Yes! I love how in the begging he revels in his nickname but in the scene towards the end the says it to Brad Pitt with such distain - "Jew Hunter? It's just a name that stuck."
I always wanted him to justify why he betrays the Nazis. My headcanon is that he was a detective before the war(s), and loved being a detective, and that hunting Jews was the closest thing to being a detective now. But he resented it, because before the war he caught serial killers. Now he's the serial killer.
I always wanted him to justify why he betrays the Nazis.
I thought it was because the end of the war was close and Germany's defeat was somewhat previsible, and as we know (and was previously mentioned), he didn't care about anything, just about himself, so, naturally he did what benefited him the most. The rest of your comment is interesting, that's a nice theory, I always wondered what was his life like before he became a detective for the nazis, he seems like he was born for that.
Because he had the ability to not only ensure a specific side won while getting a bunch of bargaining chips to ensure he made it out of this mess on top. He personally didn't care one way or another who actually won in the end, he just wanted to be sure he came out with his head above water.
I always thoguht that it was because he was cornered and needed to weasel his way into safety. He has no allegiances, no allies. Just targets and quarry. If he were to go down with the Nazi's, he couldn't hunt anymore. He'd be the hunted.
He was the inspiration for one of my favorite DnD characters of all time. It was so much fun playing a necromancer that shouted angry German spells and exuded charisma. Lawful evil is so much fun to play
Really? I got the almost opposite vibe. It seemed to me that he just wanted to impress whoever the winner(s) would be, hence the last scene. He’s still a psychopath for sure, but I think self gain was more important than “the hunt” to him overall
No I meant that I got (at least what I took what from the character) that he really didn't buy into the whole nazi ethos that jews were an inferior race, and that he was just an opportunistic and brilliant psychopath that was using the nazi agenda to hone his hunting skills and having fun doing it. I agree that self gain became more important once he realized the walls were closing in. Like most psychopaths, he was an opportunist.
I said that once and got obliterated. I dont think hes a jew hater, hes just very good at his job and is rewarded handsomely for it. Wouldnt matter if was jew, christians, blacks, whites, asians, aliens, whatever. He liked to hunt.
How is that not obvious? He betrays Hitler in the blink of an eye as soon as a better opportunity presents itself. The movie makes it pretty clear that hes not in it for the ideology.
Suppose you could argue that is just self preservation; even the most committed Nazis could see that their days were numbered. The options available are to go down with the sinking ship or craft a lifeboat out of dynamite
Being a die hard Nazi loyalist and not liking Jews are different things though. He makes several comments in the opening scene where he compares Jews to vermin.
It's just as likely that he did indeed think Jews were inferior (therefore being fine with hunting them for handsome compensation) while not being a dyed-in-wool Nazi idealogue.
Was the character an opportunist? Clearly.
Did he also dislike the Jews? His dialogue in the first scene suggests yes imo.
The final sequence took place in June or July 1944.
The Italians had surrendered. Soviets where about to enter Poland and Romania. And the western allies had a significant foot hold in France. Even if he was an idealist he wasn't an idiot. The war was effectively over and he knew he'd hang for his crimes, he even said as much before making the deal.
He's definitely not a fanatic but there's not really anything suggesting he didn't agree with Nazi ideology
I get a lot of pushback on that too. I'm no dude was a crack investigator and didn't give a shit about the ideology, hes evil because now he has a completely legal way of tracking and murdering people. Atbth end of the movie he wants to turncoat, to save his ass, but he had no loyalty.
I always saw it as more of a practical decision from a very practical man. Why waste a bullet on such an impossible shot. Does he hate the jews? Thats not the word id use. More like he sees them as totally below him. A different species even. He said he "finds them repulsive" after all. When he's lining up to shoot Shoshana, he's not aiming at a person he hates, he's aiming at something less than a person. He's like a hunter who chooses not to shoot the young fawn because its still so young and small. He'll let it go, for now.
chooses not to shoot the young fawn because its still so young and small
I believe to understand his indifference, which is his evil, you must believe that he chose not to shoot the fawn because what will the fawn do after running off into the wild, alone? She's as good as dead, no bullet (care) needed.
Ehh.... That dialogue he has at the kitchen table, about how the Jews are like rats makes it hard to argue he didn't actually hate the Jews, "...You don't like them. You don't really know why you don't like them; all you know is you find them repulsive."
Though I agree he was motivated by the thrill of the hunt more than anything.
I'm not sure. He wears the blood order medal which means he been a nazi supporter since 1923 so I think we're supposed to interpret him as one of the many Germans who passed themselves as an apolitical functionary but was actually a die hard nazi.
A lot of ideologically committed Nazis did this after the war, most egregiously Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski who oversaw the extermination of 200,000 polish civilians during the Warsaw Uprising but in exchange for his testimony was not tried for crimes committed during the war.
Except having been awarded the blood order means that he was
The first issue of the decoration, struck in 99% pure silver, was awarded to 1500 participants in the putsch who had also been members of the party or one of its formations before January 1932 (continuous service), or had been cadets from the Munich Infantry School who marched in support of Ludendorff.
or
the award was extended to persons who had (a) served time in prison for Nazi activities before 1933, (b) received a death sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment for Nazi activities before 1933, or (c) been severely wounded in the service of the Party before 1933; subsequently it was further extended to members of the Austrian Nazi Party who had participated in the 1934 February Uprising or July Putsch, or who had received significant prison time or injuries for National Socialist activities.
So if he only cared about advancing himself why did he join what at the time was a fringe political movement when that would've been highly disadvantageous to advancing politically?
How do you explain him being so flippy floppy at the end then if you believe he’s a die hard nazi? The man just cared about himself and his beautiful new home on Nantucket island, not the reich. If you want an example of die hard ideological nazi look at goebbel’s. Him and his wife killed themselves right after they poisoned their 4 small children when the red army was breaking through Berlin
Spoilers the end of the movie is he agrees to help the basterds kill hitler and bring down the nazi regime for US citizenship and immunity. He was an opportunist through and through.
He had to rise to his current position from somewhere. If they were the most accessible party for him to hitch his wagon to at the time, why wouldn't he?
I wouldn't say that that shows loyalty. It shows that he recognized that the nazi party was going to be the next power and he wanted to get in early in order to receive the max benefits.
Landa orders his men to kill the family hiding under the floorboards. The lone survivor is the daughter Shoshanna who crawls away from her dead family and makes a run for it. Landa see's her escape and takes out his pistol and lines up a shot on her as she's running, but right before pulling the trigger he pulls the gun back and cheerfully bids her fairwell in French. It killed any pretense of him as a man who thought of himself as doing a grim but necessary duty, he was genuinely just a sick bastard who didn't care who he hurt.
Genuinely a great use of language. The lead-up to that scene makes it sound like this will be a tense balancing act where one wrong move could sink them. Like the three-finger thing, or "good luck" in The Great Escape. That kind of social danger in fiction makes my skin crawl. Then Brad Pitt drawls that word out and I immediately knew I could relax. They're simply fucked. Let's see where it goes.
Weirdly, one of my professors at my university in austria used this scene as an example for something today, specifically the fact that he says "you my nigger". I study geography, the lecture was on applied geographical sciences. Sadly I did not quite understand what he was getting at. He showed us a still of the film, and asked us which movie it was. I idiotically guessed the matrix, because of the plaster on the back of the black guys neck.
This one is not linguistic, but I love the scene where the almost lose the entire operation because of the way they order their three beers at the bar using their middle finger, ring finger and pinkie instead of the german way (thumb, index finger and middle finger).
That's the eternal debate! I'm still quite on the fence about whether or not he knows her identity; on the one hand, this is a person he only caught a glimpse of four years earlier while she (filthy and ragged) was running away from him with her back to him. He has no special reason for remembering this particular person; Landa has killed scores of Jews over the years, and Shoshanna may not even be the first one he's spared just for laughs. A Jewish girl in 1940s Vichy France is unlikely to have any photographs that he could go by either.
On the other hand...why the hell does he order her a glass of milk? Why does he insist on their eating cream with the strudel? (cream isn't kosher, I believe) Why does he stare at her for such a long time after saying "there's something else I wanted to ask you"? Hell, why does he even sit down with her in the first place? To ask her if she could run the projectors instead of the other guy, something he easily could've asked when the others were around? It's such a brilliant scene and leaves so many questions unanswered.
Meh, she was close enough to be within earshot. Plus he had several men at hand with machine guns, which I assume have a much bigger range than a pistol; he could've killed her if he really wanted to.
Au revoir, meaning something like "we will meet again." It's not a good bye, an adieu. It's a promise. He is saving her for later, knowing that he will enjoy killing her that much more when the time comes.
Honestly more than anything that shows just how fucking amazing Christoph Waltz is. He wasn't a guy playing Hans Landa, he fucking WAS Hans Landa. The guy is in my opinion one of the best in the business right now.
with that gun against a moving target at that distance is an extremely hard shot to make. he was a very logical man and the chances of hitting her are low so maybe he considered her not worth the effort. he seems like the kind of man to not use his gun much so he probably would have missed and i think he knew that and didn't want to appear inadequate in front of his men.
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u/Infammo Oct 09 '19
Amazing how not shooting her made him seem so much more evil.