Dear David Denby,
In discussing the way Inglourious Basterds invokes film and filmmakers — Goebbles, the Art Deco theatre, the cinemaphile characters (including actors and actresses, theatre owners and projectionists, and critics) and the Basterds themselves (“A kind of Jewish Dirty Dozen”) you write, “Tarantino has gone past his usual practice of decorating his movies with homages to others. This time, he has pulled the film-archive door shut behind him — there’s hardly a flash of light indicating that the world exists outside of a nutbrain fable.”
I don’t understand why creating what Tolkien called a “secondary world” should be such a problem. I understand that that is a different project from trying to make a film “about something” (rather than a film that “is that something itself”); I fail to see why the former is necessarily better than the latter. I am also puzzled why of all people a film critic should be so bothered by a film that is soaked in films. It seems to cater to those of us that love film. Also: there are so many plays about plays for example, including Midsummer Night’s Dream — are they all deficient on principle as well?
(Read the rest of Geoff’s defense over at his blog – Remarkable.)
