"I think this might be my masterpiece"

possible spoilers

These are the last words in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and they're so gloriously cocky spilling from the lips of Brad Pitt as Tarantino's doppelganger, Lt. Aldo Raine: brash, foul-mouthed, scarred and uglied up and from an unsexy part of the USA and constantly smirking, unruffled by anything that happens to or around him, that I think he might be right. Tarantino, that is, speaking through Aldo Raine.

Despite the early trailers that made much of cartoonish violence and Pitt's cartoonish accent, it's certainly Tarantino's most mature movie--despite those easy gags, it's a mile away from the diatribes that revelled in tossing around taboos and dropping n-bombs in his earlier movies.

Pitt, though he gets the last word, isn't even the star of the movie--that would be Melanie Laurent as Shoshana, a Jewish cinema owner who saw her family killed at the orders of Oscar-nominated Christoph Waltz's Col. Hans Landa, after betrayal by the man who hid them. The garish revenge of Raine and the Basterds is nothing compared to her steely resolve, and she gives the movie emotional heft that sneaks up on you and only hits you when you realize how far she's willing to go.

Really at its heart this isn't a movie about revenge--Tarantino already did that, glorifying and personifying revenge in The Bride in Kill Bill--but about movies, about the power and the joy of movies, but mostly the power. The way cinema can destroy, can inspire, can write and rewrite history. It's not enough to kill Nazis--Shoshana must make a movie and splice it into one of Goebbels' propaganda pieces, asserting her self, her freedom through cinema.

Tarantino's greatest strength as a filmmaker has always been that he's a film junkie: he can reference layer upon layer of high and low art. But the strongest references here are to his own movies--a closeup on Shoshana's lips nearly identical to one from Pulp Fiction but with stakes much higher, and a drop-in grindhouse title on top of a German Basterd (who despite his cartoonish intro also lends weight--Til Schweiger is dangerously, broodingly dominant onscreen, emanating as palpable hatred as Shoshana's every time he's onscreen with the Nazis).

Even the Basterds, who start off as Jewish revenge porn (a crew of Jewish soldiers from the USA dropped in behind enemy lines to destroy as many Nazis as possible?), remind you where the film is really going. Eli Roth, nicknamed "The Bear Jew" and lovingly shot (never thought I'd find the man responsible for Hostel sexy) evokes a remark from Raine that watching him beat Nazis to death "is the closest we get to going to the movies."

They strike back through spectacle, if not explicitly through cinema. They don't just kill Nazis; they scalp them (how American-cinematic!) and leave mutilated bodies to be found, and carve swastikas onto the foreheads of those they let live--in a way, a nod toward what he owes to real victims of the Holocaust--a reminder that all this happened and no one should forget, and a picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words gesture both of mercy (and the word "merci" is never translated in the subtitles, a move that I can't help but think was intentional, particularly in the intro scene between Landa and LaPadite) and of continuing revenge. The story of the Basterds is their real strength, making them outsize cinema-villains. Storytelling is power.

The film cartoonizes Hitler, defanging him not just through violence but by making you laugh at him. It humanizes other Nazis, though, while not forgiving them--Daniel Bruhl as the young soldier who crosses over into cinema and stars in his own life story is almost likable in his flirtation with Shoshana and his need to flee the larger-than-life sight of himself on the movie screen, the dramatized version of his real-life exploits.

Bruhl's character isn't the only one that crosses the borders there--Diane Kruger also does as an actress turned double agent: film into politics into film again. The lines of reality and cinema, for Tarantino, are suddenly more porous, while the rest of his work has always been hyperconscious that it is film. Basterds rockets from the improbable--Mike Myers in heavy makeup recruiting a plummy-accented film critic to go behind enemy lines to meet the Basterds--to the poignantly real, but here it's not just celebrating the fun that movies are, it's making a stronger point about them.

Tarantino's political statement here is that cinema is political. Indeed, the movie wouldn't have to be about Nazis at all but for the fact that no other regime in history so successfully embraced and used film to create and tell its own story.

I had sworn off Nazi movies before this one hit, but I am also a sworn Tarantino fan. So I may say instead that I hope this is the Nazi movie to end all Nazi movies. After all, it's so conclusively rewritten history--something perhaps only safe to do with history both as well-known and as disputed as that of Hitler's Germany. Just the fact that he can make this movie leaves you wondering what kind of movies we'd have had the Nazis won. You get the feeling that for Tarantino, one of the most poignant scenes in the film is Shoshana's statement that she has no choice but to play German films.

There are a million tiny perfect moments here--a montage set to David Bowie's "Cat People/Putting Out Fire" with Shoshana putting on her makeup-as-war-paint, a cigarette flying in slow motion through the air to set a pile of film on fire, a request by Landa for a house on Nantucket that I can't help but interpret as a dig at the Bush family's own connections to the Reich, Roth's exuberant outburst after bashing in a Nazi skull complete with Ted Williams references.

I did long for a comeback moment, a la Kill Bill or True Romance, a gesture of personal physical violence from one of the film's female characters. But perhaps the lack of it is an odd gesture for some sort of peace, at least for Shoshana.

Peace. It's not really a theme here, but neither is war. Violence certainly is, but for all the vicarious thrills (and heck, I'm Jewish, I enjoy them as much as anyone) the feeling given is less that violence is good and more that those thrills SHOULD be vicarious. Bashing people's heads in with a baseball bat isn't actually a solution to a problem, and if you want to burn down the theater to take your enemies out, you may well go out with it.

Still, I haven't left a movie theater with a wicked grin like I did tonight in a while, and that's the pleasure Tarantino has always given--lines to quote, laughs to remember later, visuals that stick with you, and stories, always stories.

It's just that here, his story actually says something.

Brewing Controversy between Germany and Uruguay

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the relatively little-known Battle of the River Plate and Uruguay's role in the sinking of a Nazi ship that remains in Montevideo's harbor to this day. Lillie over at Memory in Latin America had a nice little post about Uruguay raising the Nazi eagle and swastika from the ship's wreckage a few years ago, and about the controversy it is now causing.

It's the swastika that is causing the trouble. The German government, as represented by its ambassador in Uruguay, is opposed to the display of the eagle with the Nazi cross. Germany, understandably enough, is sensitive about the ultimate symbol of National Symbolism. Public display of it is generally illegal in Germany although exceptions are made for historical and educational purposes.

There now seems to be some uncertainty about the ownership of the eagle. Germany believes the ship to be part of its cultural heritage. According to Uruguayan law, sunken ships predating 1973 in their waters are generally considered property of the Uruguayan state. Uruguayan businessman Alfredo Etchegaray has the rights to salvage the wreck and he doesn't believe that Germany even has the right to express an opinion on the matter. He points out that Germany has its own share of historical relics from other countries, including the head of Nefertiti which Egypt would very much like back. Uruguayan newspaper El Pais notes that Germany contributes money to the preservation of concentration camp Auschwitz, in modern-day Poland.

It's pretty interesting, and well worth checking out in its entirety.

Strange Images from Advertising - The Coca-Cola Swastika

One of the informal things I like most about being a historian is coming upon ads and consumer goods that are extremely anachronistic now, but really hit upon the zeitgeist and language of a particular time-period. These ads, in retrospect, are often horribly racist, sexist, or classist (though that isn't to say advertising has lost any of these qualities today), but the fact that they do tap into something that was perhaps popular and/or effective at another time makes for a delightful mixture of amusement and unease.

Which is why this watch-fob promoting Coca-Cola on a Swastika is so remarkable. Of course, as many will comment, the Swastika well pre-dates the Nazi Party in Germany, and can be found in India, among indigenous cultures in the United States (including decorations adorning the Kimo Theater in Albuquerque). Still, this is one of those promotionals that you know you will never see in the Western World again, all because of their associations with the Nazis and with Hitler specifically (much in the way toothbrush mustaches just don't appear anymore).

Of course, the Coca-Cola swastika made sense at its time - Coca-Cola attaching its name to a symbol that meant (in a pre-Nazi time) good luck and good health was actually a rather innovating and relatively harmless ad campaign for the early 1900s. Still, there's something really strange about seeing those things now, even in looking to the past.

Little-Known Aspects of Latin America: Uruguay Forces the Scuttling of a Nazi Ship

Many amateur historians can (annoyingly) rattle off the names of naval battles from World War II, both from the Pacific and the Atlantic. Yet one country is often overlooked in these lists: Uruguay, which indirectly oversaw the sinking of a German battleship.

Early in the war, the German navy had been conducting commercial raids on ships up and down the Atlantic. In September 1939, shortly after the war officially broke out, the German battleship Graf Spee had successfully sunk several merchant boats without loss of life. Still, dissatisfied with the doings of the Graf Spee, the British Navy dispatched several ships to track and stop the Graf Spee. In one of the first naval battles of the War, the German ship engaged battle near the River Plate with British ships, including the HMS Exeter, which was damaged enough to be retired from service. Although the German commander had caused more damage, he was outnumbered, and steered the Graf Spee up the River Plate, hoping to dock in neutral Uruguay's capital, Montevideo. However, Uruguay, following international treaties, said the ship could only remain in Montevideo's bay for 72 hours, and, unable to gain safe harbor in a neutral country, the captain scuttled the ship in Montevideo's bay, where it remains to this day. Thus ended the Battle of the River Plate, one of the first naval battles of World War II, and one in which Uruguay, in its own way, played a decisive role.

While the battle is not a major milestone in the British or German narratives of World War II, it is important enough to Uruguay that, in early December of last year, the government issued a stamp commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Battle, acknowledging that stamps may be a fading part of culture, but the battle remains relevant as a point of pride and identity to Uruguay to this date.

Film Review: A Song for Argyris

Remembering.

That is the theme of Stefan Haupt's 2006 documentary A Song for Argyris. Argyris Sfountouris is one of millions of people whose lives were destroyed by World War II. A young boy of nearly four in Distomo, Greece, his parents and much of his extended family were killed in Nazi massacre in 1944. The Nazis were ambushed in the road above Distomo and they took it out on the village.

What must this do to a young boy? He was just old enough to remember the horrors of what he saw; events that shaped the rest of his life. His grandparents, who survived the massacre, were unable to take care of him and his youngest sister. They were sent to an orphanage. His sister was affected permanently; she doesn't seem mentally retarded but she has never been able to live by herself and remains in a home until the present. Argyris became a quiet, smart, and intense boy whose impressed his elders. After a few years in the home, he was selected to live in an international orphanage in Switzerland that brought orphans from around Europe to live together as a reconciliation project. He took to the orphanage and stayed in Switzerland to complete his studies as a scientist.

Meanwhile, while he became committed to democracy while in Switzerland, Greece was undergoing deep turmoil. Always a frontier of the Cold War, the immediate postwar years saw the Marshall Plan combine with repression of leftists to keep the Greeks from becoming communist. Argyris was still a child in Switzerland and he had no control over it. But in 1967, a right-wing military coup created a dictatorship lasting until 1974. By this time, Argyris is a grown man, a Greek intellectual, and a human rights advocate. He played a small role in the resistance from his Swiss exile, passing along banned literature and organizing resistance concerts and other public events condemning the military regime. For this, his passport was revoked. The Swiss allowed him to stay but he couldn't leave and became a man without a country.

After he received Swiss citizenship in the early 1970s, Argyris went on to serve in relief and human rights operations in Africa and Asia. However, little time is spent on this portion of his life.

In fact, about halfway through the film, I began to wonder just what the point of this documentary was. Argyris is a pretty interesting guy and has lived an intense life, but I wasn't seeing a compelling reason to make a movie about him.

But then, we get to the point--Argyris is spending his later years fighting for German recognition of the Distomo massacre. Here we understand what Haupt is going after. This is a German film that is really about exposing not only the need for Argyris to remember what happened to his village but the German compulsion to forget all the atrocities they committed in World War II. Argyris could have gone on with his life. He was a young boy after all and has had an incredible array of opportunities in his life. But he chose to make remembrance the central point of his existence. He and his his sisters sued the German government in the 1990s, demanding reparations for what happened to them. After World War II, Germany was supposed to pay reparations, but the importance of West Germany to the United States during the Cold War led these to be forgotten about very quickly.

Should a reunited Germany be forced to pay their debt to the survivors of their actions? I don't know. It's clear from Argyris that money is not going to ease his pain, nor does he really care about it. He wants contrition. And that is exactly what the Germans have trouble expressing. Haupt is clearly disturbed by his nation's forgetting and Argyris serves to remind the Germans of their dark and still fairly recent past. The German ambassador to Greece was invited to a conference held in Distomo for the 50th anniversary of the massacre; not only did he refuse to attend, he didn't even respond and sent note takers to the conference surreptitiously. This was clearly an outrage. For the 60th anniversary in 2004, the German ambassador did come and apologize for his country. But this apology clearly did not satisfy Argyris; he rails against it afterwards. But would anything satisfy him? Can anything make up for the loss of your parents and much of your extended family, the years in an orphanage, and being made an exile? Probably not. But it's not as if the Germans have tried very hard either.

A Song for Argyris is not a great documentary. The narrative structure is a bit confusing, too little is made of much of Argyris' life, and it takes an awfully long time to get to the real point. But it is certainly a thought-provoking film about memory, nationality, and war.

Nazi Board Games

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Nazi board games exist. I guess I had never thought of it before. I particularly like this one:

In the game, players use a crude spring to launch wooden pieces onto a board
with four sections with different point values. The two outer rings included the
names of German cities. The third ring had cartoon images of top Nazi officials
such as propaganda minister Joseph Goebbel. The inner ring -- with the highest score of 100 points -- showed Adolf Hitler.
The box for the game, called the V-Game, showed a picture of
Hitler riding atop a German V-1 rocket and wearing a British royal crown.

I want to imagine what games children in other totalitarian regimes played. Did Cambodian kids during the Khmer Rouge play games where you practiced shooting your friend with glasses? Did the Stasi promote games to trick your parents into saying something anti-government so their kids could inform on them? Did Franco's Spain have games where you saw how far you could launch a figure based on a gay male stereotype out of a cannon?

Good times.