Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds
Starring: Brad Pitt, Mike Myers
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Inglourious Basterds...You walked out of the theater either loving or hating this film, so far the people seem to be loving it over the latter. What makes this film so successful? Aside from being another Tarantino pop culture explosion, Quentin employs a whole new arsenal of story telling and script structure techniques to give the classic Tarantino flavor a whole new twist as he tackles his hand at his first war epic.
The first thing that separates this film from other Tarantino films is this is his first film dominated by foreign languages. Every nationality in the film speaks their respected language, but they also cross over languages here and there. The Germans speak German, as well as Italian, and English; and they speak it very well. The Americans and the English speak English, sparse Italian, and German, but not as fluently as required to remain undercover under the Gestapo's reign. The Bastards periodically require translators to speak to their Nazi prisoners. At the beginning of the film, Col. Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz, tricks the Jews hiding beneath the floor boards of the farmer's house by speaking english to the farmer, so the hiding jews would not understand them. These are just a few examples of how even the languages themselves, become characters in the story. The language and even the accent in which you speak it can make or break the perfect cover.
This brings us to another key element that makes the film interesting. We all know history and all the stories of the Nazi's being savage killing machines without mercy. But in the film they do a complete role reversal. The Third Reich appears to be the mild mannered innocents and the Bastards are the savage, ruthless murderers. But since we know what the Nazis have done, we get even more enjoyment when the bastards kill the Nazis in the most brutal ways possible. We also favor the bastards so much merely because of the face that they are the only characters in the film that speak English. We eagerly await to see Aldo Raine on screen just to be able to understand what he is saying, among other reasons.
Moving on to the structure of the chapters and the formula approach to the story. The film runs close to the 3 hour mark with long blocks of dialogue interspersed with quick, explosive action sequences to keep us interested in the next block of dialogue. We as the audience accept the long monologues and dreary dialogue sequences because we know we will be rewarded with fast paced, gritty, bloody good old fashioned Tarantino ultra violence. Another element is the incredible attention paid to the detail of film posters seen throughout the background of the film. Film itself is another character of the story. Bridgette Von Hammersmark is a famous German film actress, Shosanna Dreyfus has been hiding from the Gestapo by running a cinema theater, Fredrick Zoller's heroism to the Nazi party is expressed through the film "Nation's Pride", the famous German film director G.W. Pabst is mentioned quite often, and the entire climatic ending takes place at the movie theater. Even early in the film Aldo Raine off handedly mentions that seeing Donowitz beat Nazis with a baseball bat is as close as the Bastards get to going to the movies.
To wrap it up, Tarantino has really done it this time. He uses many old tactics from previous films that worked, and floored them ten fold to an entirely new level of story telling. Many people say that this film has ultimately ended the World War II film, in a good way. I agree, I don't think I could ever see another World War II film without thinking of Inglourious Basterds. Good thing Speilberg got in Schindler's List while he still had the chance. I give Inglourious Bastards 5 stars, but probably not for someone expecting a historically accurate depiction of WWII.