Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
8/30/09
Hundreds
of billions of taxpayer dollars are poured into disastrously managed companies
judged “too big to fail” with little or no accountability. Political
administrations both Democrat and Republican blatantly break the law without
punishment because we're “looking forward, not back”. Pro athletes
and celebrities literally get away with murder. If you're frustrated
by the nagging sense that nobody ever gets what they have coming anymore,
has Quentin Tarantino got a story to tell you! Tossing out insignificant
things like facts and history, his 8th feature unleashes the full fury
of Hollywood on one of the 20th Century's least sympathetic parties:
the Nazi party, to be specific. Inglourious Basterds writes
a new ending to World War II that should delight anybody who's ever mused
that Hitler and Company got off too easily in their ultimate fates.
But while his payback is indeed a bitch, the Pulp Fiction auteur
is just as good with the quiet moments, constructing a literate, suspenseful,
funny thriller that knows more about the movies than just about anybody
watching it. And also knows how to bust heads.
The
film unfolds in five “chapters”. First, we watch “The Jew Hunter”
Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) politely put the screws to a French farmer
(Denis Menochet) who's hiding Jewish refugees beneath his floorboards.
There is only one survivor, and four years later she grows up to be Shosanna
Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) hiding out in Paris as the owner of a movie theater.
She happens to catch the eye of Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a young
German war hero who's the toast of Berlin thanks to a stand against the
Americans that's had him labeled “The German Sgt. York”. Joseph Goebbels
(Sylvester Groth) has created a new movie called Nation's Pride
about Zoller's heroism (the kid plays himself, of course), and plans the
biggest premiere ever. Hoping to curry favor with Shosanna, Zoller
persuades the Nazis (including chief of security Landa) to hold it at her
theater. The notion of the entire Nazi high command within her walls
means only one thing to her: a plan to burn her movie palace to the
ground with them trapped inside. Meanwhile, American Lt. Aldo Raine
(Brad Pitt) has assembled a multinational force to penetrate behind enemy
lines and strike terror into the hearts of the Nazis. The “Bastards”,
to quote Raine are “not in the prisoner taking business. We're in
the killin' Nazis business. And business is boomin'.” Scalping
and bludgeoning the dead and carving swastikas into the foreheads of the
survivors, they spread a demoralizing message of terror through the Nazi
ranks. When word of the Nazi premiere gets out, the Bastards are
assigned to assist Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) and the British
government's inside woman, actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger)
with a plan to smuggle explosives inside. As all parties, including
Adolph Hitler (Martin Wuttke) himself, converge at the premiere, where
Landa's cleverness will be tested to its' limits, and Goebbels' film will
have to share the bill with one created by Shosanna's herself...
Here's
what Quentin Tarantino does: he puts quirky, intimidating characters
together for long scenes where they tell each other stories or banter about
pop culture as they jockey for position, waiting for the moment when violence
breaks out. As cool as this formula is with mobsters and kung fu
masters, it seems tailor-made for this trip behind enemy lines, where he
matches the pure terror of coming face-to-face with the Nazis against two
sheer forces of vengeance. Yes, he does like to listen to himself
write, but Tarantino's dialog really is as good as it thinks it is, and
he's assembled a cast that's totally capable of pulling it off.
Some
will puzzle over the mad liberties Tarantino has taken with history, but
I think they're key to Basterds' appeal. This is a movie set
in a parallel universe, to be sure, not only because of what occurs there
but also because of the moral context in which it does so. Inglourious
Basterds exists in a world where while there is right and wrong, but
no limitation on what is permissible in the defense of it. The Nazis HAVE
IT COMING, and it doesn't matter if you feel bad about being a Nazi, doesn't
matter if you were just following orders. The Bastards will bash
your skull in with a baseball bat, cheerfully open fire on you until bullets
have broken your body down beyond recognition or carve a swastika into
your forehead on the off chance they decide to let you go. And that's
tame compared to what Shossana has in store for the guests at her premiere.
In fact, that finale is like a vision of Hell, or at least Judgment.
And the Nazis in attendance have been sitting there begging for it, laughing
and cheering their way through Nation's Pride. Inglourious
Basterds is not so much a movie about right and wrong as a movie about
“Oh, yeah? Well my switchblade says you're NOT getting away with
that.” And I'd be lying to say it didn't feel really good.
And
it's precisely because the movie is so amoral that the dialog scenes remain
so tense. When Landa interrogates the farmer, when Wicki, von Hammersmark
and two Bastards try to persuade a bar full of Nazis that they're all Germans,
when Shosanna is grilled first by Goebbels and then by Landa, neither of
whom have an inkling who she really is, those scenes are all the more uncomfortable
because you can imagine the horrors that await anyone who is found out.
The bar scene is particularly interesting in the way it covers all kinds
of superfluous ground including a charades-like game that becomes packed
with subtext because of the possibilities that the Nazi officer seated
with the heroes will guess more than the name on the card pasted to his
forehead. And while the scenes have a way of going on and on, they're
never dull, because Tarantino keeps the lines clever during the slow spots
and really delivers the violent goods once he gets around to it.
And
until then, he's got some great characters, extremely well played.
The headlines will go to German TV actor Waltz in his first major English-language
role, and he's truly superb. Landa is a Monster, but he's a calm,
cool, intelligent monster who believes those things make him better than
his fellow Nazis and free to put all allegiance below that to himself.
In fact, I think I can safely say that no one going in will be able to
guess Landa's ultimate fate, or the role he plays in the ultimate fates
of the other characters. But part of the reason for that is because
he behaves like a 2000's CEO rather than a Nazi mastermind, and while Tarantino's
busy piling on the subtext about modern day sins, it's to the actor's credit
that he keeps us right in his intended era by never losing his oily, essential
Naziness. In fact, it's the very fact that he's so urbane that makes
his explosions of violence so shocking.
But
he's more than matched in shocking violence by his adversaries, the Bastards.
Pitt is a hoot and a half as Raine, but he does more than just deliver
the one-liners. This seems like a really dangerous guy, and the Southern
accent he affects is good for both jobs: making his casual violence
more endearing and also making him seem more like a guy who knows how to
get his hands dirty. He presides over a team that's really good at
the dirty-hands stuff, led by Eli Roth, the Hostel director who
carries his own uber-violent subtext, as Sgt. Donny Donowitz, known by
the Nazis as “The Bear Jew”. Donny's talent is smashing in heads
with baseball bats, and the Bastards make this brutal act into full theater
for a single survivor who spreads the word. Roth's savagery in the
role is particularly effective at the end, when he's only too happy to
add as many briquettes to Shosanna's fire as he can. And Til Schweiger
is utterly awesome as the Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, a former Nazi who killed
pretty much every German officer he could get his hands on even while allegedly
on their side. Fassbinder nails that WWII British cool, even if Hicox
isn't quite as slick as he believes, and Kruger does a great job of being
just the right amount less than trustworthy as the double agent we never
really know whether to trust.
On
the Parisian side of the story, Laurent is a revelation as Shosanna.
Maybe it's precisely the fact that she can't summon deference to the Germans
that makes them all so interested in her, but either way her utterly damaged
soul is a ticking time bomb every second she's on screen, and when it blows,
it does not disappoint. Bruhl does a great job of putting on the
charm, making it hard to see how this guy could have killed so many in
battle, until it's not any more. And the historical Nazis are appropriately
odious, with Groth luxuriating in Goebbels' megalomania and Wuttke pitching
his Hitler just right for the movie's demands: a craven bastard all
his own who's starting to slip and needs to be put down before he gets
a chance to do it himself.
It's
not by coincidence that Tarantino has concocted a scenario by which cinema
is the downfall of the Nazis. Ingorious Basterds is awash
in trivia and knowledge of German film history and filmed with a relentless
eye toward the history of WWII movies. Many of the character names
reference one of more historical figures and/or movie characters, and if
you recognize them all you should get an honorary film degree because you're
ahead of 99.9% of the moviegoing public. But it's cool to pick out what
you can, from shot compositions lifted from everything from the cinema
of the time period to Spaghetti Westerns, to a score that's not afraid
to throw in everything from Ennio Morricone to David Bowie, whose “Cat
People (Putting out the Fire)” makes an unforgettable backdrop to the opening
moments of Chapter 5 (the wonderfully titled “Revenge of the Giant Face”).
Tarantino's movies are more and more crazy collages of pop culture, and
when we break for Samuel L. Jackson's perfectly WWII-inappropriate narrator
to explain to us the flammability of nitrate film stock or to present a
blaxploitation-style montage on the exploits of Stiglitz, the pure joy
he takes in everything that's ever been committed to film shines through.
Inglourious
Basterds will likely divide audience pretty sharply between those who're
picking up what it puts down and those who're appalled by the sight of
it. It's bloody, violent, depraved, self-amused and utterly delightful.
In other words, it's Tarantino. And his new movie is a nice chance
to daydream about a few deserving people taking a baseball bat to the head
from the comfort of an amoral alternate universe. |
