Inglourious Basterds Review

Yup, it's a subtle film

I had the pleasure of watching Inglourious Basterds as part of the recent Melbourne International Film Festival.  We bought our tickets early (before they sold out), and even then there had to be a second screening opened to deal with the high demand.  Sure, we were stuck down in the cinema’s second row from the front by the time we cleared the line, but the movie proved itself well worth the potential trips to the chiropractor.

Inglourious Basterd‘s is the latest film from making-cult-mainstream director Quentin Tarantino.  And when it gets right down to it, could you think of any other director that could get away with making a movie about a Jewish company in World War 2, behind enemy lines, scalping Nazi troops?

The list would certainly be short, that’s for sure.

However, despite the rather controversial concept, the actual exploits of the Basterd company don’t make up the majority of the film.  The plot, while making sure we know the squad’s intentions and methods, focuses more on the events that happen around them.  The movie is presented in a series of chapters, much like those in Kill Bill, only this time they’re in sequential order.  The first chapter is an introduction to the brilliantly acted Colonel Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) who roots out and kills the family of another of the films main characters, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent).  Landa has the opportunity to kill Shosanna while she flees, but chooses not to.

Shosanna story is essentially what drives the film, as many years after the murder of her family she has changed her identity and now lives as a cinema owner in Paris.  After having a young Nazi movie star become enamoured with her, she’s thrust into the middle of an enormous Nazi operation as her cinema becomes the host of Joseph Goebbels’ latest propoganda film.  The premiere is to be attended by all the Nazi top brass, including Hitler himself.  This presents too good an opportunity to the British, who begin “Operation Kino”, a covert attempt to blow up the cinema with all the leaders inside.  Unbeknown to them, Shosanna has exactly the same idea in mind, as it turns out Hans Landa is put in charge of security for the event.

Hans Landa, using the "mine's bigger than yours" method of intimidation

If anything, Tarantino has made a revenge film that seems to over-shadow his “revenge film”, Kill Bill.  Maybe with the exception of the Nazi command, everyone in this film has a justified feeling of revenge to carry with them, and you can see it bubbling away under the surface during each character’s dialogue.  After Kill Bill (which I loved, certainly), I felt that in many ways Inglourious Basterds was a far more original work, and a step back toward the more character driven pieces of Tarantino’s earlier films .  The film didn’t seem to rely as much on previous cinema to make it’s point.  While I enjoy Tarantino’s many homages to film classics (don’t worry, there are still plenty of these moments in Basterds), it’s certainly a formula that becomes a little tired if overused.

Basterds is presented to the audience as a Spaghetti Western that just happens to be set in World War 2.  The majority of the film’s music is created by Ennio Morricone, the conductor behind the classic A Fistful Of Dollars and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (to name a few).  You get fantastic snatches of it through the cinematography too.  The film begins on a small dairy ranch, with a farmer chopping wood and his daughter hanging out sheets to dry, who soon spots the Nazi’s travelling down the road towards them, kicking up dust.  All it would need is a blood red sunset behind it, and the scene could tumble straight into a Leone film.

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice"

Staying with the Spaghetti Western style, there is also no shortage of violence in Basterds.  Tarantino plays it fast and hard, as the violence is over-the-top, graphic and will have even the most hardened fans squealing with astonishment.  However, for the most part, the film doesn’t linger on these moments.  There might be a few moments where you think a particularly graphic shot is held for maybe a few seconds longer than it needed to be, but overall the film makes the impact then moves right along.

That said, the film is set in an alternate history of the war (let’s just say some HIGHLY historically inaccurate things happen), which gives the audience the freedom to laugh out loud at the more extreme moments of mutilation.  It also neatly suspends any disbelief the audience might be clinging on to at the start of the movie.

When the movie is at it’s most entertaining, however, is typically the lead up to the violence, rather than the violence itself.  To this effect, there are many series of “set up” conversations that eventually lead to conflict, and it’s in these scenes that the actors prove their brilliance.  By far the most outstanding performance of the film comes from Christopher Waltz.  Mostly unknown outside of his native Germany (I think I saw him on an episode of Inpector Rex once), Waltz is mesmerising as the “Jew Hunter” Landa, who switches seemingly at random between charming multi-linguist, shrewd detective and cold, malevolent killer.  The scene where he is re-introduced to the now identity-disguised Shosanna is fantastic, and Waltz as Landa seems to have the ability to make even the ordering of strudel with cream play out like a life-threatening interrogation.

Quentin demonstrates the way he wants Aldo's jaw to look

Given all his previous brilliant performances, audiences might be a little surprised at the somewhat understated role Brad Pitt plays as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds.  Raine certainly comes across as a driven, canny and ruthless leader, but for the most part the character is rather stoic, seemingly along just to observe the out-and-out bloodlust of his squad.  He even takes a rather clinical view of his work while carving swastikas into the foreheads of his captured enemies.  The section of the movie shown in trailers, where Raine demands one hundred Nazi scalps from each of the men inside his squad seems at the beginning to be genuine blood-lust on Aldo’s part.  By mid-way through the movie, however, even this seemed to me more like a tactical desicion made on the Lieutenant’s part to motivate his soldiers.

The movie clocks in at around two and a half hours, so seeing it at 11pm (like I did) might not be the best approach.  Either that, or take a Red Bull if you’re off to the last screening.  For it’s length, however, the movie is paced extremely well, so you probably won’t notice the hours waltz by.

The Verdict:

Pros: The film is everything you’ve come to expect from a Tarantino film, and more.  The performances are spot-on, and as this is mostly a dialogue film, this is what makes the movie shine.  Christopher Waltz won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in this movie, and all I can say is that it is well deserved.

Cons: People who go into the movie expecting to see the more controversial exploits of a Jewish covert squad will probably be disappointed, because we see only a little bit of what we understand is a rich back story of the Basterds themselves.

Overall: 4 out of 5.  Sure, it’s not Resevoir Dogs amazing, but it’s still a great movie, shot with Tarantino’s trademark panache.  A strong core cast, bolstered by a brilliant support cast, definitely makes this movie worth a look.  Thumbs up!