Inglourious Basterds

Before we made our way to the theatre, my sister asked me how I would explain Tarantino’s films to someone who knew nothing about him.  I paused to think, and was momentarily halted by the overload in my brain.  Because trying to simplify Tarantino is entirely counterintuitive… and reductive… and un-American.  Okay… maybe not un-American.

But appreciating Tarantino requires all of the senses.  While he certainly wants to entertain you, he’s also looking to put you through the wringer.  There is earning to be done on both sides of the screen and you can’t half-watch a Tarantino film.  Some people find this off-putting; the giant setups, the use of violence, the pointed dialogue that can feel a bit peculiar at times, the deliberate cutaways and music cues.  In another director’s hands, it can come across as dressed-up artifice and hubris.   And yes, they are devices that make up a very distinctive style.  But the way they are used… is an indicator of a truly gifted filmmaker.  Inglourious Basterds, QT’s latest, is about as good a film as any of his best… or anyone else’s, for that matter.  And given its challenges (most of the film is not in English, for one thing.  Who else could pull that off?), it is also one of his most ambitious.

Part World War II epic (Tarantino-style of course), part-Dirty Dozen-guys-on-a-mission film, Basterds is carefully balanced by Quentin’s imagination and our own knowledge of this particular time and place.  The film opens with one line: “Once upon a time… in Nazi-occupied France…” Whether or not he is attempting to unburden himself of the need for historical accuracy, what Tarantino manages to accomplish with this one line, is amusement through dread.  He inches through tension with just a hint of a wink, and what unfolds in the opening scene is just so excruciatingly engaging and paced with razor sharp precision, until the thing you already knew was going to happen starts to happen and you still feel your heart trying to break through your chest (It’s a moment that is recalled later in the film, in a similarly marvelous/heartbreaking scene… that involves strudel).

The standout performance belongs to Austrian actor, Christophe Waltz, as Nazi Col. Hans Landa, who is nicknamed The Jew Hunter.  Landa is unlike any Nazi soldier ever realized on screen; cornball and giddy, even bordering on ridiculous, yet unnerving and believably monstrous at the same time.  Apparently, Tarantino was about to put a stop to the whole production because he couldn’t find anyone to fill the role, which required the actor to be fluent in French, German, Italian and English (demanding much?).  I also can’t imagine him being an easy character to understand on the page.  Landa is equally abominable and hilarious, and his presence (as well as the Basterds) swiftly acknowledges and then cuts off our tendency to create glorified heroes and villains in war.  Tarantino found a real gem in Mr. Waltz, who imbues Col. Landa with just the right amount of life and emotion, while simultaneously making him seem just a little bit psychotic.

The introduction of the Basterds is classic meet-the-leader-and-his-crew, and it’s as badass as you would expect.  The boys are a rowdy and ragged bunch of misfits, who straddle the line between character and caricature, each one bringing their own special brand of crazy to the party.  Tarantino wisely gives them just enough distinctiveness while still maintaining their mystique as a unit (and minimizing the screen time given to any underwhelming performances).  Brad Pitt, as the redneck knife-wielding Lt. Aldo Raine, is reliably unselfconscious and great fun to watch.

There is also a lovely performance from Mélanie Laurent, who plays Shosanna Dreyfus, a French-Jewish woman set on avenging the death of her family at the hands of the Nazis (Waltz and Laurent are both in the strudel scene and it’s awesome).

Violence is a big part of Tarantino’s cinematic voice, for which he is both known and vilified.  But he’s not the first to show it, nor will he be the last.   And while most films try to expose the humanity buried in a world of violence, Tarantino is more interested in the violence buried in our humanity.  And so it comes in flashes; bright and exaggerated, stylish, humorous and terrifying, both grotesque and celebratory, but at its core, the violence and death really function as symbolic illustrations of consequence.  In the cinematic world of Tarantino, it is what occurs when we make compromises, when we trust the wrong people, when we indulge our own vendettas…  We must endure the aftermath of our choices.

It may seem easy to dismiss much of Tarantino’s artistry as the copycat antics of a man campaigning for Movie Nerd of the World.  But that’s hardly the case.  QT knows what he’s doing.  And while the insertion of a film reference here or there evokes a warm inner chuckle from young cineastes and movie geeks across the land, what makes the whole thing work is not how successfully he pays homage, but how adeptly he is able to communicate within his medium, realism be damned!   Tarantino is one of the few (in my mind, the only) filmmakers who actually writes films… not screenplays.  His approach is far less like a director and more akin to a novelist or painter.  He labors and colors, layer by layer… at times, it seems like Tarantino is more fluent in film than he is in English (if you’ve ever seen him in an interview, that’s not hard to argue).  And like any beautiful language, it sounds best when listening to someone who can speak freely and is not hindered by insecurity.