War is Swell

There are many things to like about Inglourious Basterds, but the best thing about it is that it’s not Death Proof. Quentin Tarantino seems to have learned a vital lesson from his half of Grindhouse (the double bill experiment that tanked hard at the box office, earning about $25 million worldwide): If you’re going to have a lot of talking heads in your movie, they need to say something interesting. Deathproof is an hour-and-a-half of a few awesome car chase/wreck sequences and whole lot of bad performances and lifeless, often juvenile, dialogue. Inglourious Basterds is two-and-a-half hours of mostly sharp dialogue and largely captivating performances. Mostly. And largely.

The first thing that needs to be made clear, though, is that it’s not the film you think it is. The actual Basterds play a secondary role in the movie – the story is not really about them, and we don’t learn much about the supposedly legendary military unit. Secondly, this isn’t an action movie, so if you’re looking for combat and protracted gunfights, you’re out of luck. Tarantino has described it as being as much spaghetti western as war movie, and, yeah, it’s plenty pulpy, yet there’s also a lot of artistry on display that elevates Basterds above the kind of violent Looney Tunes romp depicted in the trailers (“I want my scalps!”).

Of course, the main character – who isn’t really the main character, but more on that later – yelling about Nazi scalps in the trailer is Brad Pitt (a.k.a. insurance taken out against having another flop like Grindhouse). As the boisterous leader of the Basterds, his performance has split critics, who think he’s either brilliant or overbearing. I’d say he’s a bit of both. While it’s fun to watch Pitt spew marble-mouthed tough guy monologues all over the screen for a while, the shtick wears thin, especially because his Lt. Aldo Raine doesn’t have a lot of dimension and the movie isn’t that interested in his struggle to, uh, collect scalps.

Basterd’s main plotline surrounds a young Jewish woman, Shosanna (alluring French actress Mélanie Laurent), who was the only one of her family to escape Nazi bullets and now runs a movie theatre in occupied France under a new identity. When a German soldier-turned-propaganda-film-star takes a shine to her, it leads to a chance encounter with her family’s murderer and a plan for revenge that involves a special screening at her cinema – a plot that involves using the very medium of film itself to take out the S.S. – how meta!

At the same time, the Basterds have been on a Nazi killing spree (very little of which we actually see) that’s enraged Hitler himself, and they hatch their own plan to wreak havoc at the screening. Hostel/Cabin Fever director Eli Roth plays one of the soldiers, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (a.k.a. “The Jew-Bear”) who crushes Nazi skulls with a baseball bat, while The Office’s B.J. Novak plays Pfc. Smithson Utivich, but neither get enough screen time to develop much beyond set dressing.

At the centre of the film is actually villain Col. Hans Landa, the aforementioned Nazi murderer. German actor Christoph Waltz deserves a Best Actor nomination for his elegantly mannered but truly evil character, and it’s a credit to Tarantino that he lets him steal the show. The director tends to like his movies long these days (i.e. the two-part Kill Bill) and his “director’s cut” of Basterds is apparently considerably lengthier. You gotta wonder if the men of the Basterds lost screen time to Waltz once the dailies came in because the guy owns this film. (It also warrants mentioning that actor Denis Menochet, as French farmer Perrier LaPadite, gives a really intense, hearty performance, as well, even if it is restricted to the opening scene.) Tarantino tends to self-indulge in his own dialogue, homages and in-jokes, which happens here (you’ll see shots and character names cribbed from other films), but, unlike in Death Proof, several overlong scenes are saved by the actors and the camerawork.

The cinematography is also Oscar-worthy in Inglourious Basterds. Director of Photography Robert Richardson (Kill Bill, The Aviator and a bunch of Oliver Stone movies) – a multiple Oscar-winner – gives the movie a lush, classy look that works as a visual counterpoint to all that pulp. The lush reds of the Nazi banners, the gorgeous greens of the French countryside and a lot of elegant browns make things really pop, creating a world that, in Tarantino-style, has its own pulse.

The filmmaker attracts a lot of talent and it really takes his work to the next level, glossing over a few of the shortcomings (which would explain why working stripped-down for Deathproof may have contributed to it being a dud). When you’re given such high quality eye candy, it’s easy to forget that Basterds meanders sometimes (for example, there’s a scene with Mike Myers in it as a British soldier that really doesn’t do much).

But, even if Tarantino does lose the plot occasionally, it’s nice to see a film – particularly a war film – that says “screw the rules” and does something different (the tagline "Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France" makes that clear) without losing your interest. This movie refuses to march in a straight line, which means historical fact isn’t worth a broken bayonet here and there are always surprises in store. Part thriller, part comedy, part war movie, part character study, part wish fulfillment against Hitler’s monstrous deeds and part treatise on cinema itself, Inglourious Basterds is total Tarantino.

And in a good way this time.

 

-Dave Alexander