"Inglourious Basterds" - An Analysis

I saw “Inglourious Basterds” last night and it hasn’t left my mind since. It’s been a long time since I’ve written a review for a movie, but I feel like I have to say something about this one. My friends, this film represents Quentin Tarantino at his most brilliant since “Pulp Fiction.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Between “Pulp” and “Basterds,” we have had “Jackie Brown” and “Kill Bill: 1&2,” so to say that “Basterds” surpasses these films is quite the statement. While there is no attempting to hit the audacious highs of “Kill Bill,” “Basterds” delivers goods of a different kind. It was tense, disturbing, exciting and brutal from the opening sequence to the last shot and I loved every minute of it.

Most of the criticism that I have seen about this film is that it’s “over indulgent” and that it lacks many of Tarantino‘s “signatures.” Of course, what film isn’t the result of the indulgence of one or more individuals, be them the filmmakers, the writers or the producers? And in terms of “signature” movies, no one would argue with me when I say that you would be hard pressed to find a film more indulgent than “Kill Bill.” So, with those critiques out the window, why has this film been so polarizing amongst the Tarantino fan base? I think the reason is that Tarantino has opted for the appeal of intelligent, taught filmmaking rather than setting out to gratify our want for the next “Kill Bill.” If you like your revenge tales full of hot-blooded rampages, like his previous effort, then this may not be the film for you. But, if you can also appreciate the idea of revenge as a dish served very, very cold, then you will find “Basterds” much more satisfying.

The trick to “Basterds” is it’s ability to invest you in the need for vengeance. In “Kill Bill,” we were shown a horrifying event: the slaughter of a pregnant woman out to make good and her bridal party on her wedding day. We feel for that character and gleefully cheer her on as she ruins countless outfits with gallon upon gallon of the gushing blood of her foes. But, this is make-believe. “Basterds” presents us with a very real foe that all of us, Jew or not, is already emotionally invested in: Nazis. If the sight of an SS uniform doesn’t already make your blood boil, Tarantino employs the skills of Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz to create a character as heinous as Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal of the real life Amon Goeth in “Schindler’s List.” This character, Col. Hans Landa, is introduced to us as the worst kind of villain: the intelligent kind. He steals the show within the first five minutes of the film, in which he interrogates a dairy farmer who is accused of harboring “enemies of the state.” In this twenty minute opening sequence, not a drop of blood, vulgar word or even gun is in sight until the last minute, atypical of a Tarantino film. As the scene goes on, it becomes more and more clear that Landa is already aware of the whereabouts of the Jews that this farmer is hiding and is choosing to engage in a sort of “cat and mouse” game of dialogue. But, what is so remarkable about this dialogue is that it’s purposeful and propulsive. It’s not the usual character-building banter we hear in Tarantino films. Landa is trying to get information out of this dairy farmer by using only his words, creating the image of himself as cool, collected and incalculably evil. This game of words builds until we get our first taste of the inhuman violence that inhabits much of the remainder of the film.

The film continues to reveal the main players in the plot. We finally see the “Basterds,” headed by Brad Pitt’s charmingly twisted “Lt. Aldo Raine.” He leads a band of Jewish-American soldiers whose mission is to simply kill as many Nazis as they can and take their scalps. They have become sort of infamous among the Nazis (much to the dismay of a very ridiculously portrayed Adolf Hitler) due to the overwhelming success of this mission. The Basterds are a colorful cast of characters, to say the least, and a few of them have backstories of their own that come into play. Eli Roth plays Donnie (a.k.a. “The Bear Jew”) who delights himself and the other Basterds by using his Louisville Slugger on the temples of indignant Nazis. One of my few critiques of the film, however, was that time was never spent to get to know all of the individual Basterds, which would have been nice considering the film was named after them.

The idea that the plot centers around is a movie premier. A young German private by the name of Frederick Zoller (played innocently by Daniel Bruhl) has been embraced by Germany as a war hero and Hitler’s second in command, Joseph Geobbels, has made a film about the private’s exploits. The premier of this film, which is assured to be one of the great propaganda films of the Third Reich, will be attended by all of the German high ranking officials, including Hitler himself. It turns out that the owner of the cinema which is to house the premier, Shosanna Dreyfus, is the sole surviving member of her family who were all massacred in front of her eyes by none other than Col. Landa. When she hears that her theater has been chosen for the event, she plots to burn down the theater and everyone in it on opening night. Unbeknownst to her, the British Army gets the same idea. The British brass, represented here by Mike Meyers doing an impression of, basically, an old, stuffy Austin Powers, sends a soldier to rendezvous with a beautiful double agent, played by Diane Kruger, and the Basterds. Their plan is to blow up the theater as well (with “Basterd” flare).

The film is basically a series of extended sequences in which the characters run into obstacles of different kinds en route to accomplishing their final goal. These scenes are not only highlighted by, but completely built around tense dialogue. One scene in particular, which features a couple of the Basterds and the British officer in a tavern trying to convince an especially astute member of the SS that they are, in fact, German officers, is as tense and exciting as it gets. Whereas “Kill Bill” precluded extended, intensely choreographed fight sequences with bands of witty dialogue, in “Basterds” we get dialogue that is as well choreographed as any action sequence with back and forth so tense and riveting that you are literally sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for the ball to drop.

This brings me to a point that I found fascinating. You see, each of the characters involved in one of these scenes of dialogue has something to hide. It’s an American or British or French person trying to hide something from the Germans and it’s also the Germans trying to hide the fact that they are onto them. The dialogue is structured so that each side of the conversation is attacking the other, trying to find weaknesses and finally exploit it. Because of this, there seems to be a wonderful theme of falseness. I mean, one of the people in the scene mentioned above is a double agent who also happens to be a very popular actress in Germany. She pretends to be someone else for a living. Not only that, but the entire sequence advances as the characters are playing a game in which they each don cards on their heads and pretend to be a fictional character all while pretending to be Germans on top of it! But there are other people who are false as well. You have the Austrian born Basterd who enlisted in the German army just so that he could get close to officers and kill them. You have the dairy farmer in the first scene. You have young Frederick Zoller, who puts on a pretty modest, innocent act until his real intentions with Shosanna are revealed violently at the end. And Shosanna literally puts a screen between the Nazis and her plot to kill them all; their death warrants waiting right under their very noses. In fact, her very face is projected onto a literal “smoke screen” in the final moment of the theater sequence. The one man who really doesn’t have any interest in being false in Aldo Raine, who, if anything, is the antithesis of all this deception. He feels so strongly that people shouldn’t pretend to be what they’re not that he permanently scars the Nazis that he releases so that they can never hide who they are. He also does not take part of the deception-filled tavern sequence and even at the end when he pretends to be Italian, he makes absolutely no effort to hide the fact that he’s obviously faking to Col. Landa. You can bet that it was no accident that Raine was written and poised to be the most enjoyable character in the film.

Inevitably, the tavern scene, and all of these scenes, end in a wild, brief burst of action; much like the snap of a rubber band after it’s been stretched to it’s limits (Tarantino actually described it in a very similar way). The film continues in this way for a time, setting up run-ins with nasty Nazis and building tension and the necessary hatred toward the Nazis in order to justify the climactic scene that we are all, by now, very anxiously awaiting.

The last chapter of the film concerns the set up and execution (no pun intended) of the master plan to burn down the cinema. Each of the characters we are invested in runs into some kind of trouble (mostly stemming from the “always-a-step-ahead” Col. Landa) and everyone ends up sort of on their own, all trying to make it work. After an impressive and lengthy “night of the heist”-style sequence, we finally arrive at the big moment.

***WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS***SKIP AHEAD IF YOU DON’T WANT TO RUIN THE FILM FOR YOURSELF***

What we experience at the end of “Inglourious Basterds” is truly horrific and frightening. While Tarantino has locked himself in the realm of history up until this point, he now delves into the realm of fantasy. I’m going to go into great detail about this scene because I really want to describe what it made me felt, when it made me feel it and why.

What we see is basically the ultimate revenge fantasy. Shosanna interrupts the screening with a film of herself looking directly into the eyes of the audience and tells the Germans that they are all going to die. As she begins laughing maniacally, her cohort lights high-nitrate film stock aflame and the theater proceeds to burn down. Her cohort, however, has also locked the doors to the theater, creating a deathtrap for the Nazis in the theater. Meanwhile, the Basterds have successfully broken into the theater and, from the balcony, mercilessly gun down every body in the room. For a few full minutes, all we see is the massacre of hundreds of Nazis and their guests.

Now, considering the course of history and the two hours of Nazi hating preceding this event onscreen, you would think that I would be standing up in my seat and cheering for this. Instead of a moment of glory and triumph, this is a moment of pure horror. Tarantino highlights the horrific aspects of this by evoking images of classic cinema, such as the burning of the gymnasium in “Carrie” and Eli Roth holding his gun and shooting down in the exact same stance as Al Pacino did in “Scarface.” What Tarantino is doing here is dredging up the worst aspect of our humanity and placing us face to face with it. Let’s face it, everyone in the audience, including myself, wanted to see these assholes go down in flames. But, Tarantino says, “ok, here it is.” And when you see this fish-in-a-barrel massacre, it’s very disturbing. Yes, they deserve what is coming to them and yes, I wanted to see it happen… and maybe that’s what is most disturbing. That I wanted this. That there is a difference between killing a foe and out-right murder and now that we’re faced with it, we choose murder. The end of “Carrie” was disturbing in the same way. Yes, they were all horrible people, completely inhuman, but to take pleasure in watching a human being, no matter how terrible, burn to death? And Tarantino reminds us that Roth is much like “Scarface”: he has a hot head, but he’s been our hero through the whole movie. But, isn’t he a bad guy? Tarantino reminds us even further of this inhumanity by playing the very same music over this scene that was played in the opening massacre scene. Our heroes are now being scored with the very same music that was used to represent the villains. This is a stark reminder that all of us can be inhuman. Even our heroes experience villainy and there is a very thin line that separates good and evil.

The most effective part of this whole scene is that Tarantino effectively puts the gun in our hands. The Basterds and Shosanna used film to live out their fantasy of seeing Hitler and the Nazis die a horrible death. The Germans used their propaganda film to watch their fantasy of killing Americans come to life. And so are we, now, using film to experience the same fantasy. The implications of this fantasy are, to say the very least, horrifically disturbing.

Whatever you felt during this scene, there is no denying that the effect is massive, powerfully effective and thoroughly satisfying. It left me disturbed, yes, but I love that it grasped me so. I loved that I got home and had to sleep with the TV on. I love that it’s still turning through my mind even now.

***END SPOILERS***

So, what we have here is a film that is vastly different that anything you’ve ever seen and yet, it still retains the very singular voice of Quentin Tarantino. It has all the traits of the “new age” Tarantino films, such as killings set to crescendos of Morricone written spaghetti-western film score and a David Bowie song in the very next frame and you also have the signature thoughtfulness and dark humor of his earlier works both fused to make one unique whole. You have the classic self-references (most notably to “Reservoir Dogs” and the inclusion of special cameos by Sam Jackson and Harvey Keitel) and trademark shots. And, don’t be fooled; only Tarantino could have pulled this off. What separates him from other contemporaries that he praises, such as Robert Rodriguez, is his intelligence. I mean, even when it comes to the “Pulp Fiction” or “Reservoir Dogs” shoot-the-shit style of dialogue, there was much more than met the eye… or ear. Make no mistake, the dialogue in films like “Pulp Fiction” were as calculated as any of his fight sequences in “Kill Bill.” They dealt with real issues of righteousness, redemption, masculine worth and fears. In “Basterds,” Tarantino crafts his dialogue to match his visual style, yielding what is his most tense, Hitchcockian in nature and brutal film to date.

I officially dub thee, “Inglourious Basterds,” Kyle’s favorite movie of the summer… and possibly all of 2009.