Incongruent Historical Films: Inglourious Basterds

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Often a film's worth goes beyond what it explicitly discusses, as a films' narrative's nuances and subtleties can communicate more value to the audience than what his clearly stated. This is especially pertinent in historically inaccurate films. Quentin Tarantino's latest two films, Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), are set in a historical time period, but despite this background these are not history films. Both films are brimming with anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, as many similar films are. Inglourious Basterds features a Jewish character killing Adolf Hitler and Naize to achieve revenger, and Django Unchained features a slave turned bounty hunter on a quest to rescue his wife and deliver vengeance to enslavers. Though neither films resembles actual history, Aaron Barlow, Jeanine Basinger, Terri Francis, and Matthew Boswell agree that films like these offer a useful and quite possibly necessary insight into history and how the audience should approach the past. Thus, many scholars believe that historically inaccurate films can still provide useful insight to the past.

Films can make the audience reflect upon history in ways that a documentary would not compel them to do. Whereas the audience tends to think of history as static, narrative-based films allow the them to see the characters as people who have emotions, hopes, and ideas. Because the audience approaches narrative-based films differently from documentaries, Francis and Hornady argue that narrative-based films, particularly through their absurdness, allow the audience to reflect on history in different ways. The film Django Unchained features many absurdities. Francis argues that the absurdities force the audience to think about the...

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... in the usefulness of that.

Works Cited

Barlow, Aaron. Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes. California: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2010. Print.
Basinger, Jeanine. The World War II Combat Movie: Anatomy of a Genre. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. Print.
Boswell, Matthew. Holocaust Impiety: In Literature, Popular Music and Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.
Folsom, Brad. "Yes, Mandingo Fighting Really Happened." History Banter, 02 June 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
Francis, Terri. "Looking Sharp." Transition 112 (2013): 32-45. Print.
Hornaday, Ann. “Slavery through Tarantino’s lens.” The Washington Post 27 Dec. 2012. EBSCO. Web. 9 April. 2014.
Roth, Eli. Interview by Naomi Pfefferman. JewishJournal.com. 2009. Web. 25. Mar. 2014.
Smail, Christopher. "Blood, Slavery and Folk Tales in Tarantino's Django Unchained." New Lin ear Perspectives Web 28 April. 2014

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