Inglorious Basterds (Friday, August 21, 2009) (115)

I think if you were planning a big-budget movie to not make money in America and to be totally unpopular with erstwhile fans, you might conceive of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. This is all a bit unfair to open with as this is a very good movie. The reason it's a tough sell is actually the reason why I like it. It's long and cerebral and moves from serious to camp very easily. Basically half of the film is in German or French with subtitles. The biggest marketing aspect - Brad Pitt - is in only about a half hour of the 2:30 that it runs.

The beauty of the film is in the long, long dialogue sequences and in the violent outbursts that separate them. I have not really liked much that QT has done since Pulp Fiction (Jackie Brown was ok and had some good moments), but this is very different from those. Those were almost all genre silliness - but this is genre on top of substance (this sounds pompous of me to say - sorry).

There are two basic story lines in this movie. One is that of Nazi SS Col. Hans Landa, played brilliantly by Christophe Waltz. He is the so-called 'Hunter' because he has an uncanny ability to track down Jews living in hiding in France. In the opening sequence he finds a Jewish family living in a French farmer's cellar. After murdering the parents and almost all of the kids, one daughter gets away. He spends the next few years trying to track down that girl.

The second story is about Brad Pitt, as Lt. Aldo Raine - a quirky Southern American officer whose main passion in life is killing Nazis (or 'Nahtzees', as he says). To do this he enlists Jewish American soldiers to his violent and bloody crew - the Inglorious Basterds. The Basterds scalp Nazi soldiers and beat their heads in with baseball bats. They're ruthless and totally over-the-top in their methods.

The two stories meet when the Basterds attend a movie opening (hosted by Shoshanna, the then-grown Jewish girl, at her Parisian movie theater a few years after the opening) where the Nazi High Command are showing a propaganda film. They plan to kill the Nazis by guns and bombs.

As a friend said to me, the film is basically 20 minutes of dialogue followed by five minutes of extreme, if silly, violence - making it hard for many to sit through (for either the boredom from too much talk or sickness for too much blood). Meanwhile, I loved this flow. The dialogue is fresh and funny and interesting. Characters, like Landa, will spend five or ten minutes talking about their passions and souls - not entirely seriously and almost silly - but totally believable. At one point, when Landa is speaking to the farmer in the first sequence, the farmer pulls out a common pipe to smoke. Landa responds by pulling out his own pipe - a gigantic ivory and silver thing - totally lending his character an air of arrogance and ridiculousness. This is beautifully written and played.

The supporting roles are also interesting and fun. Eli Roth (yes - the same director of schlock horror pics in the Hostel series) is great as the baseball bat wielding Sgt. Donny Donowitz and Melanie Laurent is fantastic as Shoshanna Dreyfus (ok - and she stunningly beautiful).

I love that Tarantino plays with gender/religion/race roles that would be in a B war movie (like the original Inglorious Bastards that this one takes its name and spirit from). Part of our connection to Shoshanna is her freedom and smarts - at one point symbolized by her romantic relationship with a black man. This is a throw-away genre detail - but at the same time a twist of the cliche and genre-bending. The forgettable black man in the B-movie is totally self-aware of his low, disposable status and their deep emotional relationship is a change from the purely carnal erotic relationship of a black man in the typical genre picture.

I've read a bit of commentary about the angry violence directed at the Nazis and at Hitler specifically. Some say it's not constructive and serves to foster less, rather than more, healing. I disagree with this. I think it's wonderful to finally (FINALLY) be able to laugh and enjoy the pure delight of seeing Hitler die in a gruesome and painful way - I mean why not?! We get the emotion and intellectual and moral discussion from the background story. We get the pure visceral delight from seeing Hitler die.

Stars: 3.5 of 4