By Patrick Greenwell
“Inglourious Basterds” is a film more than a decade in the making. Director Quentin Tarantino spent much of his career writing and rewriting the script, and it definitely shows. Inglourious Basterds really is Tarantino at his best, a description which probably repulses as many as it draws in.
Immediately, it should be noted that the film is nothing like what its trailers proclaim it to be. Anyone expecting the story of a rag-tag group of Allied soldiers in elaborate firefights with Nazis will probably come away disappointed. Very little time is spent with Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and his team of brutal soldiers, the Basterds, though they pop up from time to time to provide some action or comedy between the film’s long periods of dialogue. Rather, the focus of the film is on French Jew Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) and her theatre. Indeed, more time is spent on the film’s antagonist, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), an SS officer known as the Jew Hunter. Granted, this is not necessarily a problem, as Waltz steals the show, giving an Oscar-worthy performance as the brilliant and sinister, though at many times charming and quite funny, Nazi detective.
The film is certainly not a traditional World War II movie. In fact, it’s more akin to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” with a World War II setting. Those familiar with Tarantino are aware of his love for Spaghetti Westerns, and in this film he has gone out of his way to adapt the genre to a different era. Shosanna is the good, Landa is the bad, and it’s safe to say the Basterds, with their tendency for scalping, face carving and general brutality, are the ugly. Eventually, their paths cross. This is due to a plot by the Basterds to murder Hitler and all of the high ranking Nazi officers.
While that may sound as though it’s the perfect backdrop for some intense action, fight scenes in the film are few and far between. In true Tarantino fashion, the emphasis here is on dialogue. From a philosophical discussion on the Nazi party’s hatred of Jews to an elaborate look at the racial implications of “King Kong,” the conversations, quite literally, go on for hours. Moreover, most of the dialogue is not in English. Germans speak German, the French speak French and even the Basterds speak a little Italian, albeit very poorly. While this could be a detriment, it’s almost always enthralling. The entire cast performs wonderfully. Moreover, Tarantino has a gift for dialogue, and the effort he’s put into developing the script really shows.
When the action does pick up (and it does), it’s backed by a wonderful soundtrack consisting of a number of Ennio Morricone pieces taken from other Spaghetti Westerns and various period works. Also, bizarrely, David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting out Fire)” is featured rather prominently in one scene that looks like something out of an 80’s music video. It’s a rather odd mix, but it comes together wonderfully.
Inglourious Basterds is not a film to see if you are looking for a traditional World War II movie. There are no large-scale battles, no courageous but inevitably doomed squad of soldiers and no great unstoppable Nazi war machine. The battles take place in basements, the soldiers are psychopaths and the Nazis are laughable at best. Anyone expecting historical accuracy will be equally disappointed. The bad guys definitely get what they deserve (and then some). Rather, this is a film for people who want to see a great director in top form. It’s really more of an experience than just a movie, and it may take some time to piece together just how magnificent it was.
