I have just finished watching Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds, and I have to conclude that it is a movie made to satisfy viewers with an overdeveloped sense of vengeance and a limited imagination.

But for the conspicuous absence of Pol Pot, Rasputin and Attila the Hun in the film’s burning theatre, the immolated rogue’s gallery would have been complete.  I can see how a fictionalized story which allows the Jews to do unto the entire Third Reich what was done unto them might have some appeal.  This way the victims get to act as deplorably and inhumanely as their victimizers and still be heroes (doesn’t that naturally make this a premise for a Tarantino film?!).

I have to confess that this disgusted me — if I empathize then I can share in their dehumanization, and if I don’t then why should I give a tinker’s cuss about the whole film (like an episode of Seinfeld, full of unredeemed characters, I wouldn’t care if the whole rotten lot of them were swallowed up into the bowels of the Earth and never heard from again)?

A series of special forces animals indiscriminately carve up Nazi soldiers across the French countryside, and this culminates in a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel final scene where Hitler (and the rest of the German high command) is shot, burned and blown up in a film festival.  Hitler himself is so riddled with bullets that his face begins to fragment.

While some of the acting was excellent I think such thespian prowess could have been hung on a better developed skeleton, frankly.

I will continue to ponder the film, but these were my first impressions.

I’ve been invited to a party for nudists of sorts — a neighbour of mine has shed his/her humanity and would like me to do the same and jump in the pool.

Very nearby there is a dog who howls all night.  It probably starts shortly after I fall asleep, because I do fall asleep and yet, once I have heard its tormented cries, I cannot sleep again.  It is a continuous expression of anguish and sorrow.  It pierces glass.  It pierces darkness.  It pierces restfulness.  It challenges any attempts I may have to convince myself that I am a good person — it disagrees.

I’ve thought of sneaking over in the night and poisoning the poor beast.  I’ve thought of publicly humiliating its deformed, twisted owners.  Putting them in a pillory where they can be scorned; immortalized as oddities and relics.  But I still get to sleep in my bed as I have done for many nights now, as my canine friend has continued to ask for help or release.

I am complicit in its suffering.  I have been invited to this party and I cannot claim not to know the predilections of my host.  I need to act today.  My own humanity is at stake.

More later…

Phone treed and then ate some French toast. Time for G to do homework and then we sit to watch a film together. I think an Ice Age movie may be in the cards this morning…

This piece is proudly hanging in our dining room.

Bill