Inglorious Basterds

It’s been a little over two years since the Grindhouse debacle. Now, I hear what you’re saying. Yes, a lot of that movie works. Plannet Terror is great, gory, escapist fun and some of those fake trailers are fantastic. I’m calling it a failure because the movie performed poorly at the box office and Quentin Tarantino fans left the theater saying he had lost it (well, this fan did at least). Death Proof has all the elements that define Tarantino movies (extended dialogue scenes, brutal violence, and feet), but it lacked that undefinable something that makes his movies so special. Death Proof comes off feeling like it’s made by some newbie trying to immitate Tarantino’s style, rather than Tarantino himself. The movie was so off-putting that people began to wonder if the man behind such masterpieces as Pulp Fiction and Reservior Dogs had become nothing more than a charicature of himself. With Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino proves that he still has one of the most unique visions in Hollywood, and that his best may be yet to come.

IB is exactly what it promises to be: WWII as interpreted through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino. If you want history or realism, this is not for you. If you want to see a war movie that I promise is unlike anything you’ve seen, then you’ve come to the right place. To call IB a war film is proably inaccurate. It’s a spaghetti western that’s set in Nazi-occupied France. As you’d expect, the movie is told in segments, and not always in the right order. Still, this could be Tarantino’s best screenplay to date. On one side, you have Shoshana, a 22 year old Jewish girl hiding out in France. On the other side, Aldo Raine and his “basterds,” a Jewish-American group of soldiers whose one job is to kill as many Nazis as they can in the most brutal ways possible. These two stories are woven together by Nazi Colonel Hans Landa and the screening of the new film Nation’s Pride. To tell you any more about the story would be depriving you of something special.

I could go on for a thousand words about the performances in the film. The one who you’ll be hearing the most about and who deserves the most attention is Christoph Waltz as the aforementioned Landa. He is pure evil in every way, yet Waltz is able to show the complexities of the character and actually make him funny at times (remember, this is a Tarantino; evil can be funny). Waltz is not the driving force of the movie, but he is involved in every aspect. He weaves in and out of both stories. This guy deserves every mention he gets in the Oscar conversation. Brad Pitt is also great as Raine. He manages to be both humorous and menacing at the same time. Despite being a “good guy”, his actions are far from good. He scalps Nazi’s and carves Swatstikas into their foreheads. You root for him, but he is not the driving force, which leads us to Shoshana. Melanie Laurent gives us the character whose arc we care about the most. It is her quest for revenge that drives the story forward. Without her, the movie would lack that human touch and I would argue this is every bit her movie as it is Pitt’s.

Every other cast member is great as well. Diane Kruger shows acting talents she never got a chance to show opposite the CAGEbot in National Treasure. Michael Fassbender is great as Lt. Archie Hicox. Fassbender is an intricate part in my favorite scene, a scene that could have fallen completely flat without him. I don’t know the names of the actors who played Hitler and Goebbels, but they are quite good. Keep in mind, these are not historical representations, but rather humorous ones. Both men are played for laughs (you laugh at how disgusting they are). The only actor who didn’t work for me was Eli Roth as “The Bear Jew”. Maybe it was the Boston accent, or maybe it’s the fact that the man is a director and not an actor, but I wanted more out of the character. The part was originally offered to Adam Sandler, and had that happened, we would be dealing with an all-time classic character.

Directorally, Tarantino is really at the top of his game. There is a lot of great cinematography in the movie, especially in scenes that you wouldn’t expect it. The score is also classic Tarantino, with a combination of classical music and more modern songs. What really stands out though, is the dialogue. There are numerous scenes of extended dialogue, that aren’t adding anything to the characters or the narrative, and yet you don’t want it to stop because it is so good. Even though nothing is progressing, all of the conversations seem deliberate and create a wonderful mood to the film. There is also the violence that also culminates these scenes. As usual, it’s brutal. I’ve mentioned the scalpings and the carvings, but there is also death by baseball ball and some graphic shootouts. Like I said earlier though, despite being graphic and brutal, it all has a very speghetti feel to it, so it lessens the effect.

With the faith of his fans hanging in the balance, Quentin Tarantino has returned to form and delivered one of the best, albeit most outlandish, films of the year. Inglorious Basterds is fun, emotional, comical, brutal, and weird. Or in other words, everything I want out of a trip to the movies.