August 26, 2009: Inglourious Basterds
I find it a bit hard to believe that after over 100 movie reviews, not only have I not watched any Quentin Tarantino movies, I haven’t in fact even mentioned him! This bad-boy post-modern auteur extraordinaire, who has killer geek cred to boot, triggered a shakeup in popular moviemaking through the 1990s and while he’s never again quite measured up to the level of his early thunder, you know when you see a Tarantino movie that it’s going to be something worth watching. When I say “you”, of course, I refer to a significant but not universal percentage of moviegoers, since the material and approach in his films is admittedly off-putting to some, but I contend that it’s worth the discomfort.
If I may indulge briefly, it’s worth a quick recap of my Tarantino roller-coaster through the years to illustrate the perspective I bring to this viewing of his new film, Inglourious Basterds. I had his directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs (1992), placed in front of me on home video shortly after it came to that market, and I can’t say that I really paid attention and I can definitely say that I didn’t appreciate it. Upon the arrival of Pulp Fiction (1994), I suppose it was the promotional hype and my newfound financial freedom (i.e. still a student but no longer broke) which combined to put me in a theatre on opening night, only to return for a second viewing the following Tuesday night to immerse myself again in filmic glory. I know I’m not unique in my experience with that film, and I was happily blown away along with the others. I also was able to rediscover and come to love Reservoir Dogs after that, particularly following a repertory cinema viewing which really allowed me to experience the overpowering widescreen compositions the way they were meant to be seen. Full-screen video transfers of Reservoir Dogs, which mostly just open up the Super 35 frame, look distant and lose their immediacy. 1997 brought Tarantino’s next feature Jackie Brown, and this follow-up couldn’t hope to live up to the hype generated by its predecessor, a film which not only changed its genre but pioneered new filmmaking techniques and approaches. Jackie Brown was unjustly dismissed as a result, and while I haven’t revisited it in quite some time, I gather its dozen years have been very kind to it and I look forward to catching it again sometime. A long gap ensued before the companion pieces Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 came along in 2003 and 2004. I must admit I sort of half-watched the first of these and never saw the second, largely because I was simply not a fan of the stylized martial arts movies of that era, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon standing out in my mind as a quintessential example. 2007 brought Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the so-called Grindhouse double-bill with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Death Proof is a simple film but beautifully executed, and being directly influenced by Vanishing Point (1971), I of course loved it. So as we can see, I’ve had definite ups and downs over the years with Tarantino, but he’s the real deal, a filmmaker who truly loves films, and if that leads to a certain lack of character or story depth in his films at times, he makes up for it with bombast and rulebreaking.
Inglourious Basterds is a project which has long been in the works and is clearly a labour of love for Tarantino. Set in Europe during World War 2, it follows a team of Jewish-American soldiers who infiltrate Germany with the express goal of killing, as violently as possible, as many German soldiers as possible, in retribution for the ethnic cleansing they know is being perpetrated by the Nazis under Hitler. Brad Pitt plays the fearless southerner leading this troupe on their quest, as they eventually stumble upon a possible opportunity to wipe out Hitler himself and most of his top brass. At the same time, a young Jewish woman whose family was ruthlessly slaughtered some years ago by one of Hitler’s top men, pursues more or less the same opportunity as Pitt’s crew. There are bound to be conflicts as these disorganized rebels pursue their agendas, and a few surprise twists take things in a very different direction in the final act of the film.
Tarantino is well-known for his trademark snappy dialogue, and Inglourious Basterds is no exception to that, although I can’t help but wonder whether all of the shifting from English to French to German might take away some of the impact of that dialogue from viewers who do not natively speak all of those languages. This is one of the points which reinforces my sense that Tarantino felt it worthwhile to give up some of his filmmaking power in order to tell a story he wanted to tell. This is a very respectable expansion of his capabilities. The story is ambitious and not in his normal tone, also suggesting that it’s a deliberate departure rather than a comfortable continuation of what we’ve seen before. I liked Inglourious Basterds overall, but it will probably seem piecemeal and maybe a bit spotty on a second viewing. On the other hand, I could level a similar criticism at Pulp Fiction, a wide-ranging film with which I find that I’m not always in the mood for all of the stories (the Bruce Willis and Maria de Medeiros section in particular, although it fits well into the movie as a whole). With Inglourious Basterds, the opening scene is great, and the Brad Pitt monologues are every bit as good as the trailers suggest, but the scene in the bar with the movie star, and the setup for the cinema premiere, and the sub-plot with the hero soldier, might get tedious.
This is definitely a positive review, but not a five-star one. Tarantino’s signature is all over Inglourious Basterds, and razor-sharp dialogue is the order of the day, and a very respectable epic has been mounted, but I’ll have to see what the passing of a decade does to this one.
Tarantino’s old tricks complement this opus.
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