Review: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds

Cert:18

Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger

Running Time: 157mins

A leaked script, actors dropping from the project and audiences feeling shot down with disappointment by Death Proof. Hardly an ideal way to start a movie that’s been ten years in the making. But that Tarantino, he’s a confident fellow you know. Twenty minutes into Inglourious Basterds, in a scene that has suspense (note the repetitive ticking clock, an homage to the endless sounds in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West’s opening station sequence), and emotions ranging from fear to grief, we’ve already learnt one thing: this is Tarantino’s world.

Tarantino’s epic World War II pastiche opens with the obligatory title card: “Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France”. It’s the perfect and most characteristic way to open a show that is devoid of historical fact and heavy on creative interpretation. Schindlers List this ain’t.

The movie, Tarantino’s seventh as director, tells the story (never has the word ‘story’ been more apt) of a platoon of eight American-Jewish soldiers, lead by a Lt. Randolph Raine (Pitt), a delicious blend of Lee Marvin and Clark Gable, to capture “100 Nazi scalps”. It’s only when Dr. Joseph Goebbels decides to premiere his latest propaganda picture ‘Nations Pride’(a sarcastic, mythological Tarantino creation)in a Parisian cinema that the Basterds become part of Operation Kino, a plan to set alight the theatre, cremating all top-ranking Nazi’s including the Fuhrer himself.

As we drift between genres, predominantly spaghetti western, there is one character who defines the film entirely: Colonel Hans Landa of the SS aka The Jew Hunter (Waltz). Tarantino said that without Hans Landa there wouldn’t be Inglourious Basterds and here he has found his most intriguing amalgamation and one likely to go into the directors’ canon of creations. Landa is as charming as he is manipulative and dangerous. Mia Wallace meets Mr. Blonde if you will. He’s also the film’s most fun and Tarantino knew this giving Landa most of the best lines (“Bingo!"). The performance from Waltz is similar to Pitt’s: camp and just the right level of over-the-top.

A re-occurring theme used throughout Tarantino’s work is revenge and the story behind Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) is at the heart of Inglorious Basterds. An escapee of Landa’s opening scene massacre, she inherits the cinema chosen by Goebbels and plays a key role in the films already well-publicised finale. It’s with Dreyfus’ transformation from rural belle to femme fatale that cinematographer Robert Richardson gets to grips with Nazi iconography (Leni Riefenstahl would be proud) and Tarantino dusts off his record collection. Instead of opting for the obvious strains of Wagner the auteur gives the film it’s most surreal, two-fingers-to-convention moment: a David Bowie track.

Inglourious is, inevitably, loquacious. Indeed much of the Basterd’s development as characters and how we feel about them is based on dialogue, what they say and who to. Much of the films violence is preceded by both searing and delicate exchanges but this means the film does suffer from a long-winded middle chapter. But such is the self-awareness in his craft Tarantino has written a script that is a pop-culture minefield and is far more cerebral and entertaining than a baseball bat to the head.

Inglourious Basterds is an undoubted masterpiece, deserving to be mentioned in the same breath as Pulp Fiction, but it’s likely to split audiences. There will be those who applaud the undoubted showmanship on display and those who disapprove of the cavalier approach to fact. War is hell but in the hands of an unstoppable Tarantino never has war been bastardised so gloriously.