Inglourious Basterds
(http://www.invelos.com/mpimages/02/025192029981f.jpg)
(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8450/twostar.jpg)
Year: 2009
Film Studio: The Weinstein Company, Universal Pictures, A Band Apart Productions
Genre: Action, Adventure, War
Length: 153 Min.
Director
Quentin Tarantino
Writing
Quentin Tarantino...Writer
Producer
Bob Weinstein (1954)
Harvey Weinstein (1952)
Erica Steinberg
Lloyd Phillips
Lawrence Bender (1957)
Cinematographer
Robert Richardson (1955)
Stars
Brad Pitt (1963) as LT. Aldo Raine
Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna
Christoph Waltz as COL. Hans Landa
Eli Roth as SGT. Donny Donowitz
Michael Fassbender (1977) as LT. Archie Hicox
Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark
Daniel Brühl as Fredrick Zoller
Til Schweiger as SGT. Hugo Stiglitz
Review
A good film is manufactured similarly to a person’s home. The screenplay is its foundation, with the acting, music and cinematography completing the construction. But if the foundation isn’t sound, the whole structure is surely to collapse. This is a lesson we all learn early in life through the tale of the three little pigs. And like the two pigs who built their home of straw and sticks, Quentin Tarantino has built a house of cards with his screenplay to Inglourious Basterds, and by simply taking away a trio of key plot contrivances in the story, the whole film comes a tumbling down. In the end, Inglourious Basterds is nothing more than an overrated director’s predictable attempt at keeping his rabid fanbase in an endless genuflection to his phantom talent.
OK, where to begin? The opening scene, yes, that’s a good place to start. I had heard and read many glowing bits of praise concerning the first chapter in the film and I have to agree that it sets the stage quite nicely for the rest of the film. Although, if you can spot the first plot contrivance, the scene loses some of its luster and here is where I found fault with it. Let’s start with the tired and getting extremely old, “I really love Sergio Leone, so here’s some more ‘homage’ing to his genius” crap. Let’s see, you did it in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill I & II, we get it already, please move on! Second, if you’re going to use a bit of cinematographic imagery to convey the meaning of Landa’s allegory, then you shouldn’t let said imagery, destroy the premise of the scene. At one point, when the farmer and Colonel Landa are sitting in the farmhouse, the Sun shines down through a window and down onto the floorboards, where the light beams between the boards and into the eyes of the frightened Jews beneath them. If Colonel Landa is such a meticulous master of his craft at hunting down hidden Jews, how does he not see through the ½ inch gap between each floorboard at the now illuminated quarry which he seeks? Third, instead of having his soldiers find the entrance to the crawl space and apprehending the Jewish family, Quentin decides to placate his now ‘frothing at the mouth for violence’ fanboys by having the soldiers make Swiss cheese of the floorboards with their machine guns.
But what’s this? One of the Jews is trying to escape. It’s the daughter Shoshanna, and she’s made her getaway through the entrance to the crawl space and is frantically scurrying across the open farm field so she may survive the massacre. Colonel Landa pulls his luger from its holster and points the weapon at the fleeing girl, but then decides not to shoot her, instead he tauntingly exclaims, “au revoir Shoshanna”, and the scene ends. Why? Are Landa and his men suffering from plantar fasciitus and it’s too painful to run after her? Maybe they’ve forgotten how to drive a troop transport in the brief moment since their arrival, which they could easily use to track her down. No, it’s simple and it’s plot contrivance #1, if they kill her or capture her, chapters 3 & 5 in the film are no longer feasible. Having pulled the first card out of the house’s foundation, it is still strong and standing. But any further tampering may lead to disastrous results.
In chapter 2, we meet the ‘basterds’. They are led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a hard-nosed, no nonsense brute of a fighter who really, I mean REALLY hates Nazis. He has been assigned by the OSS to select a group of commandos, who just like him, really, I mean REALLY hate Nazis too. During the briefing with his men, we soon find out that all the commandos are Jewish, a sort of gefilte grenadiers squad, who must prove their bravery by each obtaining 100 Nazi scalps. In the ensuing scene, which takes place deep behind enemy lines just prior to the Normandy invasion, we find out that Aldo ain’t kidding about the scalps. While Aldo is interrogating three captured German soldiers, the rest of the group is shown slicing their macabre souvenirs from the surrounding dead soldier’s heads. Shocking you say? Well…old Quentin is just getting started. When the German officer refuses to divulge the whereabouts of another German patrol located somewhere in the vicinity, Aldo asks him if he has heard of the basterds. The officer elaborates that the German army knows of this commando squad and its reputation for brutality. I’ve underlined this passage because it will be important to plot contrivance #2. Aldo then asks him if he has heard of the ‘Bear Jew’, a soldier who takes great pleasure in smashing Nazis with a baseball bat. Once again, the officer replies in the affirmative, yet still refuses to cooperate.
Enter stage left, Eli Roth, sporting his Louisville slugger and proceeds to bash the bosch into oblivion. Seeing this, one of the other two prisoners makes a run for it and is shot. The remaining prisoner is shaking in his boots and after Aldo assures him that he will go free if he tells him where the patrol is, he divulges their whereabouts. True to his word, Aldo lets him go, but first he leaves him with a special Nazi ‘badge’ of honor. According to Aldo, to put the fear of God and the basterds into the Germans, he carves a swastika into the soldier’s forehead. Ding, Ding, Ding…if you guessed that this was plot contrivance #2, you would be right! Now follow me here… If the Germans already know of the basterds and their brutal beating and scalping of German soldiers (Remember, I underlined that above), then why does he need to ‘brand’ this soldier to put forth the message? I mean, if all Aldo wants is Nazi scalps, why would he let this one go? It makes no sense at all, he’d alert the Gestapo and they’d be there in a moment’s notice. The prisoner knows the names of a few of them, he knows how many basterds there are, and he knows their general location. Well, if he doesn’t let him go, our genius screenwriter will lose another key plot moment in chapter five, the swastika scar. This is the second card removed and the house is teetering on the brink.
I could go on and on and on, but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. So to counter my objections so far with the film, I’ll take a moment to extol the limited, and I do mean limited amount of good things in Inglourious Basterds. To begin with, Christopher Waltz is very good as the ruthless Colonel Landa, although for a few moments in the opening scene, I felt as if his mannerisms reminded me of Alvy Singer. Maybe it’s just a quirk of his portrayal, but at least it disappeared after the first scene. Waltz is definitely the glue that holds this patchwork of a screenplay together, and without him, the house of cards comes crashing down. Next, there are two moments in the film that are purely fantastic cinematic technique. The first comes in chapter 3 when Colonel Landa is interviewing Shoshanna, who owns the theater where the blood bacchanal will take place in chapter 5. As he questions her, he extols the virtues of the café’s version of apple strudel, the national dessert of Germany. He continues his questioning while consuming his portion. When the questioning is over, he puts his half smoked cigarette out in the middle of the unfinished strudel. A brilliant metaphorical moment that is not only a harbinger of the holocaust that’s going to take place in the theater, but also subliminally sets the stage for Landa’s actions during that climactic moment in the film.
The second moment in the film that I thought was outstanding was in the bacchanal scene I mentioned a moment ago. As the final reel of A Nation’s Pride is playing, Shoshanna’s assistant, waiting for a cue in the film that Shoshanna has spliced in, tosses his cigarette on to a heaping pile of old nitrate film stock. Being highly flammable, the film stock erupts in a torrent of ambitiously hungry flames at the base of the screen. On the screen at that moment is the face of Shoshanna, laughing at the Germans she’s about to send to Hell, in the same manner as they have used to dispose of the bodies of the innocent souls they have murdered.
What a shame, this film had such potential. And I’m not being facetious. If Tarantino had the courage to make a film using just the struggle between the Landa and Shoshanna characters, and omitting the basterds, it could have been a masterpiece. Unfortunately for the movie-going public at large, Quentin is a coward, and must placate his fanbase by his now quite tired over-indulgence in bloodletting, comic book characterizations and self-gratifying expressionism. At the end of the film, Aldo’s final line, spoken as he looks into the camera at the audience as he carves his final badge of dishonor, “This just might be my masterpiece”, speaks volumes to the pretentiousness and self-stroking egotistical nature of a director whose work has steadily ebbed since the high tide of his Pulp Fiction days.
Ratings Criterion
5 Stars - The pinnacle of film perfection and excellence.
4 ½ Stars - Not quite an immortal film, yet a masterpiece in its own right.
4 Stars - Historically important film, considered a classic.
3 ½ Stars - An entertaining film that’s fun or engaging to watch.
3 Stars – A good film that’s worth a Netflix venture.
2 ½ Stars - Borderline viewable.
2 Stars – A bad film that may have a moment of interest.
1 ½ Stars – Insipid, trite and sophomoric, and that's its good points.
1 Star – A film so vacuous, it will suck 2 hours from the remainder of your life.
½ Star - A gangrenous and festering pustule in the chronicles of celluloid.
I don't know why but reading Jon and Antares reminds me of watching the Mohammad Ali and Joe Foreman go 12 rounds.
Thanks Kathy, but it's Joe Frazier.
I'll gladly hang my hat with Frazier, he was a street brawler with the moxie to floor Ali back in their first fight.
For those of you too young to remember they were two extremely talented boxers. They were so different and yet they matched up perfectly. To watch them was artistry in motion.
Jon is the prime reason I love this forum. I post my reviews and await with baited breath, his response. I can have an intelligent discussion about films and film making and it never denigrates to below the belt stuff. Of all the people I've known and discussed cinema with in the last 25 years, his is the opinion I've respected the most.
Cheers Muhammad! :cheers:
Tarantino is still a hack :devil: :tease: :hysterical: