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Inglourious Basterds By Nathan Cone
Now this is how World War II should have ended. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds uses history as a backdrop for the plot, teases you with a major flight of fancy, and then dares you to come along as it actually goes down that road. I noticed on more than one occasion that I kept leaning towards the screen, almost in anticipation of what ballsy thing Tarantino would try next. This is Tarantino’s most rich and mature film in more ways than one. Pop culture references aren’t thrown around for hipness’ sake. Dialogue serves the scene, rather than the writer’s self-interests. Scenes are deliberately planned and paced. And Tarantino creates three compelling lead characters whose fates all intertwine in — where else, for Tarantino? &mdash a movie theater in 1940s Paris. The movie opens not with the top-billed star, Brad Pitt, but with a suspenseful scene that introduces the movie’s villain, SS Col. Hans Landa, known as “The Jew Hunter” for reasons that should be obvious. On a remote farm in France, he plays a game of cat-and-mouse with the farm’s owner, who’s hiding a family beneath his floorboards. Landa makes some observations about race in the scene that, if you follow the logic, offer some insights into just one of the ways the German populace must have been duped into the Nazi ideology. In the next scene, Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Raine, is shown assembling his unit — the Basterds — to do one thing and one thing only after they’re dropped behind enemy lines: Kill Nazis (or “Natsees,” as Pitt humorously pronounces it). A special point is made that Lt. Raine’s team is made up of Jewish-American soldiers, and according to Raine’s instructions, they are to be “cruel” to the Germans. Raine, who “has a little Injun” in him, orders each man to bring back 100 Nazi scalps. There’s been some chatter in critical circles about the idea of Jewish soldiers acting as cruelly as their Nazi counterparts. But from this seat, even though their methods are indeed cruel, I didn’t see any of the Basterds gassing and torturing men, women, and children like the Nazis did. I figure Tarantino simply thought it would be a cool idea for Jewish soldiers to be the ones to get the ultimate revenge on the Nazis. Which is where our third protagonist comes in. Shosanna Dreyfus escaped the bullets of Hans Landa and his men on that fateful day on the farm years ago, and now she’s running a cinema in Paris. A German soldier with ties to the Nazi high command takes a liking to Shosanna, now under an assumed name with Aryan Papers to prove it, and he convinces none other than Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of his latest piece of propaganda in Shosanna’s theater. The Basterds, Shosanna, and Landa eventually meet in the fiery final act of the film, which is too good to believe, or to spoil. Tarantino’s casting is top notch on this film. Christoph Waltz deserves the praise he’s been getting for his role as Col. Landa. Like a great movie villain, he brings charm and humor to the performance. Pitt is funny and has a little mystery about him, but he’s also pretty one-note. However, as Pitt admits in an interview on the DVD, that’s kind of the point of his character. Lt. Raine is the only one who pretty much stays the same throughout the film. Tarantino has always taken a liking to strong female characters, and as Shosanna, Melanie Laurent exudes that strength of will as she applies makeup like war paint to the strains of David Bowie’s “Cat People,” gets decked out in a bold, red dress during the film’s climatic sequence at the theater, and doesn’t take crap from anyone throughout the movie. This is a movie full of great sequences, but my favorite is probably an incredibly tense 25-minute scene in the middle of the film where the Basterds are meeting up with a British lieutenant and a German double-agent. They’re supposed to rendezvous at a quiet tavern in a small town, but a group of carousing German soldiers complicates plans. Innocent parlor games lead to a Tarantino trademark, the Mexican standoff, with a whirlwind resolution. I found Inglourious Basterds to be an exhilarating experience. Watching it is like observing a great game of chess. Finally, nearly all the pieces get wiped off the board, and there’s a showdown for the checkmate. See the movie, and you’ll see what I mean. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS ON BLU-RAY/DVDOn Blu-ray and DVD, Inglourious Basterds comes with a number of special features. The best ones on the disc feature Elvis Mitchell, current host of The Treatment on NPR station KCRW. Mitchell interviews Pitt and Tarantino for a 30-minute conversation that touches on character, storytelling, and the scenes that were left out of the movie. I also loved the Film Poster Gallery Tour, narrated by Mitchell. In this 10-minute feature, images of film posters that appear in the movie appear on screen and Mitchell explains their relevance to the film, and their place in the world of cinema. Posters of the films of Henri-Georges Clouzot and G.W. Pabst are included, as well as imagined posters for fake German propaganda films, such as the “Nation’s Pride” film that’s shown in the movie. It’s an entertaining cinematic history lesson. Rod Taylor (The Birds, A Gathering of Eagles), who also appears in Inglourious Basterds in a small role as Winston Churchill, also gets his own special feature on home video. There are two interviews with him, and he tells a great story about how Quentin Tarantino came to cast him in the film. The Blu-ray release of Inglourious Basterds improves on the DVD with superior picture and sound, but there are a few other little tricks up the disc’s sleeve. Using Universal Pictures’ BD Live technology, you can set up an online profile and set up “movie chats” with your friends, or even record a commentary track to share with other users. Alas, I still don’t know any other users to share with! A new iPhone app developed by Universal, Pocket Blu, also allows you to control your Blu-ray player using your phone, which helps you when typing while a chat window is open. Back to the main Cinema Tuesdays Reviews page More about the Cinema Tuesdays series  |
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