bar andhe's trying to negotiate with
Brad Pitt, and then as soon as he's distracted, Hammer's mark
shoots him. In the end, almost everybody
dies when I was Marcus wounded. So Rain is a bit suspicious that
she was the one who set the whole thing up because he
thought he was suspicious to begin with to be meeting them in
(19:23):
the basement. There's a whole little fun bit
of dialogue about the basement and she's shot, but they kind of
patch her up and they give her acast.
And all together, they develop anew plan where Rain Donovich and
Umar Omar, played by Omar Doom, will play Italian film and three
times to get into the premiere. And I think everybody listening,
(19:45):
bro, has seen this scene regardless of whether they seen
this movie or not. But they also have just learned
that Adolf Hitler will be attending the premiere.
So if they succeed, they'll justhave killed all the Nazis.
Yeah, You can't have a movie where they're going to
assassinate Nazis without havingthem kill the main Nazi.
So stakes were high. Yeah, it's unfortunate for them
(20:09):
because their initial plan relied pretty heavily on all of
their German speaking dudes being able to get into the
premiere. And then they sent all of their
German speaking dudes into the meeting with von Hammersmark,
and they all got killed. So there's there's a little bit
where they're talking about BradPitt's like, all right.
We'll go in order of who speaks the most Italian.
He's like me and then you and then you.
(20:31):
And Omar's like, well, I don't speak any Italian.
He's like exactly. So you speak the third best
Italian and. Funnily enough, in the scene
that follows, it's the exact other way around in terms of
pronunciation. It's really funny.
This is the absolute funniest scene in the entire movie.
Yeah, so they're at the premiere.
They're in their nice Texas. Landa is obviously immediately
(20:53):
on to them. Nothing gets by him.
Brad Pitt, this is Juan Giorno in the worst Italian accent
you've ever heard in your life. And Landa is fucking with them
all. He's getting them to repeat
their names back to them. He speaks Italian.
This is Christophe Waltz cyclingthrough 4 languages in like 5
minutes in this scene. And he's crushing in all of
(21:14):
them. Like it's, it's great.
It's a great scene, but again, super tense because it's
supposed to be this upbeat, cheery conversation.
And it's funny, but you also know that shit is not going to
go well for them. And he gets Von Hammer's mark
alone. She's been saying because she
was shot, of course, the previous day.
She's been saying that she was in a skiing accident.
He knows that this is not the case because he found her shoe
(21:37):
at the scene of the shootout in the bar.
And so he kills her with his bare hands.
It's extremely violent. It's really funny, by the way,
that Diane Krueger. I read that when Quentin
Tarantino met her, he thought she was American and he had no
idea she was actually German. So it's really quite funny.
(21:57):
But yeah, I like her character. I I kind of thought I thought
she was going to live, but she dies probably one of the most
gruesome ways of the entire movie.
Yeah, Landa, who is always acting like he's a charming,
gentlemanly sort, even though behind closed doors we know that
he's a monster. And then this is really the
(22:19):
first time we see him get his hands dirty.
He is. You know, he's on top of her
choking the life out of her. It's very brutal.
And you see who he really is. Yeah.
And he also has Rain arrested aswell as another bastard,
Smithson, little man Miudovic, played by BJ Novak from the
office. But luckily for those of us who
(22:39):
want to see Hitler get murdered.So Shannon Marcel's plan to burn
down the cinema is still set to go ahead towards the end of the
film. If you'll remember, the film
that they're watching is The Propagate and a movie about the
sniper where he plays himself and apparently Eli Roth, who
plays Donovich, he actually directed the film within a film
which is called Nation's Pride, and they used 300 extras,
(22:59):
supposedly, Yeah. I also read about this film that
they were only supposed to shootfor a day, but Quentin Tarantino
liked it so much that he gave them two extra days to film more
footage. And the actual film, it's 5 1/2
minutes long, so they're shot like a little short.
It's so funny, too. I don't know.
(23:20):
It's, it's quite a clever movie in a way.
Yeah, on the nose. But in a really.
Like, I think you have to be a little smart to get all the
irony of this movie. For sure, yeah.
So Landon explaining you to Fitch, an offer he will allow
their plan to go ahead in exchange for amnesty from the
allies. So he kind of senses that his
(23:42):
time is up and he's like shit tosave myself.
So it turns out he's even tryingto dynamite of his own on the
headless chair. And meanwhile Donovan, almost
still in the theater, attempts to get closer to Hitler and
cobbles. There's a lot going on in this
movie. I think I missed the part where
he where he had dynamite on the headless chair and didn't even
(24:03):
notice. Yeah, he kicks it under there
with his foot. He's always 2 steps.
I had this guy. Wow.
I feel like this guy actually learned that is kind of the main
character of this movie. Yeah, he's definitely ties all
the plot lines together. I suppose Zoeller nearly ruins
everything for Shoshanna by going to speak with her just as
the plan is about to unfold. So basically with her and Marcel
(24:25):
were planning was during the last film reel, there's going to
be a little movie that her and Marcel filmed that's going to
get cut in and it's her being like, guess what, I'm going to
kill all y'all. You're all going to die in a
fire and you'll all have to knowthat a Jewish person killed you.
And it's almost time for the 4threel to go on.
The plan's almost going to happen.
And then Zoller shows up and he's like, hey, just wanted to
(24:48):
chat, just wanted to get your number or whatever.
And she rejects him again and hereacts super badly.
So she's like, well, I can't, like, I don't have time to deal
with this. So she just shoots him.
And the sound of the gun is disguised by the film because of
course, in the movie it's a guy sniping like 300 people from a
bell tower. So gunfire's not out of place.
And I'm he's not quite dead yet.So she goes over to check on him
(25:12):
and he shoots her a bunch of times and she.
Dies. I was kind of sad about this, to
be honest. I wanted her to be able to see
her revenge because she doesn't get it.
Because in the next scene, Marcel has already set the
theatre ablaze by just lighting a bunch of like, film roll on
fire. Like apparently it's extremely
(25:33):
flammable. And meanwhile Donna rich and old
mercurial the guards outside of Hitler's balcony.
So everything is happening all at once.
The theatre is on fire. People are screaming, and who
machine guns who? I did pay attention.
I didn't really like it, but so much happens at the same time
that it's something gets a little bit confusing, so don't
(25:56):
know. It's an Omer machine gun Hitler.
They have the honors of killing him, and then they kind of stand
on the balcony of the burning theater and shoot everybody else
down below. It's really violent.
It is. Super violent, and this is
another moment where you just see from Donna Witch's face that
he's having almost spiritual experience by killing these
Nazis and it's super personal for him.
(26:17):
Yeah, really quite good. Yeah, one of the, I think the
top letter boxed review for thismovie, because sometimes I look
at them just out of curiosity. The top one was I wouldn't
invite Hitler to my movie premiere.
Seems like a bad dude. And I'm like, yeah, also, if you
invite Hitler to your movie premiere, the entire theater
burns down and some guys will bust in a machine gun.
(26:37):
Everyone so. It's also like it's a very small
theater that is very confined. It doesn't seem all that smart
of the Nazis to do that, to be in a tiny theater.
And it wouldn't have happened ifit hadn't been for our little
movie star who just wanted to get a girlfriend and failed.
(26:58):
But then also I had to kill her.I don't like it.
Yeah, he sucked, but he's dead, so it's fine.
But so to China, she kind of deserve to live.
But in a way, she did get to live on because even after she's
died, this film plays where she's basically telling all
these Nazis that she is their comeuppance and Hitler and
(27:19):
Goebbels and everyone that matters to the Third Reich is
killed because of her. So she does get a legacy that
lives on. World War 2 ends a few months
early. True, that's very true.
Shana lives. Rain takes Landa to the American
lines because he's cut this dealwhere he's gonna get all these
(27:40):
sweet privileges from the Alliesin exchange for allowing this
plot to assassinate Hitler to goahead, and Landa surrenders to
him. Clearly, he's just like the cat
that got the Canary. He's so pleased and smug and
Rain, Landa's sidekick. And for the first time you see
Landa's self satisfied mask slip.
This is not according to his plan.
(28:01):
And Rain turns to him. And as we've seen earlier in the
movie, the custom with all of his Nazi prisoners is to carve a
swastika into their forehead. Because he says, I assume you're
going to take off that Nazi uniform at some point.
I'm going to give you a little something you can't take off.
And the movie ends with him scraping a swastika into Landa's
forehead. It's disgusting, but also sweet,
(28:22):
sweet Benson. Yeah, it's great.
Absolutely. Yeah, it's a it's not a super
long movie. When it ends, you're kind of
like where the September is the war over and you realize this.
It is because everybody stand. Yeah, everyone is dead, but the
war is over, so there is that. Yeah, and I like this ending.
(28:43):
It's almost a bit anticlimactic to end on that note, but it's
also very symbolic, so I kind ofdo like it.
I don't know how else they wouldhave ended that student far,
because it's so far away from reality at this point that what
else are you going to do? Yeah, I did like that.
What happened with so many Nazisafter the war?
(29:05):
Was that beyond the big famous Nuremberg trials, there were
just quite a lot of people who slipped away back into ordinary
lives or the Wernher von Braun'sof the world who got collected
and sent to work in the United States as beneficiaries of the
Cold War, if you want to call it.
And we think that's going to happen with Landa.
And at the last minute, it's like, no, no, no, actually call
(29:29):
back to something that happened earlier in the movie.
Everyone's going to know this guy's a Nazi forever.
And that's of course not what happened in real life, but it's
kind of cathartic for it to happen to this one super
cartoonishly evil Nazi. Like Uber Nazi.
Yes, it's good. I I do like it.
And I also like that he doesn't kill him, that he just lets him
(29:49):
live with the shame of being a Nazi after they've lost.
Oh yeah, You were so convinced you was going to walk away from
all that. Guess what?
Nope. Yeah.
So we do have some notes for this movie.
Not that many because we can't really compare to real history
(30:14):
because it's not based specifically on anything.
We've got a couple of different kind of notes, like Samuel L
Jackson being the narrator of the movie is one of them.
I feel like he's such a staple in Quentin Tarantino movies.
Yeah, absolutely. I remember specifically I had
forgotten that he was in this movie because obviously you
don't see him. And then specifically in the
(30:36):
scene where they're explaining how flammable film role is, I
was like, oh, yeah, that's Samuel L Jackson.
I recognize that voice. Yeah, I.
Didn't know I had to find out through your notes.
Thanks. There were some real life groups
that were kind of similar to thebastards.
There was a Jewish Infantry Brigade group which was an all
(30:56):
Jewish unit within the British military and after the war some
members formed vigilante groups which assassinated hundreds of
access war criminals and there was also a special Interrogation
group which was also a British Army unit.
This one was comprised mainly ofGerman speaking Jews who could
infiltrate and sabotage German operations during the North
African campaign. Yeah, imagine.
(31:17):
This must also have been so dangerous, right?
Being like this middle of the books group of people just to
bring no support for anyone. Just doing your own thing and
doing what's right, or at least getting vengeance.
Like it's not easy. Yeah, I guess you'd be real
fucking motivated. Yep.
Yeah, I wish there was more likelike information on groups like
(31:38):
this. There's a couple of stories that
you can go and look up on the Internet, but it's not not super
elaborate or anything. It's I do wonder if they're if
we're going to make a real movieand not not funny movie about a
group like this. Who knows?
So I said I was going to get back to you on whether or not I
like alternative history. And I don't think I've seen many
(32:02):
over 2 movies yet that have an alternate version of historical
events. I think the only one I can think
of that I've seen a little bit of is the Man in the High
Castle, which is kind of the world as it would be if Germany
had wonder war in Japan. I won the war.
So I don't know if I like it as a genre.
(32:24):
I think it only works in this sort of context where it's
really over the top. Like, don't think it gets away
with it because it's so crazy. The second it becomes really
serious. I got a bit irky about alternate
history. I wonder how you feel about it?
I think it's an interesting thought exercise that I mean, I
think if you're using it as a method of exploring certain
(32:49):
themes and, and stuff, I mean, it's just for like the man in
the High Castle, for example, itrelies on us all agreeing on a
certain series of assumptions about what would have happened
and then kind of going from there and being like, all right,
well, what would the world look like if this were the case?
You know, how would things have progressed over the last however
many decades? So if you think that can be
super interesting. I never super got into it.
(33:11):
My dad used to read a lot of these alternate history books,
the hairy turtledove ones. But yeah, no, I never super got
into it. Which is not to say that I'm not
interested, but I'm just so intohistorical nonfiction and
reading things that actually happened, and I feel like I'll
never get to the bottom of my actual historical nonfiction
piles. So I just don't have a lot of
time for, well, what if, you know?
(33:32):
I never thought I would ever agree with just the statement of
never running out of nonfiction books to read, but I have like a
15 on my piles. I completely agree with you.
There's so much to learn, so, somuch to read about, so I also
tend to stick to the actual history so far.
But it's interesting in this movie.
(33:53):
It does work really well. Yeah, and it's really fun to
imagine Hitler having gotten assassinated, you know?
Yes, that's very true. And also I think we should
remember that. Don't you know, in no way was
trying to make these characters like their actual counterparts
in history. Like he doesn't really try to
(34:13):
make couples the way couples wise or Hitler to make Hitler
was supposed to be like it's just a character in this movie,
and I think I think that's why it works so well.
Like he's not trying to be supersure.
I think the second year become really serious about alternate
stuff, then it becomes really kind of strange.
And I think Tarantino is really interested in this theme because
(34:36):
he kind of the same thing in Django, right?
Where it was the people who werehistorically oppressed getting
their revenge on the cartoonishly evil oppressors.
And so Tarantino seems to reallyenjoy exploring that theme and
people clearly enjoy watching it.
It's a really good time. I don't know what people who,
(34:56):
for example, Holocaust survivorsthink about this kind of thing
because, I mean, I could see both sides, right?
I could see people thinking, finding it disrespectful,
etcetera. But yeah, I mean, definitely has
its place in the movie Canon, yeah.
I was just trying to think of ifI could think of anything that I
would want to see in like an alternative ending to something
(35:18):
to like a famous battle or something, but I can't off the
top of I think of anything, so let's skip that.
Also, the next one I wrote down,I don't know if we can really
talk about this that much, but obviously this movie is very
violent and I wonder if this movie would work half as well if
it hadn't been this violent. I feel like it's almost if you
(35:40):
make it decent in a way, like ifyou make it clean, it's not
nearly as effective. So I'm trying to remember our
old Tarantino's movies this violent.
I think they are right. Yeah, it's kind of his hallmark.
And I would also say that I think it's pretty central to
this movie. I don't think you could take it
out and have the movie read the same way.
(36:02):
No, no, exactly. It kind of makes me
uncomfortable a bit, but I thinkthat's also kind of the punch.
Yeah, and I mean, the violence is over the top too, right?
Like when you're seeing the guy's head get caved in by the
baseball bat. The violence itself is kind of
larger than life. Yeah, it's like a Kill Bill
slice off the head, as well as similarly crazy and the
(36:24):
scratching of blood is very overthe top.
But I guess it's good if they'renot just.
Yeah, I think we can all get behind some violent murder when
it's Nazis, yeah. And I tried to look up something
about music for this episode because the music is almost
another character in this movie.He plays with silence versus
(36:45):
really funny, inappropriate kindof songs.
I wonder how he chooses his music.
I couldn't find anything about it, but there's so many songs
that are strangely fitting despite being totally
inappropriate for the moment. I don't know how he does it.
Yeah, you can really tell that he has an artistic vision.
(37:07):
And that definitely includes themusic.
The bit where the quote UN quote, Bearju is coming out of
The Cave from that song is playing.
And then also the bit where Landa and Shoshanna recognize
each other and all of a sudden the music is just super loud and
intense. But I just, those were both
moments where I was like, man, he's done it again.
Yeah, it's almost like a reflection of someone's spots or
(37:28):
something, or feelings reflectedin this really chaotic music.
It's really quite smart. And it definitely would not work
with regular film music, I don'tthink.
Like if you would just put it like a regular skirt underneath,
it wouldn't work. I did like the music quite a
bit. I would listen to the
soundtrack, I think, just on itsown, just because it's so odd
(37:52):
and weird. Yeah, I wanted to so hard for
this movie, but there's not a whole lot to rabbit hole about,
so I'm very sorry. I feel, I feel like I failed my
rabbit hole in Mission. But they can't all be like,
super deep movies like this, Yeah.
It's true. Well, we do have to rate this
(38:20):
movie. We are going to rate it plot
relevant glasses of milk out of 10.
How many plot relevant glasses of milk out of 10 would you rate
this movie? I would probably give it, I
really like milk, but I am goingto give an 8 plot relevant
glasses of milk out of 10 because it just surpassed all my
(38:42):
expectations. I I was ready to not like it and
I just really kind of liked it. I think I'll watch it again
actually. So good time for me to describe
all the violence. I didn't really mind the
violence overall. How about you?
Yeah, I think I would also give it 8 plot relevant glasses of
milk out of 10. I've seen it a few times.
It's something I can just throw on and you don't have to think
(39:04):
that much about. And it's fun.
It's always enjoyable watching Nazis get what's coming to them.
I think Christophe Waltz is amazing.
Like if you haven't seen this movie, his performance is a work
of art. It's so good.
And yeah, I mean, I'll probably watch it again.
It's not really like is it a World War 2 movie that you need
to see if you love World War 2? Not sure about that, but as an
(39:27):
action movie it's a good time. Yep, I agree.
But still there's some. You say you don't really need to
watch it as a World War 2 movie and I agree.
But then it does take the make out of things like propaganda
and like the German propaganda specifically.
So there, there is some thought perfecting stuff in there if you
(39:48):
want to look for it like you have to make an effort, but it
is in there. So it's quite interesting.
And we don't really get to see that very much in other movies.
So I do quite like that. Took that approach.
For sure. And women who weren't hat racks.
We like that too. It's a shame they all had to
die, Yeah, but. Normally I'd be more upset about
(40:08):
all the female characters getting killed, but
realistically almost all of the other characters also got killed
so. It's equal.
It seems, yeah, it was a bit equal opportunity.
Yeah, see correcto are you reading anything?
I'm reading this book called Inside Camp X by Lynn Philip
Hodgson and Camp X was a facility for training secret
(40:33):
agents during World War 2 that was on the North Shore of Lake
Ontario here in Canada and lots of famous spies trained there.
It was a huge Center for transmitting radio signals
across the ocean between the United States and Great Britain
and South America and all kinds of places.
And there's a show based on it called X Company that we're
(40:54):
probably going to cover at some point on the pod.
So I've been reading the books to get a little background about
it. Is there anything still left in
Ontario for you to go see? No.
So what happened after the war was that the camp got passed on
to an Army unit of signalers. So they were still using this
sort of transmitter throughout the Cold War.
(41:15):
And then in 1969 they closed it.Most of the buildings were torn
down. There's one or two that still
exist that got taken to other locations and they're use for
other things now. But on the actual location
itself, there's like a few craters in the ground from where
they used to practice explosives.
And there's a few, like foundations of houses, concrete
(41:36):
foundations, and there's a plaque that's been erected, but
there's no actual buildings or anything left.
Shame. I would love to come over and go
and see that there's so little left guys of all these amazing
places. But yeah, sounds like a good
book. Like, I feel like we're kind of
just getting into all the spice shit, so much spice shit.
(41:57):
Yeah, I love spice shit. I'm reading three books at the
same time, 2 for which I've already talked about.
The third one is a Dutch book, so I won't do any talking about
that because I've only read 1 chapter and I've got no clue
what it's about yet. So I'll tell you next time what
I do never that. All that's left is to say thank
you for listening. You can find us wherever you get
(42:20):
your podcast and you can rate USfive stars if you so fancy.
We would very much like it if you did.
You can follow us on Instagram at Rosie W Viewer Podcast or you
can send this episode to a friend or your mother or your
sister. And what else can you do?
You can visit our website rosiewviewer.com.
Amazing. See you next week.
(42:41):
See you next week. Bye.
Welcome to Rosie the reviewer. We're your hosts.
I'm Sam. And I'm Marija.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Fongiorno. Welcome back to Rosie the
Reviewer. This week, we're talking about
Inglourious Basterds, which cameout in 2009.
(00:21):
It was directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, and it was
his highest grossing film up to that point.
I believe it got exceeded by Django Unchained a little while
later. It was nominated for eight
Academy Awards and won one, which was best supporting actor
for Christophe Waltz, which is probably a surprise to nobody
who watched it. And it's an alternate history of
the Second World War, in which Hitler is assassinated in 1940
(00:44):
for by a group of commandos and a Jewish cinema owner.
What did you think of this movie?
I was kind of surprised by this movie because I was ready to not
like it, so I had low expectations, not in the sense
that it was going to be a bad movie, but that it wasn't going
to be Micro 15. But I actually really enjoyed
(01:04):
it. The acting is pretty amazing,
and especially by Crystal Waltz,as you've just mentioned,
there's some interesting characters in there, some female
actors in this as well, which I like.
The music's interesting. The tension building,
specifically in this movie is amazing.
There's a couple moments where you're just completely waiting
(01:25):
for something to happen, and I think that's really hard to do.
So I thought that was kind of cool, and it made me think about
whether or not I like alternative history.
And I'll tell you at the very end of this episode whether I do
or not. How about you?
Yeah, I think I saw this in the cinema when it came out, and
(01:46):
it's very visually shocking. The sound mixing in the music is
really effective, quite violent.Obviously.
It's kind of Tarantino's magnum opus, really.
He spent a long time writing this, from what I've read, and
the first scene in the movie, which we'll talk about in a
little while, is supposedly his favorite thing he's ever
written. And it's a very Tarantino esque
(02:06):
movie. It's kind of a spaghetti western
set during World War 2, super violent.
There's always something cathartic and fun about watching
Nazis get brutally murdered. So it's kind of a fun ride of a
movie. Obviously an alternate history,
so not even aiming at being historically accurate in any
way, but a fun watch I would say.
(02:26):
I've seen it a couple of times. I always enjoy myself.
So this was my first time watching it.
I've only seen two other Quentin.
Well, three actually. Quentin Tarantino movies, I've
seen Kill Bill, I've seen most famous one.
What's it called? Pulse fiction.
Thank you. And I've seen Once Upon a Time
in Hollywood and that's all I'veseen by him.
(02:47):
It's not usually something I'd go for, but I kind of like in
this movie, he kind of said especially the Nazi stereotype
and just kind of flips it on hishead a little bit, like to the
extreme, but in a really effective, terrifying way.
And I really like it. So I'm excited to talk about
that actually. Yeah, supposedly he started
(03:09):
working on this before he wrote Kill Bill.
And originally the main female character in this movie,
Shoshanna, was supposed to be a sort of Jewish serial killer,
but like a serial killer of Nazis, and every time she killed
one, she would scratch them off her list.
And then he wrote Kill Bill and kind of use that concept.
So he had to rework the character of Shoshanna in this
(03:30):
movie. But it's interesting to think
about how all of his Tarantino cannon bits and pieces fit
together in his mind. Yeah, I don't know if this has
put me on to wanting to watch more Quentin Tarantino.
I don't think so. But if he ever does another
World War 2 movie, I'll watch itI think.
He definitely has a really specific style.
(03:50):
You either like him or you don't.
Yeah, and I'm kind of somewhere in the middle.
I like him, but only in like small doses, like not all the
time. That's.
Fair, Yeah. And I know you said you weren't
going to make this joke, but it's it's about time that we
watched Inglorious Basterds because when we tried to watch,
this was the movie you kept getting it confused with because
it also stars Brad Pitt doing some kind of accent.
(04:13):
I mean, that's the only comparison to make really
perfect. It's the only common demeanor of
those two movies. Although I guess maybe the
violence is about movies. I guess I'm kind of excused from
being really stupid just on thisone occasion, but I also didn't
realize that Inglorious was spelt wrong for the longest of
(04:35):
times, so maybe I am a bit stuck.
Yeah, well, it's both. Both words, if anyone hasn't
seen it written down, both wordsin the title are spelled
incorrectly. The title itself is taken from a
movie that came out in 1978. I think it's an Italian movie,
but the plot doesn't really haveanything to do with this movie.
I think Tarantino just liked thetitle.
(04:55):
Imagine just be like, that's a cool title.
Let's use it. Yeah, yeah, cool.
So let's get into the plot. We open with, as you said
before, Quentin Tarantino's favorite scene is ever made.
(05:17):
But we opened kind of with an old fashioned movie opening.
We just see a bunch of like actors and and directors and all
that sort of shit with no imageson the screen.
And then we opened with the first scene.
Yeah, the credits go by at the beginning, which is kind of
novel in a modern movie. Yes, and also he does something
in this movie to structure it. He kind of has chapters of this
(05:41):
movie, which I thought was an interesting man, kind of guiding
you along the story. So a bit of a strange opening.
But also remember, listen to I guess of spaghetti westerns is
what he's trying to kind of emulate, I think with this.
Yeah, it's quite fun. The music's fun too.
But then once that's then we open on a French farm in 1931,
(06:03):
where we meet French farmer Perrier La Petite and his three
daughters as they readied themselves for the arrival of a
very notorious s s Colonel Hans Landa at the crystal balls.
This is the role he received an Oscar for and his man.
This scene is interesting to me because it takes a very long
time for him to arrive. You see him in the distance and
(06:25):
then it's like a good 30 secondsbefore he's there.
There. It's like, what's this guy going
to do? So when he does arrive, he gets
invited reluctantly into the house where we find out that the
La Petites are hiding into his family underneath the
floorboards. And Landa has this conversation
(06:46):
that you instantly know that he knows, but he just stretches it
out so long. It's just very dense.
He sets it up as a little bit ofa he kind of pretends that
they're leaving, and then he shoots everybody underneath the
floorboards, at least almost everybody.
But one of the girls is hiding is called Shanna, played by
(07:07):
Melanie Laurel. She manages to flee to safety.
I feel like he almost lets her go.
Yeah, he gets a really gross, morbid thrill out of the chase,
I think. Yeah, he's called the Jew
killers, what they call them, right?
Or the Jew hunter. The Jew Hunter and he talks
about that's his nickname and heearned it.
(07:28):
And then and then and then that comes up later in the movie
where then he talks about how well, who can control who gives
them a nickname, etcetera, etcetera, and it pops back up
again. And also what they do when this
first scene is drink milk. They do drink milk.
It's plot relevant milk. That's why it had to be
mentioned. But how long is the scene?
(07:49):
It's so tense. It's really long.
I was writing the notes for this, and as I've said, I've
seen the movie before, so I justsort of jotted out some of the
bullet points that I knew. And all of this scene was one
bullet point because I was like,yeah, he comes to the farm, he
shoots everyone under the floorboards, the girl escapes,
and then the scene goes on for ages.
(08:09):
And I was like, Jesus Christ, this is such a long, tense
scene. I mean, it's great, but it's
very tense. I wonder though, it must be so
hard to act this scene. Also for the for the name
Manocha, who plays a farmer, because he ultimately has to
make a choice. Obviously he's hiding these
people on there and need his floorboards, but also he's got
(08:31):
his daughters and he has to makea choice whether to give up the
Jewish family or give up his ownfamily.
And he ultimately saves his own family.
So it's pretty, pretty tough scene to watch.
Yeah, for sure. And you really get a sense of
Landa as this guy who just likesto fuck with people.
He shows up and he's having thisentire conversation in English
(08:54):
and he's like, hey, so are therepeople hiding under the
floorboards? I assume they don't speak
English because I don't hear anynoise under there.
And then he's like, now I'm going to switch back to French
and we're going to act like everything is fine and blah blah
blah is so very super villain esque.
He makes it as terrible as possible.
Yeah, and he also pretends to bereasonable, but he's not.
(09:15):
But he makes himself sound like he's just this honest guy when
he's just a Nazi. Yeah.
He's definitely a cartoonishly evil Nazi for sure, right?
So we skip forward a couple of years to 1944.
American Lieutenant Aldo Rain, played by Brad Pitt, doing just
just the glorious Southern accent of some kind, recruits
(09:38):
Jewish American soldiers to joinhis Nazi killing commando unit.
He does this little monologue that was pretty much the
entirety of the first trailer that came out for this movie.
I think I remember this super vividly where he's explaining to
them that they're going to be killing Nazis and he says each
and every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps and I
want my scalps. This accent is just hilariously
(10:01):
funny to me. He's probably the most comical
of all the characters in this movie.
He's kind of ridiculous. You can tell he's having a great
time. Yes, it seems like a dream role
to be able to play just this over the top, very masculine and
a really silly range character. Right.
(10:23):
And we don't know anything aboutthis guy really.
He doesn't have a character background.
He's just a sort of archetypal red blooded American man who
wants to brutally kill Nazis. And he's having a good time and
we're having a good time. Sometimes I forget what Brett
was, a big actor, and then he does roles like this and I'm
(10:43):
like, Oh yeah, This is why. Because he's really quite suited
for this kind of role. I think.
So One of the Inglorious Bashart's victims is with Adolf
Hitler, played by Martin Rutka, and he's been ammersed by the
bathwich, but he's the only one of his little group of soldiers
(11:03):
to survive. So he explains what has happened
to him and we get introduced viahis storytelling basically to
Hugo Stiglitz, played by Till's fighter, and Donny the Bergyu
Donovich, played by Eli Roth. And these characters are
ridiculous and funny. Yeah, Hugo Stiglitz is the guy
(11:25):
who was a German soldier and then went crazy and killed a
bunch of members of the Gestapo,I think.
And Donnie the Bear, Judanowitz is the one that you saw in all
the movie posters, who was carrying the baseball bat and
was doing a lot of Nazi murdering.
Yeah, I would not want to run into any of these guys in the
dark. They're kind of terrified but
(11:45):
also having a good time. So it's really strange, like
most scary, but they're laughingabout it.
So it's also where we see the bear to exit The Cave with the
really ominous music. Yes, it's very good.
I would be terrified if I was a German.
One of the things they liked about Eli Roth's performance is
(12:07):
that his character is supposed to be this big bruiser, but he's
the one who has the most obviousemotional reaction to killing
Nazis, if that makes sense. You can tell that he feels very
deeply what's been happening with the Holocaust and this, the
revenge is very personal to him.And I feel like you get that
(12:29):
sense when pretty much every time you see him actually
killing Nazis. So I did enjoy that you did get
that sense from his performance.Did you read the trivia about
his baseball bat? About the names on it?
No, one of them is Anne Frank. Now he's got like he's taking
his revenge for all the murder Jews.
Yeah, hilariously, I don't thinkAnne Frank was dead yet when
(12:53):
it's happening, but you know. Alternative history after all,
so. Yeah, they're like, let's kill
Anne Frank off earlier so we canput her on the baseball bat.
Yeah, grim. Anyway, so Shoshanna, who
survived the massacre in the first scene, she now runs a
cinema under an assumed name in Paris.
And she's out there one night working on the marquee.
(13:16):
And a famous German sniper namedFrederick Zoeller, played by
Daniel Bruhl, shows an interest in her, and it gets flirty.
And she obviously has no interest in return.
And the next day, Gestapo officer Dieter Hellstrom, played
by August Diehl, picks her up and takes her to see Joseph
Goebbels, played by Sylvester Graf, who wants to set up a
special screening of Zohler's movie in her theater.
(13:37):
So Zohler being the same as sniper, he supposedly killed 300
guys from a bell tower. One day, Goebbels is making a
propaganda movie about him wherehe plays himself.
And so Zoeller's like, I'm goingto do this girl.
I'm sweet on a favor and get this screening to happen at her
cinema. So they're all having this
little lunch together. Sylvester Grothe, who plays
(13:58):
Grebels, is great. I don't know what it is about
his performance, but he puts thehair on the back of your neck on
end. But he's also very like Zane and
Petty and just a gross person onlike a regular level as well,
not just as on a Nazi level. And they're all sitting there in
this restaurant. And then Landa turns up and he
and Shoshanna recognize each other.
(14:19):
And this is where the glass of milk turns up again, because
Landa sits down to chat with herand orders her a glass of milk.
He's like, I know who you are and I'm not gonna say anything
out loud, but I want you to knowthat I know.
Yeah, for the longest time in this scene, I don't know if I
wasn't paying attention, but I didn't realize it was so shadow
for a bit until that scene with the milk up.
(14:43):
And I was like, oh, wait a second.
Oh, fine. I'm not sure if you're supposed
to be really surprised by that or not.
Obviously you've seen it, or rather a couple times.
I don't know if you can rememberthe first time you watched it if
you pick it out right away. I do like the fact that we get
gobbles or gobbles in this movie, and we got to see
(15:05):
propaganda within a propaganda movie in a way.
Like, it's so interesting to have an actual propaganda movie
within a movie. Yeah.
Quite good. Yeah.
So Susanna and her boyfriend andprojectionist Marcel, played by
Jackie. I know it's a plot to burn on
the cinema when all the Nazis come for the premiere of the at
(15:28):
the same time. General Ed Fennec, played by
Mike Myers, who I did not recognize at all.
I didn't see it. A priest, Lieutenant Archie
Hickox, played by Michael Fassbender, on a mission you
will undertake to assist the bastards in infiltrating the
movie premiere for an attack of their own.
So there's two parties now plotting to kill all the Nazis.
(15:50):
Yeah, and every famous person ever is in this movie. 2 I.
Just did not recognize Mike. I knew he was in it, but even
then I did not recognize him. He's definitely doing a very
like upper Crest British accent as well.
I did like a microfast banner inthis.
It's just so interesting to haveso many different stereotypes of
(16:12):
all these different kinds of characters in one movie.
It only works in a kind of over the top, right?
If you do it in a serious way, it'll just fall apart.
I think that's quite quite fun. For sure, everyone has to commit
to the hung in cheek camping. And so it doesn't work.
Yeah. So Rain Stiglitz and Corporal
Vilhelmicke, played by Getty andBrickhard, make contact with a
(16:35):
double agent, famous actress Bridget von Hammersmark, played
by Diane Kruger. They meet her in this basement
bar, and she's playing a game with a bunch of German soldiers
that she's just met. And it's this game where you
write a famous person on a card,and then you pass it to the
person next to you, and they have to put the card on their
forehead. And then they have to try and
(16:55):
guess who they have on their forehead.
And as the other people come in to meet her, the card that
they're trying to guess is Carl May, who was this writer from
the 19th century who wrote a bunch of quote UN quote, Cowboys
and Indians books that were supposedly based on his own
stories, but he had never actually been to the US.
And it was all completely nonsense, but I just loved it.
(17:15):
It was a little Carl May reference because Germans like
Hitler really loved Carl May Germans are our big Carl May
fans. So.
And unfortunately, the group of them, the bastards and Bridget
on Hammer's Mark, are sitting around talking about their plan.
But Hellstrom, who was the one who picked up Shoshanna in the
previous scene, so we've met himbefore.
(17:36):
He happens to be in the bar, andhe detects Hickox's strange
accent. He's like, that's weird German,
like, where are you from? And he's kind of picking at him
and trying to figure him out. And eventually their cover is
totally blown. And their cover is blown kind of
interestingly, specifically by the way, down to the numbers, 3,
because Germans do differently to other Europeans and to
(17:59):
Americans or to Englishmen, I believe, because he's English,
but he's supposed to be German. So he does it the wrong way.
And that's what tips him up. And I love stuff like that, you
know, because we saw some of that in masses of the air as
well. And they call me reference.
We've seen it before. I want to say her last funny
World War 2 movie. I'm just blanking on her name.
(18:20):
It's like a Waikiki 1. Yeah, Georgia Rabbit.
Yeah. So there's one of those as well.
So it's so funny, but obviously this is an older movie, so
Prince and Tarantino was first. Yeah, to do it.
I'm probably not the only one. I'm just saying.
Yeah, dubious friend of the pod,Carl May.
(18:40):
Yeah, so when that cover was blown, chaos and series because
everybody except Von Hammers, Mark and Master Sergeant Graham,
played by Alexander Failing, arebrutally shot and murdered.
And he was just there celebrating the birth of his son
Max. It was just a little fun like
that for him, but so he surprised.
(19:02):
He's standing behind the bar andhe's trying to negotiate with
Brad Pitt, and then as soon as he's distracted, Hammer's mark
shoots him. In the end, almost everybody
dies when I was Marcus wounded. So Rain is a bit suspicious that
she was the one who set the whole thing up because he
thought he was suspicious to begin with to be meeting them in
(19:23):
the basement. There's a whole little fun bit
of dialogue about the basement and she's shot, but they kind of
patch her up and they give her acast.
And all together, they develop anew plan where Rain Donovich and
Umar Omar, played by Omar Doom, will play Italian film and three
times to get into the premiere. And I think everybody listening,
(19:45):
bro, has seen this scene regardless of whether they seen
this movie or not. But they also have just learned
that Adolf Hitler will be attending the premiere.
So if they succeed, they'll justhave killed all the Nazis.
Yeah, You can't have a movie where they're going to
assassinate Nazis without havingthem kill the main Nazi.
So stakes were high. Yeah, it's unfortunate for them
(20:09):
because their initial plan relied pretty heavily on all of
their German speaking dudes being able to get into the
premiere. And then they sent all of their
German speaking dudes into the meeting with von Hammersmark,
and they all got killed. So there's there's a little bit
where they're talking about BradPitt's like, all right.
We'll go in order of who speaks the most Italian.
He's like me and then you and then you.
(20:31):
And Omar's like, well, I don't speak any Italian.
He's like exactly. So you speak the third best
Italian and. Funnily enough, in the scene
that follows, it's the exact other way around in terms of
pronunciation. It's really funny.
This is the absolute funniest scene in the entire movie.
Yeah, so they're at the premiere.
They're in their nice Texas. Landa is obviously immediately
(20:53):
on to them. Nothing gets by him.
Brad Pitt, this is Juan Giorno in the worst Italian accent
you've ever heard in your life. And Landa is fucking with them
all. He's getting them to repeat
their names back to them. He speaks Italian.
This is Christophe Waltz cyclingthrough 4 languages in like 5
minutes in this scene. And he's crushing in all of
(21:14):
them. Like it's, it's great.
It's a great scene, but again, super tense because it's
supposed to be this upbeat, cheery conversation.
And it's funny, but you also know that shit is not going to
go well for them. And he gets Von Hammer's mark
alone. She's been saying because she
was shot, of course, the previous day.
She's been saying that she was in a skiing accident.
He knows that this is not the case because he found her shoe
(21:37):
at the scene of the shootout in the bar.
And so he kills her with his bare hands.
It's extremely violent. It's really funny, by the way,
that Diane Krueger. I read that when Quentin
Tarantino met her, he thought she was American and he had no
idea she was actually German. So it's really quite funny.
(21:57):
But yeah, I like her character. I I kind of thought I thought
she was going to live, but she dies probably one of the most
gruesome ways of the entire movie.
Yeah, Landa, who is always acting like he's a charming,
gentlemanly sort, even though behind closed doors we know that
he's a monster. And then this is really the
(22:19):
first time we see him get his hands dirty.
He is. You know, he's on top of her
choking the life out of her. It's very brutal.
And you see who he really is. Yeah.
And he also has Rain arrested aswell as another bastard,
Smithson, little man Miudovic, played by BJ Novak from the
office. But luckily for those of us who
(22:39):
want to see Hitler get murdered.So Shannon Marcel's plan to burn
down the cinema is still set to go ahead towards the end of the
film. If you'll remember, the film
that they're watching is The Propagate and a movie about the
sniper where he plays himself and apparently Eli Roth, who
plays Donovich, he actually directed the film within a film
which is called Nation's Pride, and they used 300 extras,
(22:59):
supposedly, Yeah. I also read about this film that
they were only supposed to shootfor a day, but Quentin Tarantino
liked it so much that he gave them two extra days to film more
footage. And the actual film, it's 5 1/2
minutes long, so they're shot like a little short.
It's so funny, too. I don't know.
(23:20):
It's, it's quite a clever movie in a way.
Yeah, on the nose. But in a really.
Like, I think you have to be a little smart to get all the
irony of this movie. For sure, yeah.
So Landon explaining you to Fitch, an offer he will allow
their plan to go ahead in exchange for amnesty from the
allies. So he kind of senses that his
(23:42):
time is up and he's like shit tosave myself.
So it turns out he's even tryingto dynamite of his own on the
headless chair. And meanwhile Donovan, almost
still in the theater, attempts to get closer to Hitler and
cobbles. There's a lot going on in this
movie. I think I missed the part where
he where he had dynamite on the headless chair and didn't even
(24:03):
notice. Yeah, he kicks it under there
with his foot. He's always 2 steps.
I had this guy. Wow.
I feel like this guy actually learned that is kind of the main
character of this movie. Yeah, he's definitely ties all
the plot lines together. I suppose Zoeller nearly ruins
everything for Shoshanna by going to speak with her just as
the plan is about to unfold. So basically with her and Marcel
(24:25):
were planning was during the last film reel, there's going to
be a little movie that her and Marcel filmed that's going to
get cut in and it's her being like, guess what, I'm going to
kill all y'all. You're all going to die in a
fire and you'll all have to knowthat a Jewish person killed you.
And it's almost time for the 4threel to go on.
The plan's almost going to happen.
And then Zoller shows up and he's like, hey, just wanted to
(24:48):
chat, just wanted to get your number or whatever.
And she rejects him again and hereacts super badly.
So she's like, well, I can't, like, I don't have time to deal
with this. So she just shoots him.
And the sound of the gun is disguised by the film because of
course, in the movie it's a guy sniping like 300 people from a
bell tower. So gunfire's not out of place.
And I'm he's not quite dead yet.So she goes over to check on him
(25:12):
and he shoots her a bunch of times and she.
Dies. I was kind of sad about this, to
be honest. I wanted her to be able to see
her revenge because she doesn't get it.
Because in the next scene, Marcel has already set the
theatre ablaze by just lighting a bunch of like, film roll on
fire. Like apparently it's extremely
(25:33):
flammable. And meanwhile Donna rich and old
mercurial the guards outside of Hitler's balcony.
So everything is happening all at once.
The theatre is on fire. People are screaming, and who
machine guns who? I did pay attention.
I didn't really like it, but so much happens at the same time
that it's something gets a little bit confusing, so don't
(25:56):
know. It's an Omer machine gun Hitler.
They have the honors of killing him, and then they kind of stand
on the balcony of the burning theater and shoot everybody else
down below. It's really violent.
It is. Super violent, and this is
another moment where you just see from Donna Witch's face that
he's having almost spiritual experience by killing these
Nazis and it's super personal for him.
(26:17):
Yeah, really quite good. Yeah, one of the, I think the
top letter boxed review for thismovie, because sometimes I look
at them just out of curiosity. The top one was I wouldn't
invite Hitler to my movie premiere.
Seems like a bad dude. And I'm like, yeah, also, if you
invite Hitler to your movie premiere, the entire theater
burns down and some guys will bust in a machine gun.
(26:37):
Everyone so. It's also like it's a very small
theater that is very confined. It doesn't seem all that smart
of the Nazis to do that, to be in a tiny theater.
And it wouldn't have happened ifit hadn't been for our little
movie star who just wanted to get a girlfriend and failed.
(26:58):
But then also I had to kill her.I don't like it.
Yeah, he sucked, but he's dead, so it's fine.
But so to China, she kind of deserve to live.
But in a way, she did get to live on because even after she's
died, this film plays where she's basically telling all
these Nazis that she is their comeuppance and Hitler and
(27:19):
Goebbels and everyone that matters to the Third Reich is
killed because of her. So she does get a legacy that
lives on. World War 2 ends a few months
early. True, that's very true.
Shana lives. Rain takes Landa to the American
lines because he's cut this dealwhere he's gonna get all these
(27:40):
sweet privileges from the Alliesin exchange for allowing this
plot to assassinate Hitler to goahead, and Landa surrenders to
him. Clearly, he's just like the cat
that got the Canary. He's so pleased and smug and
Rain, Landa's sidekick. And for the first time you see
Landa's self satisfied mask slip.
This is not according to his plan.
(28:01):
And Rain turns to him. And as we've seen earlier in the
movie, the custom with all of his Nazi prisoners is to carve a
swastika into their forehead. Because he says, I assume you're
going to take off that Nazi uniform at some point.
I'm going to give you a little something you can't take off.
And the movie ends with him scraping a swastika into Landa's
forehead. It's disgusting, but also sweet,
(28:22):
sweet Benson. Yeah, it's great.
Absolutely. Yeah, it's a it's not a super
long movie. When it ends, you're kind of
like where the September is the war over and you realize this.
It is because everybody stand. Yeah, everyone is dead, but the
war is over, so there is that. Yeah, and I like this ending.
(28:43):
It's almost a bit anticlimactic to end on that note, but it's
also very symbolic, so I kind ofdo like it.
I don't know how else they wouldhave ended that student far,
because it's so far away from reality at this point that what
else are you going to do? Yeah, I did like that.
What happened with so many Nazisafter the war?
(29:05):
Was that beyond the big famous Nuremberg trials, there were
just quite a lot of people who slipped away back into ordinary
lives or the Wernher von Braun'sof the world who got collected
and sent to work in the United States as beneficiaries of the
Cold War, if you want to call it.
And we think that's going to happen with Landa.
And at the last minute, it's like, no, no, no, actually call
(29:29):
back to something that happened earlier in the movie.
Everyone's going to know this guy's a Nazi forever.
And that's of course not what happened in real life, but it's
kind of cathartic for it to happen to this one super
cartoonishly evil Nazi. Like Uber Nazi.
Yes, it's good. I I do like it.
And I also like that he doesn't kill him, that he just lets him
(29:49):
live with the shame of being a Nazi after they've lost.
Oh yeah, You were so convinced you was going to walk away from
all that. Guess what?
Nope. Yeah.
So we do have some notes for this movie.
Not that many because we can't really compare to real history
(30:14):
because it's not based specifically on anything.
We've got a couple of different kind of notes, like Samuel L
Jackson being the narrator of the movie is one of them.
I feel like he's such a staple in Quentin Tarantino movies.
Yeah, absolutely. I remember specifically I had
forgotten that he was in this movie because obviously you
don't see him. And then specifically in the
(30:36):
scene where they're explaining how flammable film role is, I
was like, oh, yeah, that's Samuel L Jackson.
I recognize that voice. Yeah, I.
Didn't know I had to find out through your notes.
Thanks. There were some real life groups
that were kind of similar to thebastards.
There was a Jewish Infantry Brigade group which was an all
(30:56):
Jewish unit within the British military and after the war some
members formed vigilante groups which assassinated hundreds of
access war criminals and there was also a special Interrogation
group which was also a British Army unit.
This one was comprised mainly ofGerman speaking Jews who could
infiltrate and sabotage German operations during the North
African campaign. Yeah, imagine.
(31:17):
This must also have been so dangerous, right?
Being like this middle of the books group of people just to
bring no support for anyone. Just doing your own thing and
doing what's right, or at least getting vengeance.
Like it's not easy. Yeah, I guess you'd be real
fucking motivated. Yep.
Yeah, I wish there was more likelike information on groups like
(31:38):
this. There's a couple of stories that
you can go and look up on the Internet, but it's not not super
elaborate or anything. It's I do wonder if they're if
we're going to make a real movieand not not funny movie about a
group like this. Who knows?
So I said I was going to get back to you on whether or not I
like alternative history. And I don't think I've seen many
(32:02):
over 2 movies yet that have an alternate version of historical
events. I think the only one I can think
of that I've seen a little bit of is the Man in the High
Castle, which is kind of the world as it would be if Germany
had wonder war in Japan. I won the war.
So I don't know if I like it as a genre.
(32:24):
I think it only works in this sort of context where it's
really over the top. Like, don't think it gets away
with it because it's so crazy. The second it becomes really
serious. I got a bit irky about alternate
history. I wonder how you feel about it?
I think it's an interesting thought exercise that I mean, I
think if you're using it as a method of exploring certain
(32:49):
themes and, and stuff, I mean, it's just for like the man in
the High Castle, for example, itrelies on us all agreeing on a
certain series of assumptions about what would have happened
and then kind of going from there and being like, all right,
well, what would the world look like if this were the case?
You know, how would things have progressed over the last however
many decades? So if you think that can be
super interesting. I never super got into it.
(33:11):
My dad used to read a lot of these alternate history books,
the hairy turtledove ones. But yeah, no, I never super got
into it. Which is not to say that I'm not
interested, but I'm just so intohistorical nonfiction and
reading things that actually happened, and I feel like I'll
never get to the bottom of my actual historical nonfiction
piles. So I just don't have a lot of
time for, well, what if, you know?
(33:32):
I never thought I would ever agree with just the statement of
never running out of nonfiction books to read, but I have like a
15 on my piles. I completely agree with you.
There's so much to learn, so, somuch to read about, so I also
tend to stick to the actual history so far.
But it's interesting in this movie.
(33:53):
It does work really well. Yeah, and it's really fun to
imagine Hitler having gotten assassinated, you know?
Yes, that's very true. And also I think we should
remember that. Don't you know, in no way was
trying to make these characters like their actual counterparts
in history. Like he doesn't really try to
(34:13):
make couples the way couples wise or Hitler to make Hitler
was supposed to be like it's just a character in this movie,
and I think I think that's why it works so well.
Like he's not trying to be supersure.
I think the second year become really serious about alternate
stuff, then it becomes really kind of strange.
And I think Tarantino is really interested in this theme because
(34:36):
he kind of the same thing in Django, right?
Where it was the people who werehistorically oppressed getting
their revenge on the cartoonishly evil oppressors.
And so Tarantino seems to reallyenjoy exploring that theme and
people clearly enjoy watching it.
It's a really good time. I don't know what people who,
(34:56):
for example, Holocaust survivorsthink about this kind of thing
because, I mean, I could see both sides, right?
I could see people thinking, finding it disrespectful,
etcetera. But yeah, I mean, definitely has
its place in the movie Canon, yeah.
I was just trying to think of ifI could think of anything that I
would want to see in like an alternative ending to something
(35:18):
to like a famous battle or something, but I can't off the
top of I think of anything, so let's skip that.
Also, the next one I wrote down,I don't know if we can really
talk about this that much, but obviously this movie is very
violent and I wonder if this movie would work half as well if
it hadn't been this violent. I feel like it's almost if you
(35:40):
make it decent in a way, like ifyou make it clean, it's not
nearly as effective. So I'm trying to remember our
old Tarantino's movies this violent.
I think they are right. Yeah, it's kind of his hallmark.
And I would also say that I think it's pretty central to
this movie. I don't think you could take it
out and have the movie read the same way.
(36:02):
No, no, exactly. It kind of makes me
uncomfortable a bit, but I thinkthat's also kind of the punch.
Yeah, and I mean, the violence is over the top too, right?
Like when you're seeing the guy's head get caved in by the
baseball bat. The violence itself is kind of
larger than life. Yeah, it's like a Kill Bill
slice off the head, as well as similarly crazy and the
(36:24):
scratching of blood is very overthe top.
But I guess it's good if they'renot just.
Yeah, I think we can all get behind some violent murder when
it's Nazis, yeah. And I tried to look up something
about music for this episode because the music is almost
another character in this movie.He plays with silence versus
(36:45):
really funny, inappropriate kindof songs.
I wonder how he chooses his music.
I couldn't find anything about it, but there's so many songs
that are strangely fitting despite being totally
inappropriate for the moment. I don't know how he does it.
Yeah, you can really tell that he has an artistic vision.
(37:07):
And that definitely includes themusic.
The bit where the quote UN quote, Bearju is coming out of
The Cave from that song is playing.
And then also the bit where Landa and Shoshanna recognize
each other and all of a sudden the music is just super loud and
intense. But I just, those were both
moments where I was like, man, he's done it again.
Yeah, it's almost like a reflection of someone's spots or
(37:28):
something, or feelings reflectedin this really chaotic music.
It's really quite smart. And it definitely would not work
with regular film music, I don'tthink.
Like if you would just put it like a regular skirt underneath,
it wouldn't work. I did like the music quite a
bit. I would listen to the
soundtrack, I think, just on itsown, just because it's so odd
(37:52):
and weird. Yeah, I wanted to so hard for
this movie, but there's not a whole lot to rabbit hole about,
so I'm very sorry. I feel, I feel like I failed my
rabbit hole in Mission. But they can't all be like,
super deep movies like this, Yeah.
It's true. Well, we do have to rate this
(38:20):
movie. We are going to rate it plot
relevant glasses of milk out of 10.
How many plot relevant glasses of milk out of 10 would you rate
this movie? I would probably give it, I
really like milk, but I am goingto give an 8 plot relevant
glasses of milk out of 10 because it just surpassed all my
(38:42):
expectations. I I was ready to not like it and
I just really kind of liked it. I think I'll watch it again
actually. So good time for me to describe
all the violence. I didn't really mind the
violence overall. How about you?
Yeah, I think I would also give it 8 plot relevant glasses of
milk out of 10. I've seen it a few times.
It's something I can just throw on and you don't have to think
(39:04):
that much about. And it's fun.
It's always enjoyable watching Nazis get what's coming to them.
I think Christophe Waltz is amazing.
Like if you haven't seen this movie, his performance is a work
of art. It's so good.
And yeah, I mean, I'll probably watch it again.
It's not really like is it a World War 2 movie that you need
to see if you love World War 2? Not sure about that, but as an
(39:27):
action movie it's a good time. Yep, I agree.
But still there's some. You say you don't really need to
watch it as a World War 2 movie and I agree.
But then it does take the make out of things like propaganda
and like the German propaganda specifically.
So there, there is some thought perfecting stuff in there if you
(39:48):
want to look for it like you have to make an effort, but it
is in there. So it's quite interesting.
And we don't really get to see that very much in other movies.
So I do quite like that. Took that approach.
For sure. And women who weren't hat racks.
We like that too. It's a shame they all had to
die, Yeah, but. Normally I'd be more upset about
(40:08):
all the female characters getting killed, but
realistically almost all of the other characters also got killed
so. It's equal.
It seems, yeah, it was a bit equal opportunity.
Yeah, see correcto are you reading anything?
I'm reading this book called Inside Camp X by Lynn Philip
Hodgson and Camp X was a facility for training secret
(40:33):
agents during World War 2 that was on the North Shore of Lake
Ontario here in Canada and lots of famous spies trained there.
It was a huge Center for transmitting radio signals
across the ocean between the United States and Great Britain
and South America and all kinds of places.
And there's a show based on it called X Company that we're
(40:54):
probably going to cover at some point on the pod.
So I've been reading the books to get a little background about
it. Is there anything still left in
Ontario for you to go see? No.
So what happened after the war was that the camp got passed on
to an Army unit of signalers. So they were still using this
sort of transmitter throughout the Cold War.
(41:15):
And then in 1969 they closed it.Most of the buildings were torn
down. There's one or two that still
exist that got taken to other locations and they're use for
other things now. But on the actual location
itself, there's like a few craters in the ground from where
they used to practice explosives.
And there's a few, like foundations of houses, concrete
(41:36):
foundations, and there's a plaque that's been erected, but
there's no actual buildings or anything left.
Shame. I would love to come over and go
and see that there's so little left guys of all these amazing
places. But yeah, sounds like a good
book. Like, I feel like we're kind of
just getting into all the spice shit, so much spice shit.
(41:57):
Yeah, I love spice shit. I'm reading three books at the
same time, 2 for which I've already talked about.
The third one is a Dutch book, so I won't do any talking about
that because I've only read 1 chapter and I've got no clue
what it's about yet. So I'll tell you next time what
I do never that. All that's left is to say thank
you for listening. You can find us wherever you get
(42:20):
your podcast and you can rate USfive stars if you so fancy.
We would very much like it if you did.
You can follow us on Instagram at Rosie W Viewer Podcast or you
can send this episode to a friend or your mother or your
sister. And what else can you do?
You can visit our website rosiewviewer.com.
Amazing. See you next week.
(42:41):
See you next week. Bye.
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