Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino | USA | 2009
153 min
This film should not be taken seriously. How could it be taken seriously when its director is Quentin Tarantino whose reputation as a post-modern filmmaker or ‘film DJ’ is now fully entrenched in the public consciousness? Inglourious Basterds is the sixth film from this American auteur and it is polarizing: some think it is his best film after Pulp Fiction, while others declare it to be his worst — the bestowing of such labels is normal routine when discussing Tarantino who, undoubtedly, relishes fervent debate in his name. And to define this filmmaker’s movies as self-reflexive and indulgent would also be missing the point because it is Tarantino’s intention to be self-reflexive and indulgent. He loves cinema but clearly loves the attention he gets even more. (See? After six sentences we have yet to talk about the movie itself — QT, you’re a fox, yo!)
Inglourious Basterds opens with the title card “Once Upon a Time,” signaling a fantasy (every Tarantino film can be said to be a fantasy, title card or none.) The story takes place in France in the early 40s, during WW2, as Hitler commissions Nazis to seek out Jews and inflict, what’s the word, genocide on them. The man in charge of the job is Gestapo Col. Hans Landa, played by Christopher Waltz who is extremely delightful. With Waltz playing the devil (or his minion, Hitler being the undisputable Satan personified), Tarantino is able to showcase his formidable talent at writing dialog, creating entire scenes out of mere conversations about milk, cheese, rats or Jews as rats. But remember, folks: Tarantino is a film DJ, so it only fair that Waltz’s Col. Landa is not an original creation — look at Inspecteur Jean Lavardin in Chabrol’s Cop Au Vin or the Superintendant in Melville’s Le Samourai to understand his origins. Tarantino has watched many movies and he has paid attention to them. The average movie viewer will be none the wiser; still, wasn’t it Jim Jarmusch who said “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere”?
Inglourious Basterds has structural problems, but it is a perfectly amusing little romp in visual eye-candy: Tarantino turns the wheels of mise-en-scene, effortlessly moving the camera to breathe life into what is essentially “chapters” of people talking each other to death. And this being a ‘Quentin Tarantino film,’ there is also an eclectic international celebrity cast which includes Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, the hillbilly leader of a group of Jewish-American soldiers called the Basterds whose mission is to kill and scalp Nazis. Pitt, who is not a great actor, is actually surprisingly effective as a caricature and provides genuine laughs.
When all is said and done at the end of Inglourious Basterds, world history will be rewritten in the halls of a burning cinema, as Tarantino channels his inner voice into Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine who proudly proclaims to the audience, “This might just be my masterpiece.” After such shameless grandstanding, does our opinion of Mr. Tarantino or his new movie even matter?
