Quentinglorious

There’s a little bit of difficulty in making a World War II film because of the wide-reaching preconceptions people have about the period and the events that occurred. We won the war, Nazis are bad, the French are worthless, etc. And while Quentin Tarantino doesn’t necessarily care to rely on these stereotypes in order to make his new film, Inglourious Basterds, he doesn’t really do anything to dispel them either. Not that that’s a bad thing (we did win the war, and Nazis are bad). Rather, Quentin uses his kleptomaniac filmmaking style to put his own brand onto a genre that has been recycled so many times that it occasionally verges on self-parody. Tarantino doesn’t care what you think about World War II. He’s just trying to make one of his signature films that happens to be on the backdrop of Nazi occupied France, 1944.

Basterds begins with German SS officer Hans Landa (masterfully portrayed by Christoph Waltz) interrogating, with standard Tarantino dialogue, a French man suspected of harboring Jews. The Anne Frank tension is slowly, exaggeratedly drawn out to a fever pitch before the man gives up the Jewish family beneath their floorboards and they are brutally murdered. We see a young girl (Melanie Laurent) covered in blood flee the scene, barely escaping with her life. Fast forward four years and she has come to own a movie theater in Paris. We are then introduced to Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, a quarter-Apache uneducated hick from backwater Tennessee, instructing his new unit of Jewish soldiers—the Basterds—on their mission to murder, maim, and intimidate as many Nazi soldiers as possible through the most brutal tactics possible, most notably scalping dead Germans and carving Swastikas into the foreheads of survivors. Tarantino was sure to spare no expense on the special effects budget for the amount of violence in this film. From Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), known as “The Bear Jew” to Nazi soldiers, having batting practice on the face of a captured German officer to the graphic depictions of machine guns at close range on faces, to the psychopathic Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) slicing through as many German throats as he can reach, the blood comes by the bucket. But really, what else did you expect from Tarantino in a movie about World War II?

Besides attempting to give an homage to just about every genre of film he could think of, including classic German and French cinema, Italian spaghetti westerns, with random name-dropping of European films and actors that verges on pretentious, Quentin emphasizes plot less and character development more. At a certain point, however, increased onscreen time for important characters like Pitt, Roth, and Laurent does not necessarily equate to them being deeper characters, but they are largely quite entertaining and function well with the over-the-top style for which Tarantino is renowned. Roth’s violent tendencies and shit-eating grin display something visceral and incredibly basic about revenge, with a Jewish American carrying out the wildest violent urges imaginable on proud Nazis. The director really just refuses to abide by any rules except his own, taking time out to introduce Stiglitz in a kitschy, violent montage narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. Additionally, Pitt’s southern accent is rather ridiculous at points, but he provides a great deal of comic relief and shock value in his dealings with subdued German soldiers, with great quotes like, “We in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.” Without a doubt, however, the most impressive performance comes from Waltz’s Hans Landa, the “Jew Hunter” who confidently, calmly, and systematically goes about carrying out the evil business of the Third Reich, murdering Jews and associates without so much as a second thought. His eloquent, almost poetic dialogue really stands out, and it was made all the more menacing by his German-accented English.

The film’s fantasy/history double helix plot begins to come together with Laurent being romantically pursued by a young German war hero as the Basterds attempt to make their way closer to a climactic encounter with the Nazi high command. Although some scenes do drag on too long (at two and a half hours, things tend to move slowly), the film is punctuated by enough comically violent entertainment that one can’t help but remain engrossed in it throughout the better part. Although Quentin Tarantino’s audience is very aware that they are watching a work of fiction, one can’t help but react with base emotion and have fun with every gasp, gag, and wide-eyed stare of amazement when viewing his work. I hope that’s what he’s going for, anyway.