INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
For the most absurd and powerful revisionist war
movie in eons, you can't get any better than "Inglourious Basterds," the
loopiest and most entertaining Tarantino flick since his "Kill Bill" series. To
call it only riveting and exciting is to underrate it - it is a movie largely
about movies. It is about dazzling the audience and thrilling them to no end
with one galvanizing moment of intensity after another. It is so damn
enthralling and exasperating an experience, so blackly funny and so
blood-chillingly and brazenly violent with such top-notch performances that I am
almost ready to say it rivals "Pulp Fiction." In fact, it does.
The Basterds are comprised of some Army soldiers
during World War II whose job is to hunt and kill Nazis. The way to prove you
killed a Nazi is to scalp them, and if you find a Nazi and let them go, you
carve their foreheads with the forbidden swastika - a Scarlet Letter of shame.
Tennessee-born Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is the leader of the pack of Basterds.
One member of the Basterds includes a nearly psychotic baseball bat-wielding
Donny Donowitz, known as "The Bear Jew" (Eli Roth, surprisingly charismatic).
The rest are the archetypes of most 20th century WWII movies including a
startlingly beautiful French Jew, Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), who owns
a Parisian cinema where she is forced to show German propaganda films; a British
film critic and expert on German cinema no less, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael
Fassebender), who is also a spy; and a glorious German movie starlet, Bridget
von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), also a spy.
The plot involves the Basterds' ultimate mission: to
kill Hitler, Goebbels and the whole Third Reich in the very movie theatre owned
by Shosanna by setting fire to a few dozen nitrate movie reels. If this mission,
known as Operation Kino, succeeds then World War II is over. Yes, I know, we
never heard such nonsense when we learned about World War II in school but Tarantino isn't so
much making a historical film about war - he is brave enough to rewrite it to
fit his own universe. Back to the mission: a certain dashing, charming, suave
and cunning Nazi may serve as an obstruction to the Basterds' plans. He is Hans Landa (the amazing
Christoph Waltz), who has a calm demeanor and is extraordinarily intelligent in
obtaining information. He can find a Jewish family hiding out in the French
countryside, ascertain the proprietor of a high heeled shoe in the aftermath of
a massacre, and can speak English, German and Italian with ease. He is the most
delectably frightening villain in all of Tarantino's ouevre - an officer who
can make anyone quiver and spill the truth without the need of a lie detector
test. Can the Basterds stop this nasty Nazi and finish the war with
Jewish-American suicide bombers and dozens of nitrate film reels?
"Inglourious Basterds" is the work of a master
director who combines and mixes his love of all war movies into a socko and
comical epic punch of a movie. As I stressed before, he is not making a
traditional war movie nor is he making a serious treatise on war - he is making
a war movie about war movies. But even more interestingly, he adds touches of
humanity even in the face of such homage - the movie is in quotes and full of
irony but there is something deeper here that touches on war in a way that
perhaps war movies have not touched upon, post-"Saving Private Ryan." For
example, there is the Sergio Leone opening (complete with a score that is reminiscent of
Leone's spaghetti westerns) with the dairy farmer harboring Jews underneath the
floorboards of his home. Landa pays a visit and eventually discovers that there
are Jews hidden under the kitchen. When the dairy farmer tries to fight back
tears, knowing that he had to give away their presence (and Landa knows it too),
it becomes unbearably tense and it is tinged with regret - this war makes
everyone quiver and shake in their boots. Also consider the Bear Jew who beats a
Nazi to death with a baseball bat - the other Nazis have surrendered and see this
horrific display of brutality with tears in their eyes. Such scenes show that
Quentin Tarantino may be a demonic hell-raiser of a filmmaker, but he is also in
touch with the humanity in horror from both the good guys and the bad.
And then there is the French tavern sequence which
rivals even Hitchcock for building suspense and tension. It is so uniquely
unsettling this sequence that I would say it is among the greatest suspense
sequences of all time. I won't give much away except that it involves a German
actress, a few drinks, a name-guessing game and some spies masquerading as
Nazis. It is all in the telling details (like how a German is supposed to order
a drink) that give away the spies' true identities. "Reservoir Dogs" also dealt
with identity but, here, it is almost phantasmagoric in its unnerving atmosphere
and tension.
But there is so much more to enjoy. I would give a
laundry list of fantastic, tantalizing scenes but there is one that is etched in
my memory. The vision of Shosanna Dreyfus in her precious movie theatre where
her projected laugh on the silver screen in the face of Nazi deaths will linger
(not to mention an aural accompaniment preceding the climax with David Bowie
singing the musical theme from "Cat People") is haunting and poetic, more so
than anything else I can recall from Tarantino. It is as if Tarantino was
recalling the imagery of Fritz Lang's own striking noir tales, or even aping to
some degree the climax of Lang's own "Metropolis."
And there is the cast, which is as wonderful an
ensemble as one can imagine. Brad Pitt does his Southern twang perfectly, and
most notable is the memorable scene where he rounds up the troops and explains
what he expects from them. I would not count this as his best role (that honor
would go to "Fight Club") but it is a colorful, hilarious role for the Pitt Man
(tell me you simultaneously won't laugh and cringe when he pretends to be an
Italian at a German movie premiere). Also worth mentioning is Eli Roth who is
suitably effective and mean enough as the notorious Bear Jew; the almost
unrecognizable Mike Myers as a British officer; Rod Taylor who came out of
retirement to play Winston Churchill; Daniel Brohl (who really seems to come out
of that 40's era) as Frederick Zoller, a Nazi war hero and movie star who can't
bear to watch his own life story in the film within the film, "Nation's Pride";
the aforementioned Michael Fassbender as the classy British spy who also seems
to have dropped in from that era as well, and Diane Kruger as the sophisticated
German movie star in undoubtedly the best role she's played by far (you'll
quickly forget she was in "Troy" and "National Treasure").
But there is the piece of de resistance, the man
whose glowering eyes and piercing charms will resonate long after the movie is
over. He is Christoph Waltz, an actor who makes all other Nazis in the history
of cinema look pale by comparison. This is an actor who epitomizes the phrase
"devilish charm." He is so evil, so cunning, so humorous, so subtle and so damn
charming that I am surprised that the Hitler of this movie didn't quake in his
boots at the mere mention of his name, Hans Landa. Shudder, shudder, shudder.
Waltz should win the Oscar (and did) for playing the most devious Nazi ever, one who so
relishes a Nantucket Bay home after the war is over. Playing one of the great
villains of all time, Waltz waltzes away with this movie, hands down.
Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is a
complete masterpiece of pop cinema, with Tarantino at his absolute peak and in
full control of his own vision of war as a playful and violent diversion. I
don't think he can top it, but then I didn't think he could top "Pulp Fiction."
Well, he did. After the cartoonish carnival of the "Kill Bill" volumes, the
grindhouse spin of "Death Proof," and the mature love story of "Jackie Brown,"
he has delivered his finest achievement to date. It is more than a movie - it is
a reminder of the art of the cinema in all its lush glory and vivid
entertainment.
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