Chattanooga Pulse

Director Quentin Tarantino’s eighth feature film Inglourious Basterds is an excitedly violent wartime opus that is, at its best, concerned with the wonder of cinema.

The uncomplicated plot concerns a young woman’s plan to single-handedly avenge her massacred family by doing away with the Nazi Party via locking members in a movie theater she intends to burn to the ground on the night of a Third Reich film premiere.  Nation’s Pride— a schmaltzy propaganda piece directed by Joseph Goebbels—is meant to be a rallying cry for Hitler’s master race, but Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) plans to turn it into a death sentence.

The American military is intrigued by this premiere because the Fuhrer himself will be in attendance.  Brad Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, an officer who specializes in leading a violent militia of young man into German territory to scalp Nazis.  They’re called the Inglourious Basterds and their story crosses paths with Ms. Dreyfus by way of the harrowing German Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, the film’s best performer).

The scenes are long, sometimes overly so, and structured to evoke a maximum amount of tension before exploding into violence.  Tarantino mimics Sergio Leone, starting a scene with wide shots and inching into close-ups, but he doesn’t leave it at that.  Inglourious Basterds is a cinema nerd’s dream come true, and the script is riddled with references to classic German films, while each scene visually nods to classic directors— John Ford, Brian de Palma, G.W. Pabst, and F.W. Murnau are all embedded in the director’s aesthetic.

Still, there are no signs of Tarantino becoming a humanist director.  There’s a shred of humanity in the brilliant first scene, but the rest makes me wonder whether Tarantino will ever level his violence fetish and make a movie that will hold a place in the annals of cinema next to the greatest films of his idols.

Opening at the Bijou this Friday is the acclaimed documentary Food, Inc., a movie that details an out-of-control problem faced in the United States: The majority of our food comes not from farmers concerned about the quality of their product, but from industrial farms-turned-factories owned by a handful of money-hungry corporations.

Director Robert Kenner makes great efforts to make the subject harrowing for the uninitiated.  Those not familiar with the mechanical, Orwellian way our country produces food may well be shocked by the film and overcome cravings for fast food as it does its best to reveal the dark underbelly of American food production and the ideological shackles it inflicts on farmers.

“I understand why farmers don’t want to talk,” says Perdue chicken farmer Carole Morison, “because companies can do what they want to do as far as pay goes because they control everything.  But … something has to be said.”

Food, Inc. relies on the stories of courageous people like Morison who have refused to stand idly by and deny the problem.  Another one of them is Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm who has been taking proactive measures to keep his customers safe and healthy throughout his whole career.

“The irony,” says Hirshberg, “is that the average consumer does not feel very powerful. They think that they are the recipients of whatever industry has put there for them to consume.  Trust me, it’s the exact opposite.  Those businesses spend billions of dollars to tally our votes.  When we run an item past the supermarket scanner, we’re voting.”

In perfect timing with Food, Inc.’s arrival in Chattanooga, the Arts & Education Council’s Back Row Film Series will present a strikingly more positive documentary called Tableland this Thursday evening at Loose Cannon Studios.

The film is filmmaker Craig Noble’s journey through the organic farms, vineyards and breweries of Ontario and the northern United States.  The farmers he interviews share the concern of Food, Inc., but their passion for creating a perfected product is their lifeblood.

Tableland’s farmers take manifold precautious to ensure the safety of the food they sell, but these precautions—efforts that industrial farmers could not even approach— have become a way of life.  The film informatively explains current eco-buzzwords like “sustainable,” and encourages the audience to seek local farmers who care as much about the Earth as their own livelihood. The film plays like a credo for responsible eating and recognizes eating as one of the purest forms of pleasure—pleasure that does not have to be derived from ignorance.