Film: Inglorious Basterds

Title: Inglorious Basterds (2009)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer(s): Quentin Tarantino
Actor(s): Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Brühl, Michael Fassbender, etc.
Costume Designer: Anna B. Sheppard
Rating: R (strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality)

With and Quentin Tarantino movie there are a few preconceptions I always have:

1. There will be lots of violence. From start to finish. It will be graphic, brutal, and probably gratuitous.
2. The film will have at least one reference (whether direct or stylistic) to B movies of the seventies.
3. The dialogue will have that distinctive Tarantino cadence. Regardless of the content of the dialogue, the rise and fall of the actors' voices will be interesting to listen to.
4. He will manage to use the word "nigger" at least once.
   

Given these expectations, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. I had some doubts about whether or not Tarantino could pull off a period piece, but it turns out he can.

Inglorious Basterds (Christoph Waltz), an SS officer who has been nicknamed the "Jew Hunter" by the people of France. The farmer is suspected of hiding a Jewish family and, as the scene progresses, has a few plotlines weaving together to tell the stories of some different people in WWII German occupied France, and is told in chapters. The film opens on a scene in 1941, with a French dairy farmer (Denis Menochet) being questioned by Col. Hans LandaLanda wears him down and gets him to admit to it. The structure of this opening scene is excellent. It would work equally well as a one act. And Waltz playing Landa was amazing to watch, both times I saw the film. The scene culminates with Landa's men killing the whole hidden family (mostly we just see guns fired), except for Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) the teenage daughter of the family, who runs away covered in her family's blood.

Chapter two is about the "basterds" in question. Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) gathers together a group of Jewish Americans and takes them to France for one purpose: "That's killing Nat-zees!" This band catches groups of Nazis, kills them, scalps them, and carves a swastika in the forehead of any survivor, so that even when their uniform comes of they will be easily identifiable. This segment is brutal. It is graphic. It is not for people with faint stomachs. The character of Sgt. Donny Donowitz, aka "The Bear Jew" (Eli Roth) is a total psychopath. It is clear that these characters may not be Nazis, but they're also not good guys.

In the third chapter, we again meet Shoshanna, living under the alias Emmanuele. It is now 1944 and she owns a movie theater in Paris, where she is forced to play German films. She is reluctantly being pursued by Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) who is a German war hero (and very cute) who recently starred in a film about his own exploits, directed by none other than Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth). He convinces Goebbles to move the premier of the film to Shoshanna's theater, and she hatches her plan to burn all of the Nazi attendees alive.

At the same time, the OSS finds out about the movie premier and decides to do something about it. Mike Meyers has a cameo as a British general, which is actually the one thing I don't think works about the film. They pick Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), a British soldier and expert on German cinema, to liaise with their double agent, famous German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), and the Inglorious Basterds. Their plan is to blow up the theater. The scene at the rendezvous is so well crafted. It hinges on cultural differences and language.

I'd hate to give away the ending. Suffice to say that I was not expecting it to turn out the way it did. And again, the end is brutal and interesting.

The script was clever and, most exciting for me, was only about 65% in English. The rest was in French and German, both of which I sort of understand. Listening to the Tarantino dialogue in those languages was kind of like a mental exercise, and very enjoyable.

The violence in this film was graphic and brutal. Heads were bashed in, throats were cut, scalps were cut off in close ups, people were basically massacred. I think what disturbed me the most was actually the close up of Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) carving a swastika into someone's forehead. But on the good side, the violence wasn't start to finish.

The B movie references were all there, from the music to the aside about one particular member of the Basterds, complete with a voiceover by Samuel L. Jackson. And the use of "nigger" was certainly present, but in German. I was pleased to see that Tarantino had it being used by Goebbels, who is obviously and unequivocally evil. Actually, Goebbels is probably the other part of the film I didn't like. Sure he is clearly ugly and evil, but they really camp him up and make him kind of comical. I think I would have preferred the architect of Kristallnacht to either be less like the comic relief or more broadly comic relief.

All in all, I really enjoyed the film. I'm hoping that when it comes out on DVD I can figure out a way to cut out most of the violence to show it to people who can't handle that sort of thing, because everything else about it is really worth watching.