Reviews
Inglourious Basterds
August 19 2009
Quentin Tarantino
Starring Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz
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Inglourious Basterds starts with the best scene Tarantino has written since Dennis Hopper told Christopher Walken he’s an egg-plant in True Romance. Whisking volatile comedy with powderkeg violence, it’s as good as it gets. And it never gets that good again.
Unfolding in German, French and English, this terrific opening scene sees the villainous ‘Jew Hunter’, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), murder a Jewish family hiding in a French farm. But one girl (Mélanie Laurent) escapes, growing up to run a Paris cinema where she hatches a plot to kill Hitler and the Reich’s top brass when they attend a movie premiere.
What we have here, then, is QT gleefully harnessing film’s power to rewrite history. Meanwhile, Michael Fassbender’s British agent (a film critic by training) gets orders from an unrecognisable Mike Myers to hook up with German actress-cum-spy Diane Kruger to take out Hitler himself. Once again, it’s tough-grrls who are the real heroes in QT’s world of violent men. And Kruger provides the trademark foot fetishism.
So where, exactly, are the Basterds in all this? Well, quite. After Brad Pitt’s redneck half-Apache leader Aldo Raine demands his squad of Jewish-American soldiers each bring him 100 Nazi scalps, they barely feature. After fearsome introductions, infamous Nazi-killing German Til Schweiger doesn’t say a word in the film, and blankety-blank Eli Roth leaves you wishing they’d cast a proper actor as the infamous ‘Bear Jew’. Woody Allen would’ve been good.
QT’s war opus is topped and tailed by shocking massacres, but in-between, the violence erupts only in short, bloody blasts. The devil is in the dialogue. Tarantino’s best action set-pieces are all verbal: the farmhouse scene, a tavern drinking game in which an SS officer grows suspicious of Fassbender’s German accent, and, basically, every time Landa opens his mouth.
Nothing in the entire movie is as funny, frightening or sophisticated as Christoph Waltz’s unforgettable performance. All silken menace veiling sociopathic derangement, he’s full of tiny intricacies that don’t come from the script – whether carefully undoing the fastenings on a notebook, or eating apple strudel (“Ah, ah! Wait for ze cream…”).
Trouble is, the rest of Basterds drags on and on and on. Over the last decade, Tarantino’s movies have become less frequent and more indulgent. Now it’s got to the point where he repeats long dialogue scenes until you’re tired of hearing people talk. Inglourious Basterds ran very baggy at its Cannes cut of two hours and 41 minutes. It’s no exaggeration to say that an hour could have been hacked away like a Nazi scalp.
Tarantino has been wrestling with the script for more than a decade and he still hasn’t nailed it. He even hauls in Samuel L Jackson to interject several voiceover-interludes when he runs out of ideas for how to tell the story.
By the bizarre, blazing sado-massacre of a finale, QT has let loose completely: flashes of cine-genius curdle with crude, crazy juvenility, although it doesn’t stop this being his most purely enjoyable film since Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The banana-chinned supergeek himself obviously likes it – just wait for the last line.
Anticipation:
Enjoyment:
In Retrospect:
When is the world going to roll over and forget about Quentin Tarantino? He made a couple of half-decent films over a decade ago, and people *still* talk about him like he's some kind of treasured talent. He's just a mouthy adolescent film geek who got lucky, and then spent the next 10 years demonstrating that he'd got lucky. Fair play, he's squeezed the most out of his limited talent and intellect, but for fuck's sake, if he never made another film again it would hardly be a great loss to cinema. If he'd never made a film at all it'd hardly be a great loss to cinema.
Written by Marcus Swift on August 24th, 2009 at 11:17
The world will forget him as soon as he stops being the best american director alive along with David Lynch and Brian DePalma.
Written by Giskdan on August 25th, 2009 at 03:31
I saw this film last night. It contains a few moments of invention and talent, but ultimately it is an illustration of Tarantino continuing to tread water and wallow in his past glories.
Go and see for : the opening scene (though still too long) which is well crafted and a decent effort to hook the viewer in, there's a nice tracking scene in the Parisian cinema and the odd well framed atmospheric shot. Christoph Waltz as Landa is superb and at the other end of the scale to Pitt who seems happy scraping the bottom of the cliche barrel nowadays. Hand on heart, the thing I admired most in this film was the apple strudel.
Written by GillMPhoto on August 25th, 2009 at 08:57
I really liked it, strudel and all – although it might have been a bit shorter. One of the problems that Tarantino faces (and for which I suppose he is in part responsible, skilled self-promoter that he is) is his status as a brandname. If somehow we could (and, let's face it, we can't) abstract away from the fact that this is A QUENTIN TARANTINO FILM, and if somehow we could magically forget the director's past filmography, it might be possible to focus on the virtues of the film itself, and the clever way in which it shows cinema not only as a hall of mirrors, but also as a palace of dreams, where wish-fulfilment is reality, fantasy becomes history, and Hitler can be defeated by a small band of Jews – while the face of evil is always clearly marked as such.
Written by Anton Bitel on August 25th, 2009 at 14:37
Marcus Swift, you're a pretentious fag. He made "half-decent" "films" in the world of "cinema". La ti da your majesty.
Written by Justin on August 25th, 2009 at 16:17
I see the Americans have arrived to raise the tone.
Written by Marcus Swift on August 26th, 2009 at 08:42
QT is a victim of his own relative success, his recent creations are meticulously dissected. Of course he doesn't do himself any favours by generating huge pre-release hysteria, but I didn't think Inglouriuos Bastards was bad at all.
What is the facination with people turning online discussions into anonomous slagging matches?
"you're a fag!" "your mum's gay?" etc.
Justin, Marcus is just offering his opinion.
Written by NJS on August 26th, 2009 at 09:59
Hear hear! Good online discussions are always about arguing (or even agreeing) with other people's views, not attacking the people themselves. And homophobic slurs should be left behind in the playground…
Written by Anton Bitel on August 26th, 2009 at 10:08
Thanks Anton.
I blame Jonathan Crocker for encouraging it. Calling QT a "banana-chinned supergeek", not very nice is it!? The man has feelings you know! Let's stop with the name calling, one love and all that.
Written by NJS on August 26th, 2009 at 11:12
Apple Strudel, Landa, the Basterds… I seem to be in the minority who wanted a longer cut of IB. Not only did I think that good old QT bettered his last few efforts, I may even go so far as to say this may be my favourite (between this and Dogs).
I thought the acting was exquisite, the dialogue was distinctly trademark of a QT production, the story was fascinating and the entire feel of the story was (lost for words, can't quite find or remember a good enough descriptive word!). What many forget to remember is that QT is a fanboy, he enjoys film from yesteryear and his entire work (as a whole) is a homage to the thing he loves. Why does the finale of IB, perhaps the most amazing QT scene of all with the burning cinema take place in the cinema? Because without is, QT just wouldn't know what to do with himself.
It's a parody of WWII which I would hope many people would actually accept, he changes the history but so what if it's historically incorrect, when has anything of his actually been any semblance of reality, coming from the director who wrote the bank heist film without ever showing the heist!
I agree with many that Waltz's acting was a highlight, fingers crossed for a Supporting Academy Award, and even the use of Pitt was good. His didn't over shadow but was just right. The humour used was a great touch on the tough subject (re. Italian language). And the two main women in the film were just manly enough not to feel that they should be seen and not heard.
At the end of the day, loved the film, want the DVD and want to watch all over again…
Written by ollie3 on August 27th, 2009 at 10:20
So, women have to be 'manly' to justify being heard as well as seen? Remind me, what year is this again?
Written by LSt on August 27th, 2009 at 12:14
OMG! After I read your reply, I suddenly realised how what I said could have been misconstrued. What I meant to say was that after years of watching Hollywood use women in a highly sexualised way and sometimes only giving them one dimensional characters, it was a complete breath of fresh air to see the female characters in IB take complete control of every single scene they were in. 'Manly' may not have been the right word, more so in control of all their faculties, no one was going to make them do something they didn't want to. Believe me, I much prefer strong female characters, I see them actually as more realistic than male. That is what I meant of Kruger and Laurent's characters in IB, they were so powerful and their dialogue really controlled the path of the film, while at the same time managing to be in complete control of their sexuality.
But hey! at the end of the day, the ideology still stands in the institution of Hollywood about women and sex, but it takes performances like IB's to break them…
Written by ollie3 on August 27th, 2009 at 12:22
he is a great director whilst you are just a loser. sorry. just thought it needed saying. loser.__
Written by Jordanhex on August 29th, 2009 at 00:16
I saw this late as I was expecting Quentin to disappear up his own arse again. Kill Bill (though occasionally inspired) was clearly made to amuse a very small group of people and Death Proof was a couple of great set-pieces surrounded by hours of banal dialogue.
My word though, he's back on form with this. He's like the Sergio Leone of dialogue. It takes great writing (directing and acting too) to wring such tension from a few guys sat around a table. The finale is an absolute joy and even Eli Roth is entertaining. Very surprised with it and delighted to see Quentin back on his game.
Written by @fortunesfool73 on October 9th, 2009 at 17:41
What's the beef with Kill Bill then? I thought collectively it was bang on, thoroughly enjoyable and definitely QT on form.
Death Proof in my humble was a bit 'meh! But over here we never got to see that and Planet Terror the way it was originally intended together with the trailers in between in proper grindhouse style, that would've added to it/them .
I'm in total agreement with the review though, the opening 20 minutes appear very special and like you're in for a thrill ride. It does go downhill, the worst part for me is Eli Roth, he's dreadful and not really an actor. That role should've been for someone decent, he's actually rather annoying.
I still purchased the dvd. Albeit the R1 2 disc S/E one as the UK release looks pretty pissy in comparison.
Written by delarge on December 18th, 2009 at 17:00