“Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France...”
So begins Quentin Tarantino’s latest opus, Inglourious Basterds. The film is a shining example of what continues to make Tarantino one of today’s most compelling directors: his near perfect ear for dialogue, the nuances of his characters and an ability to build tension that would make Hitchcock proud. Oh yeah, and a smattering of violence just to point out how obsessed our culture is with it.
As has always been the case, Tarantino is a director drunk with films and the history of cinema. Perhaps no other working director is as aware of the power of film to change history (which he takes full advantage of in Basterds), and history’s effects on film. Watch as he name checks Charlie Chaplin and some of the greats of German cinema in the same scene, or the way that the bulk of the kick-ass soundtrack is Ennio Morricone music. Tarantino is some kind of wonder DJ of a director, blending everything together into a perfect piece of celluloid.
Besides, there’s a rare joy that comes from hearing Tarantino’s dialogue in no less than four languages: French, English, Italian and German.
Basterds – which is broken up into five chapters – takes place over four years in Nazi occupied France. The title refers to a group of Jewish-Americans lead by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a man who has some Apache blood flowing through his veins, and uses his ancestors' example as a way to disrupt and dishearten the German people. From all the men in his group he asks for one hundred Nazi scalps, each. “And I want my scalps,” he growls in a gritty Tennessee accent.
Playing against him – although the characters don’t meet until the climax of the film – is Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), better known as “The Jew Hunter.” Waltz is the Nazi’s head man when it comes to finding people, and a load of the film's tension comes when he encounters Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a French Jew whose family had Waltz had killed. Dreyfus runs a cinema in Paris, and when a smitten Nazi hero brings a bunch of the Nazi higher-ups – including the Furher himself – to her theatre for a movie premiere, her plan for revenge and the Basterds all converge.
Viewers will have to throw out what they know from high school history for the ending, but that’s okay. What’s going on is too entertaining – and more than just a little cathartic – to suspend disbelief. Tarantino choreographs the final gun-fight like a spaghetti-western on steroids, and it’s a beauty.
All the actors are in top form, but three deserve special mention. Pitt is comic gold, bringing a hilarious mix of dry wit, violence and Americanism to Raine. Watching him not at all hiding his thick southern accent as he speaks Italian will have your sides splitting.
Laurent is a wonder as Shosanna. The sheer fortitude she brings to her character is amazing, all the more so when she loses it for a moment after meeting Landa three years after her family’s murder. Her final speech – fittingly, it’s a small movie – is as a prime example of vengeance personified.
The real winner, however, is Waltz. He imbues Landa with a perverse charm and ability to disarm someone verbally without missing a beat in any language. Waltz is so good you almost find yourself rooting for him, which considering what he stands for, is saying something indeed.
At the film’s end, as Lt. Raine looks at a bit of his handiwork, he comments, “You know what? I think this might be my masterpiece.” Go see Inglourious Basterds, and you’ll feel the same way about Tarantino. There’s nothing inglourious about it.
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