Them Näzis ain't gett'n no mercy from this sides' of the barr'l (Inglourious Basterds (DVD))

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Inglourious Basterds (DVD)
Date:	07/09/09 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intense film with very strong performances throughout

Disadvantages: Extremely brutal and violent in the most sadistic way possible

Coming after the critical and popular flop that was Death Proof, and after going through a lot of controversy over the value of anything pulp-director Quentin Tarantino has done for several years now - whether his films are entertaining exercises in fandom fun, or simply empty and shallow collections of homages, references and clichés that are neither smart nor particularly inventive - Tarantino has now returned with his newest pulp action conglomeration, this time taking on the war genre of film as his point of departure. Inglourious Basterds (sic) is not a hugely complicated film by any large margin as it details the exploits of a team of paramilitaries out to "kill some Näzis" in German occupied France, not really having any other deeper reason to exist, while on the other side an orphaned young French woman of Jewish origin ends up attracting a major Nazi movie premiere to her small theatre via the recommendation of a warhero-turned-movie-star, an event that shall be attended by all the major figures of the German power structure, including Hitler himself. The results will be a massacre waiting to happen (as the trailers so helpfully show you).

The first thing one must note about this film is that this certainly isn't one for the squeamish as, like many other Tarantino films, it's extremely violent. But unlike a lot of his other films, the violence here is somewhat more different than Tarantino's usual style is, being more openly brutal than absurdly stylish (Kill Bill) or humorously inflected (Pulp Fiction). The violence here is extremely mean-spirited and at times somewhat uncomfortable to watch because of this level of candid brutality not hiding behind the absurdity of its excessiveness. There is a level of reality to it all that will certainly not appeal to everybody and a lot of the enjoyment factor hinges on your own comfort zone in watching this sort of gruesomeness of which there is a lot of. Therefore, if seeing people getting scalped, beaten to death with baseball bats, shot to hell several times, or strangled (all done right there on camera in detail) is upsetting for you, then you probably should think twice before seeing this Tarantino offering.

However, offsetting the rather sadistic purpose of the film's intent, what really makes this film go is the acting performances, which were stunning pretty much throughout, and which really are the reason to see this film in the first place. This is largely an ensemble film, and a lot of the actors really put their best to the movie. There really is no particular "main" character here, and even if this wider canvas results in a little too problematic a lack of focus between the different sides of the film (the Basterds and the cinema), one can rest assured that everybody will at the very least be in top form when ever they do make an appearance on screen. Brad Pitt is the highest billed actor here, and as the leader of the "Basterds", Aldo Raine, is almost overly caricatured as an "American" with his heavy Yankee accent that may at first sound overly silly, but to which you quickly get adjusted to. He also provides the majority of the humour in the film as basically every appearance of his is designed to be joking in one way or another, going from sarcastic to witty to ridiculous. Providing some contrast is Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna, bringing a nice flavour as the repressed, melancholy and hostile Jewess who only has revenge in her heart after her entire family gets butchered at the start of the film. There's not really a lot that's done with Laurent here, but she does bring out the idea of a detached and emotionally cold woman through quite well, working her way to her personal vengeance with a purposeful singularity.

Other characters include the war-hero-become-heroic-actor Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), who is attracted to Shosanna, being both seemingly humane and humble, though with a seedy undercurrent that slips out a few times; Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) as a former Nazi-soldier psycho wanting to just kill other Nazis is brilliant with his low-burning sense of rage just beneath the surface; Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz, the "Bear Jew", who likes to bash people's heads in with a baseball bat and loving it, is very intense; Diane Kruger as the German actress Bridget von Hammersmark working as a double agent for the Allies is elegant and smart; Michael Fassbander as Lt. Archie Hicox, the British supplement, is adequately charming, though he doesn't get a lot of time to flesh out the character; Marcel (Jacky Ido) as the black projectionist at Shosanna's theatre and her lover, brings a conspiring confidante to the film, while adding a small amount of racial diffidence to the proceedings; while other more minor characters added support well enough for their individual purposes without seeming too much like filler characters. The real-life historical figures perhaps were a bit overly cartoony, like Hitler and Göbbels, but considering this is a Tarantino film that is nowhere near a historically accurate one, this worked for its benefit as pure entertainment pulp. However, the one performance that really stands out among all the others by a clear margin, is definitely Christoph Waltz as the multi-lingual, amicable yet sinister Nazi Colonel Hans Landa, the "Jew Hunter". Waltz is really phenomenal and certainly one of the most effective bad guys I've ever seen on screen, mixing his amiable front and the underlying dread exceedingly well together so that the two blend together almost inseparably. You can almost see the monster behind the easy-going smile and cultural sophistication, never allowing the viewer to mistake him as a non-dangerous person. Truly a stunning performance in all its understated subtlety.

Stylistically the sets, costumes, and other such details looked just great, somewhat more opulently stylised perhaps than grimely realistic. The settings don't perhaps make ones eyes pop out in their scale, nor with their detail, but the 1940s war period evoked was still adequately effective when put through the lens of Tarantino's war movie genre templating and stylish execution through costumes and props. As always, music plays a large part here as in many other Tarantino films, with his favourite composer Ennio Morricone's scores leading the way (and whom Tarantino wanted to originally write a score for this film - which would have been the first "original" score in a Tarantino movie - but which unfortunately didn't happen due to scheduling problems), while a selection of other war scores and a couple of anachronistic songs flit between the Morricone Westerns and such. As per a lot of his other films, many scenes are dragged on with rising expectation (often with the music combined in a similar way to a lot of Spaghetti Western movies Tarantino loves so much) and a seething tension that most of the time works really well without thankfully seeming needlessly dragged out. In fact, one easily forgets that this is a 153 minute film. The intensity being such that it feels more like a 90 minute film, which is an accomplishment in itself. Also the periodical dropping of humour helped in not making this a grim experience regardless of its brutal contents, though some of the more pulp comic details were a bit too silly to seem little more than overly exaggerated acts of comic book bravado (like a huge 70s poster name plaque appearing on top of "Hugo Stiglitz" that led to a little background flashback on the character in the most "insert scene here" way).

Certainly this isn't a masterpiece of filmmaking within the larger context of cinema, but it is perhaps one of Tarantino's better realised films. Most of its flaws can pretty squarely be attributed to the plot that seems to be just an excuse for the glorification of violence and sadism. Also the framing of the film in "chapters" from the outset seemed a little too mannered and attempting a more cohesive structure, but just coming off as a bit cliché. There is a clear attempt for more reality through using a number of languages the people speak, Waltz in particular being fluent in many so that he could switch back and forth from French to English to German without breaking a sweat. This also brings out one of the funniest bits in the film as Aldo Raine, and a couple of other of the Basterds, attempt to masquerade as Italians in front of Landa, who unfortunately speaks way better Italian than they can, to expected embarrassing consequences. So be prepared for a lot of subtitles if this happens to be an issue for you as a lot of the other languages spoken get almost as much airtime as English does. But what really makes this film's problems disappear to a large degree are the strong acting performances and general "feel" of it, making this perhaps more enjoyable to watch than it should be. For these qualities, combined with the technical aspects of how the film looks and its sustained intensity, this is still worth seeing, if with reservations regarding your personal taste. Just the violence can get a bit too excessive for some people, and there's little getting away that this isn't the most easy Tarantino film to watch if you are thus tempered. But it is still a pretty impressive achievement when placed within Tarantino's other body of work, and is perhaps rightfully considered as his personal masterpiece to date.

© berlioz, 2009

Summary: If you change one letter here, you get "summery".