Landa's rat speech / Inglourious Basterds
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Landa: Now, if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast, it would be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk. But if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with a beast, it would be that of the rat. The Führer and Goebbels's propaganda have said pretty much the same thing, but where our conclusions differ is I don't consider the comparison an insult. Consider, for a moment, the world a rat lives in. It's a hostile world, indeed. If a rat were to scamper through your front door right now, would you greet it with hostility? Perrier LaPadite: I suppose I would. Landa: Has a rat ever done anything to you to create this animosity you feel towards them? LaPadite: Rats spread diseases. They bite people. Landa: Rats were the cause of the bubonic plague, but that's some time ago. I propose to you, any disease a rat could spread, a squirrel could equally carry. Would you agree? LaPadite: Oui. Landa: Yet I assume you don't share the same animosity with squirrels that you do with rats, do you? LaPadite: No. Landa: But they're both rodents, are they not? And except for the tail, they even rather look alike, don't they? LaPadite: It's an interesting thought, Herr Colonel. Landa: Ha! However interesting as the thought may be, it makes not one bit of difference to how you feel. If a rat were to walk in here right now, as I'm talking, would you greet it with a saucer of your delicious milk? LaPadite: Probably not. Landa: I didn't think so. You don't like them. You don't really know why you don't like them; all you know is you find them repulsive. Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews. Where does the hawk look? He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere he would hide. But there's so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide. However, the reason the Führer's brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me. Because I'm aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.
Comments
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How odd... a white man compares Jews to rats, and in every way I feel the same...about whites. Doesn't matter who they are or what they may or may not have done, I hate them. Every last, dirty, stinking, pig-skinned one of them.
And, I have a white man to thank for that bit of realization! Ah, the poetry of it! I could eat it with a spoon -
Hitler was right
Jews = rats -
"you don't like them, you know why you don't like them, all you know is that you find them repulsive"
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But strange enough he has a really good point when he speaks about the rat and sqirrel.
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I love rats, they make great pets. Very affectionate.
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jew rat. pirat. the hunting jew.
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Such a dumb scene lol. Rats invade your home and eat your food while squirrels don't. So that's why we kill rats instead of squirrels.
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Funny, Jews see themselves very differently; When a Jew prays, he is like a Dove. When he stands up for his beliefs he is a Lion. When he marches without fear into the gas chambers he is like a Lamb. Now, as for the Nazis...when they got drunk they were like Pigs. When they hunted and slaughtered human prey they were like Wolves. When they preened and paraded in their black uniforms they were like Crows, and when they divided their stolen treasures they were like Vultures!
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This might be the best acting Tarantino ever caught on film.
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He boils racism down to basic, biased, preference. Simply put, it is a fallible reason to mistreat a thing. However who or what is going to stop you from thinking or acting this way?
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In my opinion, this is the best thing about Tarantino movies: when the characters go into a long, but clever and also thought provoking speech that is also a delightful conversation. They're classic, not too complicated, usually spoken very refined and although it isn't too terribly complicated, it still makes you think.
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The only enjoyable and true part of a truly vile Jewish anti German propaganda movie.
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Thr Scariest thing was that He was right...
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The incredible thing about this speech... It's not only about how the Nazis treated the Jews.
It's drawing a comparison of how we treat Nazis.
If a Nazi walks through your door do you treat it with hostility? What has it done to earn your hostility? Sure, they commited genocide, but so did the British in Africa. Would you treat a British man the same way?
Apart from the accent they even look the same, but you just hate Nazis because they're Nazis. You are repulsed by them because you have been taught how evil they were since you were born.
This comparison is continually made throughout the movie; the most despicable and vulgar acts in the film are committed by American soldiers on unarmed and captured Nazi troops. We are supposed to be repulsed by the hyper violent movie the Nazis watch at the cinema, isn't it so sickening to see them love the slaughter of Allied soldiers so much?
But, yet, at the end of the movie there we are in a cinema getting satisfaction from watching hundreds of unarmed Nazis get gunned down in a locked, burning building. Eerily akin to a gas chamber of mass slaughter.
The whole movie is intended to spread a message;
Our rampant dehumanisation of the Nazis is almost as violent as their dehumanisation of the Jews.
After all, if a soldier put a gun to the back of your head and told you to press a button that kills 30 people, would you do it? I think a lot of people would die to save them.
Now lets imagine those 30 people are Nazis.
I don't think there's anyone in our society who wouldn't press that button. -
The scariest thing about this scene was they way he just sits there and explains how he basically hunts people for a living and does it with a smile on his face. To think that at some point and time there were actual people like him that just took pleasure in killing hundreds if not thousands of people and didnt lose any sleep over it. The fact that he's even trying to justify it makes it that much more terrifying cause you know he's aware that it's evil but he's trying to sell you the idea that it's just business
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His character is so intimadating...i felt intense watching this..his performance in this film was superb..so good it gives me the shivers
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A highly intelligent racist is the most dangerous. He can justify his cruelty in sophisticated methods that may seem quite compelling to the common man.
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The rat and hawk comparison is wonderful. He already knew the Jews were hiding under the floorboards. He mentioned where a rat would hide from a hungry hawk flying above. A rat would hide in underground holes.
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The screenplay has a line in this speech where he compares the Negro to the gorilla that was cut from the final film.
Every screenplay he has ever had produced has some sort of negative racial reference to Black people, except for Dusk Till Dawn.
.... and maybe Natural Born Killers which I haven't seen in many years. -
Landa is my favorite character in any film ever
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