INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
****
Whether or not Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino’s “Best Film,” the fact that such a thing is possible speaks volumes. If ever there was a “There’s no way he’ll ever top…” film, it’s 1994’s Pulp Fiction, the Cannes-winner that launched a new wave of indie film making – for better and for worse – and that, fifteen years later, still dazzles with its innovative structure and legendary, Oscar-winning dialogue. Despite follow-ups like the great Kill Bill series and the outrageously underrated Jackie Brown, the epic Pulp Fiction seemed untouchable. Fifteen years later, enter Inglourious Basterds.
Tarantino’s best? That is of course debatable, but the fact is Inglourious Basterds is a damn good film. Instantly transcending the Dirty Dozen rehash suggested by its trailers and ad campaign, this epic WWII film is a staggering tale of patriots and mercenaries, double-agents and double-crossers, and perhaps most impressive of all, the least Quentin Tarantino film that Quentin Tarantino has made.
Sure, there are splashes of the auteur at play. Keen eyes will immediately recognize the signature fonts and stand-offs, keen ears will immediately recognize two familiar cameo voices from Tarantino’s oeuvre, not to mention musical cues lifted directly out of the Kill Bill series (themselves lifted from older films). But the Tarantino staples stop there – after the somewhat masturbatory dialogue evidenced in his most recent film Death Proof (as one friend put it, he might as well have thrown on a wig and make-up and play all the characters themselves), Tarantino shows tremendous restraint in Basterds, transcending even earlier works like Fiction and Reservoir Dogs to create characters who are fully realized, and whose ambitions and motivations are clear (sometimes surprisingly so).
The Basterds of the title are a team of Jewish-American soldiers whose sole mission in Nazi-occupied France is to hunt and kill Nazis, and moreover – as instructed by their lieutenant, played with comic gruffness by Brad Pitt – scalp their victims. Although the sequences involving the Basterds are very entertaining, alternatively comical and intensely suspenseful, the surprise of Inglourious Basterds is that the film, despite the star power of Pitt, is very much not about the Basterds at all. The protagonists of this film are really Jewish theatre-owner Shoshanna Dreyfus and Nazi Col. Hans Landa, and emerging as the true stars of the film are the unfamiliar actors who play them, Melanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz.
A review of Inglourious Basterds would almost feel incomplete without a section devoted solely to Waltz’ mesmerizing performance; fill in your own hyperbole, and it would seem inadequate. Alternating between menacing and humorous with the blink of an eye – and doing so in four languages – Waltz’s Landa is a monster on par with Schindler’s List’s Amon Goeth and Pan’s Labyrinth’s Captain Vidal, and still transcends even these in despicability because unlike Goeth’s petty man-child, Landa is an erudite and seasoned professional, and unlike Vidal – well, to lay out the key difference between Landa and Vidal would be to spoil a great twist at the film’s climax, but suffice it to say, it reveals Landa to be an even greater scumbag of a human being than his murderous behavior would already suggest. It’s brilliant writing matched with brilliant acting, and Waltz’ Cannes win for Best Actor, and his awards to come, are well deserved.
Tarantino has described his own film as a Spaghetti Western set in WWII, and while there are definitely touches of classic western structure throughout the film, his summary – any summary – cheapens the experience of the film. Inglourious Basterds is an opulent epic that is as sprawling as it is taught, as rich in color and detail as classic Bertolucci or Antonioni, a feast for the eyes and ears even as it explodes in moments of brutal violence. Only time will tell if it will achieve the level of immortality that Pulp Fiction has managed to obtain, but as a singular work, Basterds is a masterpiece, and if not Tarantino’s best, then it’s easily his second best, and perhaps the most finely-crafted and expertly-acted WWII film ever made.
- Logan Crow
September 27, 2009
Comment:
