Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger

“You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business, we in the killing Nazi business. And cousin, business is a boomin’.”

Allow to admit right up front: I am a great fan of Tarantino. He’s one of the few directors who gets me giddy as a school girl whenever he releases a picture. Why? Probably because his absolute love of what he does and the work of those in the same field is so entertainingly and expertly conveyed that it rekindles my love of cinema every time I see one of his films. With his latest release, Inglourious Basterds (yes, that’s really how it’s spelled), I felt that giddiness boiling to the surface once again. Did he deliver?

There are two stories intermingling through the film and each is given the same time, care, and respect as the other. The first story presented in the film centers around a young French Jewish woman named Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) who escapes the hands of SS Col. Hans Landa--also known as The Jew Hunter--assumes a new name and becomes a cinema owner in Paris three years later. As she changes the marquee on her theater one night, she becomes the object of affection for a handsome SS war hero and actor who desperately attempts to woo her with his knowledge of film and his exploits in the war. She resists him at first, but when the young officer persuades Joseph Goebbels (the minister of propaganda for the Third Reich) to hold the premiere of their new film at Shosanna’s theater, she takes the offer in an attempt for revenge on her murdered family and a chance to end the war.

And then, there are the Basterds, a rag-tag group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Pitt, with a thick, thick Tennessee accent) who are dropped into France before the Normandy invasion and scour the country in search of Nazi platoons. They murder, beat, dismember and scalp any and every Nazi they come across, showing no mercy and invoking fear into the highest ranks of the Third Reich. They prosper for three years in their mission until they, too, learn of the premiere and with the help of a double agent/actress plan to blow up the theater and every major ranking SS Officer.

There is much to be discussed with the aspects of this film, but I will start with the performances. While Brad Pitt gets top billing (he’s Brad Pitt, after all), he is not in the film any longer than the other actors, and in the case of Laurent and Waltz, maybe even less. What screen time Pitt does have is a treasure. His Tennessee Lieutenant is pure enjoyment from start to finish: funny, charismatic, and just plain cool. Some of the lines in the movie work solely because of his devotion to the accent (the scene where he tries to speak Italian would’ve made Groucho and Chico Marx very proud), but Pitt never takes it too far, teetering right on the edge of overacting, a balancing act worth admiring. As the young Jewish woman seeking revenge, Laurent is capable and admirable in her role, holding her own in scenes that require subtle nuances that allow us into her character’s thoughts and feelings without giving anything away to the other characters on screen. The scene where she meets Col. Landa three years after he massacred her family and is forced to eat dessert with him is an exceptional testament to her talent. All around, everyone cast in the film fits their roles nicely with the exception of the Mike Myers cameo. It’s not that appearance is distracting or annoying, but rather pointless and easily replaceable.

Then there is Christoph Waltz as the evil Colonel Hans Landa. There has been much acclaim heaped upon Waltz’s performance--he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival--and every iota of it is more than deserved. Waltz delivers a villain so frightening, charismatic and devious, often all within the same scene, that you love and loathe every second he’s on the screen. The opening scene on the farm is so powerful and terrifying it belongs in the ranks with Henry Fonda’s first scene in Once Upon A Time In The West as one of the best villain entrances in cinema. Sitting at the farmer’s table, he delivers a speech comparing Jews to rats so meticulous it is sure to be shown when he’s nominated for an Oscar come next February. Waltz is the true pillar of the film and should be considered Best Actor instead of Supporting.

Of course, we can’t talk about a Tarantino film without bringing up dialogue and violence. The man is famous for extended scenes of his characters carrying on normal conversations before sudden bursts of violence and despite what the trailers lead you to believe, Inglourious Basterds is no exception. Some of these dialogue scenes play out for ten or more minutes but each is underlined with a sense of danger, making every word worth hearing. Probably the longest of such scenes--and my favorite scene in the movie--takes place in a basement tavern where three of the Basterds, including a newly recruited British soldier, meet their double agent Bridgette von Hammers mark (Kruger). When a Nazi high-ranking officer joins the Basterds and Hammersmark for drinks and a game, the tension in the room is almost unbearable. Tarantino’s knack for letting these characters talk as danger lingers brings a richness to the proceedings that we know will eventually end with gunplay.

It will probably be noted by some that Tarantino’s violence has become too graphic with his recent efforts Kill Bill, Death Proof, and now Inglourious Basterds. While this is true to some extent, there is an explanation. In his earlier films, the majority of the violence took place off screen and only seemed excessive. Now, we have a Tarantino who provides us with limbs being chopped off left and right, heads caving under the force of a baseball bat and blood spraying in every direction, but these new films have all been a homage to species of film that either no longer exist or are in danger of expiring. It is only suiting that the violence should be portrayed in the way it is, as a tribute to those films Tarantino grew up watching.

Inglourious Basterds also marks a new undertaking for the writer/director. This is his first foray into a time period different than ours. The sets, costumes, and makeup recall the early forties with exceptional precision. Mélanie Laurent, especially, is picture-perfect image of the era, decked out in bright red lipstick and dress that brings to mind those film-noir women in red that we associate with the time period. Even the small details--yes, that’s gunpowder that Lt. Raine snorts--help to create a new World War II that looks like the one we all know but, thanks to Tarantino, gives us an ending most of us wish had actually taken place.