INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
dir: Quentin Tarantino
"What a tremendously hostile world that a rat must endure. Yet not only does he survive, he thrives. Because our little foe has an instinct for survival and preservation second to none. And that Monsieur is what a Jew shares with a rat." - Col. Hans Landa
Brief Synopsis
Upon learning that certain significant members of the Nazi leadership are attending a film premiere, a group of Jewish Allied soldiers known as "the Basterds" plan a surprise attack. Meanwhile, a Jewish woman whose family has been murdered by the Nazi's has her own plan for revenge at the premiere.
Why It's Here
If history is written by the winner, then Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds seems to be written by the loser, or at least for them. I am of course referring to World War II's real losers--the Jews. While the atrocities commited against the Jewish people have resulted in eternal sympathy in the movies, there has never been a film to break the chains of history and allow the Jews to travel back in time and kick the ass they surely wish they could have kicked. Tarantino's World War II epic focuses on two seperate group of Jews deep behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied France. The first group is a young Jewish theatre owner and her black projectionist who live in disguise among the Nazi occupiers, while the second group is Lt. Aldo Raine's (Brad Pitt) Basterds; a group of vicious, vengeful Jewish American soldiers hell-bent on tormenting every Nazi they find to make up for the suffering their people are enduring, and because it's more fun than fighting on the front lines, as Aldo Raine says, "frankly, watchin' Donny beat Nazis to death is is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies".
The two groups never meet, making the film move at a brisk pace with two parallel plots that are only intersected by "The Jew Hunter", an S.S. officer given the special task of hunting down the remaining Jews in France. Christopher Waltz portrays the Colonel, formerly known as Hans Landa, whose the link between the stories and exactly the motivator needed to fuel the agendas of the film's protagonists. As if there is any need to inspire hatred towards the Nazis, Landa acts as the film's menace, who is charming, charismatic, yet quite obviously sinister. Tarantino's theatrical characterization of a Nazi Colonel, and for that matter, characterization of the Basterds, is extremely fun to watch and strongly diverts from the often briskly dutiful characters represented in most war films. These characters are driven by more than their country and honour, they are driven by personal vendetta and in the case of Hans, profit.
There is a point where the film and history take seperate paths. But Tarantino doesn't let the audience know this until it springs up and shocks you at the film's climax, if you want to experience the surprise yourself, I suggest you stop reading. Tarantino is a writer/director who has gained a much loved and equally hated following by breaking conventions, his post-modern Pulp Fiction refused to abide by structural laws of Hollywood film, and his Kill Bill films merged several unrelated genres into a cluster of indulgence. Here Tarantino dares to exaggerate the war effort in France, replacing famous battle set-pieces for dialogue driven exchanges in local settings, usually a dinner table. Tarantino's ability to put tension into words is every bit as teeth-grinding as the chaotic battles Spielberg orchestrated in Saving Private Ryan, but Tarantino doesn't make you feel sickened or lost in the madness of war, he creates a anxious tension in characters who might kill each other, but their civil nature keeps them talking. But, it's war after all, and sooner or later someone is going to shoot. If there is one argument I could maybe make against the film it's that the structure is repetative. Just tense conversation after tense conversation, yet it's not quite a fault. The variety of the conflict and the shock of the outcome are all equally satisfying, without any sense of diminishing thrills.
Tarantino creates a war film not about war but about racial barriers in tense times. A Jew confronting a German, a French woman being flirted with by an invasive German, Jewish Americans capturing Nazis, as well as the traditions and accents of one culture versus another. Suspicions run high and in a world where every lisp or finger cue can define your alliance, it makes for thrilling material. As I said above, while Tarantino is violent, he doesn't attempt to give the viewers shellshock as Spielberg did. The film is theatrical, right from the dramatic opening. It blends a hint of spaghetti western into it's war setting, and true to Tarantino's convention defying nature, the film diverts from revenge thriller into revenge fantasy.
The third act, my favourite part of this lengthy venture, brings the three stories into a single setting, while the stories are still paralells, never intersecting, they affect each others efforts. Shosanna, the theatre owner, is having a Paris premiere for a new Nazi propoganda film, with plans to switch reels and reveal her plot before burning them all alive. Meanwhile, the Basterds have bombs in place and suicide agents ready to get revenge on the Nazi high command, including Hitler who is attending. Eli Roth's father wrote an insightful article about the emotional response that he as a Jewish person felt when watching his son take a machine gun to Hitler's face in furious ecstacy, he described it as "a powerful mixture of rescue, revenge, redemption, relief and a strange grief", the sense that a Jewish soldier was able to sacrifice himself and destroy the hand of Death that swept over the Jewish people during the Second World War. Tarantino doesn't create a fountain of sympathy for the Jewish people as other films do, he doesn't need to. Tarantino knows his audience is aware already of the motivations, and rather than accepting what's done is done, he executes his creative license as a writer and re-defines a point in history that is very sensitive to a very large number of people. Tarantino opts for fantasy that has never existed in a visual form like this, where the Nazi regime litterly ignites and burns down, at the hands of a group of Jews. Yet, it's not all satisfactory when the Nazis get their due. The film shows the Basterds as wicked and ruthless as the Nazis they destroy. The Basterd's may have a reason for their ruthlessness, but they take great pleasure in it, and while the theatre massacre is shown in slow-motion as Eli Roth tears the building apart, it's not really gratifying, and this is perhaps what his father meant when he said "a strange grief", for the film never positions it's protagonists above it's antagonists, they are just playing at the same game. The scene is violent and quite ruthless, with certain satisfaction that it's nothing but scum burning, but it's still unfortuante, it's still war.
The final act salvating with revenge fantasy and exploits, but beyond that it looks amazing too. Shosanna, who by the time the night turns awful for the Nazi's, is dead, but her ghost remains, seen through the smoke as a laughing face above the massacre, exacting revenge for her people in murderous glory. This is the kind of thing Tarantino is incapable of doing wrong. It's two and a half hours boiling up to this moment, and the slow burn instantly sparks when Shosanna appears on screen. It's a glorious display of something reality could never produce, only film -- this film, and Shosanna's.
The two groups never meet, making the film move at a brisk pace with two parallel plots that are only intersected by "The Jew Hunter", an S.S. officer given the special task of hunting down the remaining Jews in France. Christopher Waltz portrays the Colonel, formerly known as Hans Landa, whose the link between the stories and exactly the motivator needed to fuel the agendas of the film's protagonists. As if there is any need to inspire hatred towards the Nazis, Landa acts as the film's menace, who is charming, charismatic, yet quite obviously sinister. Tarantino's theatrical characterization of a Nazi Colonel, and for that matter, characterization of the Basterds, is extremely fun to watch and strongly diverts from the often briskly dutiful characters represented in most war films. These characters are driven by more than their country and honour, they are driven by personal vendetta and in the case of Hans, profit.
There is a point where the film and history take seperate paths. But Tarantino doesn't let the audience know this until it springs up and shocks you at the film's climax, if you want to experience the surprise yourself, I suggest you stop reading. Tarantino is a writer/director who has gained a much loved and equally hated following by breaking conventions, his post-modern Pulp Fiction refused to abide by structural laws of Hollywood film, and his Kill Bill films merged several unrelated genres into a cluster of indulgence. Here Tarantino dares to exaggerate the war effort in France, replacing famous battle set-pieces for dialogue driven exchanges in local settings, usually a dinner table. Tarantino's ability to put tension into words is every bit as teeth-grinding as the chaotic battles Spielberg orchestrated in Saving Private Ryan, but Tarantino doesn't make you feel sickened or lost in the madness of war, he creates a anxious tension in characters who might kill each other, but their civil nature keeps them talking. But, it's war after all, and sooner or later someone is going to shoot. If there is one argument I could maybe make against the film it's that the structure is repetative. Just tense conversation after tense conversation, yet it's not quite a fault. The variety of the conflict and the shock of the outcome are all equally satisfying, without any sense of diminishing thrills.
Tarantino creates a war film not about war but about racial barriers in tense times. A Jew confronting a German, a French woman being flirted with by an invasive German, Jewish Americans capturing Nazis, as well as the traditions and accents of one culture versus another. Suspicions run high and in a world where every lisp or finger cue can define your alliance, it makes for thrilling material. As I said above, while Tarantino is violent, he doesn't attempt to give the viewers shellshock as Spielberg did. The film is theatrical, right from the dramatic opening. It blends a hint of spaghetti western into it's war setting, and true to Tarantino's convention defying nature, the film diverts from revenge thriller into revenge fantasy.
The third act, my favourite part of this lengthy venture, brings the three stories into a single setting, while the stories are still paralells, never intersecting, they affect each others efforts. Shosanna, the theatre owner, is having a Paris premiere for a new Nazi propoganda film, with plans to switch reels and reveal her plot before burning them all alive. Meanwhile, the Basterds have bombs in place and suicide agents ready to get revenge on the Nazi high command, including Hitler who is attending. Eli Roth's father wrote an insightful article about the emotional response that he as a Jewish person felt when watching his son take a machine gun to Hitler's face in furious ecstacy, he described it as "a powerful mixture of rescue, revenge, redemption, relief and a strange grief", the sense that a Jewish soldier was able to sacrifice himself and destroy the hand of Death that swept over the Jewish people during the Second World War. Tarantino doesn't create a fountain of sympathy for the Jewish people as other films do, he doesn't need to. Tarantino knows his audience is aware already of the motivations, and rather than accepting what's done is done, he executes his creative license as a writer and re-defines a point in history that is very sensitive to a very large number of people. Tarantino opts for fantasy that has never existed in a visual form like this, where the Nazi regime litterly ignites and burns down, at the hands of a group of Jews. Yet, it's not all satisfactory when the Nazis get their due. The film shows the Basterds as wicked and ruthless as the Nazis they destroy. The Basterd's may have a reason for their ruthlessness, but they take great pleasure in it, and while the theatre massacre is shown in slow-motion as Eli Roth tears the building apart, it's not really gratifying, and this is perhaps what his father meant when he said "a strange grief", for the film never positions it's protagonists above it's antagonists, they are just playing at the same game. The scene is violent and quite ruthless, with certain satisfaction that it's nothing but scum burning, but it's still unfortuante, it's still war.
The final act salvating with revenge fantasy and exploits, but beyond that it looks amazing too. Shosanna, who by the time the night turns awful for the Nazi's, is dead, but her ghost remains, seen through the smoke as a laughing face above the massacre, exacting revenge for her people in murderous glory. This is the kind of thing Tarantino is incapable of doing wrong. It's two and a half hours boiling up to this moment, and the slow burn instantly sparks when Shosanna appears on screen. It's a glorious display of something reality could never produce, only film -- this film, and Shosanna's.