No one expects conventional filmmaking when going to see a Tarantino film. However, Inglourious Basterds, the ultimate Allied Forces/Jewish revenge fantasy, pushes the boundaries of fiction even further than the director’s previous work.
Inglourious Basterds - The Story
The movie opens with the escape of Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish girl whose family is slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). A few years later, in German-occupied Paris, Shosanna – who is now the owner of a movie theater – has the opportunity to avenge her family’s murder by burning down the theater which hosts the premiere of Joseph Goebbels’ latest propaganda film. Shosanna’s design is only one of the three threads that are woven together in Tarantino’s surrealistic plot. While the young girl works out the details of her plan, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a good old boy from Tennessee, puts together a special Jewish-American force aimed at terrorizing, killing and scalping as many Nazi soldiers as possible. The commando-style team includes Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), aka “the Bear Jew”, who beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat, Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), a former soldier in the German army, who holds an impressive record in killing German officers, and other six American Jews who believe, as Raine puts it, that they are not there to teach the Nazis “a lesson in humanity”.
As the plot advances, the two unstoppable forces – Shosanna and Raine’s Nazixterminators – move independently toward the same target: the Fuhrer and his clique, who become unrealistically vulnerable once they decide to attend the film premiere in Paris. But Tarantino knows the perfect recipe for a war film needs both the flavor of suspense and the secret ingredient of espionage, so he introduces a third element into the equation. The British headquarters have a plan of their own for the night of the grand premiere. With a German actress-turned-Allied-spy (Diane Kruger) on their side, the Brits devise Operation Kino, which is also aimed at wiping out the SS high command. Their path soon crosses with that of Raine’s squad and all revengeful forces erupt in a spectacular final act.
Tarantino’s Heroes and Villains
Inglourious Basterds is infused with Tarantino’s signature style. The story is developed in a chapter format, with a narrator’s voice often distracting from the intense atmosphere the director manages to keep intact during the masterfully staged dialogue scenes. Once again characters are defined by explanatory flashbacks, which are roughly inserted between action scenes. Like in Tarantino’s past work, dialogue occupies a central space in the dramatic landscape. Inglourious Basterds may be labeled as an action movie, but it is Tarantino’s fresh, entertaining dialogue that gives the story its edge.
The movie seems reluctant to center on one character, oscillating between Shosanna’s tragedy, Aldo Raine’s mission, the self-doubt of a German soldier who is in love with Shosanna and even the double life of a German starlet/Allied spy. Brad Pitt is hilarious in the role of the cocky Tennessee lieutenant. His thick Southern accent and his impassivity make Raine a colorful character who is at the heart of many entertaining scenes, proving once again that Pitt performs best in a comic posture. Diane Kruger also shines briefly in the double role of the flirtatious German actress and the cold-blooded spy who shoots German soldiers without hesitating. Her character remains in control until she is confronted by Landa, the master manipulator, who has no trouble finding her vulnerable spot. The Austrian-born Christoph Waltz gives a brilliant performance as Colonel Landa. He is anything but the stereotypical SS officer. Although he finds satisfaction in his ignoble work, Landa is detailed, mannered and annoyingly enthusiastic. He is capable of carrying out the most atrocious act with perfect serenity, without even removing his white gloves. Landa is the only compelling villain. The episodic appearances of cartoonish Hitler and Goebbels raise a question mark about Tarantino’s intention, which often seems to be leaning toward parody.
Shosanna, played by Mélanie Laurent, is apparently the dramatic force of the film. However, she fails to engage the viewer and to communicate her pain and frustration, partly because the audience spends too little time with her. Wounded and obsessed with revenge, she becomes a symbol of the Jewish predicament in WW II. The attempts to humanize her are feeble and revolve mainly around her uneasy relationship with Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), the Nazi who becomes infatuated with her. After she shoots Zoller, she hesitates, derailed from her mission for a brief moment. But the scarcity of such glimpses of humanity seriously undermines the dramatic substance of the film.
The Aesthetics of Violence
Inglourious Basterds is not a gentle film. Not all of the violence is direct, psychological pressure playing a central part in the plot. However, the viewer is assaulted by quite a few scenes of shooting and scalping. But Tarantino seems to have found a unique language to express the meaning of violence. The climactic scene where the Nazi-packed theater burns down in a supreme act of purging is beautifully staged. The members of the Basterd squad left inside the theater engage in a Nazi shooting spree. This spontaneous act of violence, an expression of genuine hatred, functions contrapuntally to the staged shootings on the screen, which are supposed to reinforce the image of glory of the Third Reich. Once the reels are switched, Shosanna’s face is projected on the screen as an immovable phantasm in flames, contrasting with the chaos in the theater, the screaming and the banging on the closed doors of the Nazi trap.
The most memorable image is Shosanna’s death. Dressed in red – the symbol of fire, anger and pain – she is shredded by the bullets fired by her admirer in an allegorical scene. The visual integrity of Inglourious Basterds manages to overshadow the film’s lack of dramatic cohesion and its toying with a universal drama in this eccentric quasi-parody.
- Distributed by: The Weinstein Company
- Directed and written by: Quentin Tarantino
