“Inglourious Basterds” follows two story lines: a revenge story of a young Jewish-French girl Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), whose family was killed on orders of Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), and that of a group of Jewish-Americans known as the ‘Basterds’, whose job it is to terrorize and kill Nazis. Both stories develop independently and converge on one explosive, history-changing night at a movie theater owned by Shoshanna.
“Inglourious Basterds” is a bombastic ode to and parody of WWII movies, drenched in Quentin Taratino’s, the film's director and writer, distinct style. From the use of on-screen words, insane violence, tongue-in-cheek song selection, extensive and thorough dialogue, and a feeling that ‘whoever made this movie had a lot of fun doing so’, it’s clear that “Inglourious Basterds” is 100% Quentin Taratino’s baby.
“Kill Bill” (Taratino’s previous release) has a similar vibe, but ultimately the film was vastly inferior to his previous work. Where “Kill Bill” failed to deliver, “Inglourious Basterds” did very well. “Kill Bill” was bogged down by endless violence and was way too long, to the point that the emotional impact of the story loses potency. “Inglourious Basterds” corrects both of these problems. I like Tarantino movies a certain way, with the constant dialogue scenes to violent scenes ratio at about 6:1. That seems like a lot of dialogue, but Tarantino has an amazing ability to turn a scene of two characters talking at a table for 10 minutes incredibly entertaining and grippingly suspenseful. Tarantino has mastered his style at this point, which means that “Inglourious” is blatantly egotistical and over-the-top. Luckily for us viewers, Tarantino’s self-indulgence is our enjoyment. He also found a great cast to make his style work; particularly Christoph Waltz as the Hans Landa aka the "Jew Hunter", and one of my favorite current actors, Michael Fassbender, as well as Melanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Brad Pitt, August Diehl and Daniel Bruhl.
However, I do not believe the movie would have worked without the Oscar-winning performance by Christoph Waltz. His character is so polite, articulate, quirky, brilliant, deranged, likable and incredibly entertaining to watch that the awesome-bad-guy effect occurs, when an antagonist is so awesome and interesting to the point that the viewer in a way wants the bad guy to win, even at the expense of the protagonist (think Heath Ledger’s Joker, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh, and Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector).
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| Christoph Waltz won an Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance of Hans Landa. |
Along with brilliant and entertaining dialogue, Tarantino's direction is spot-on, the visuals are very well done, the characters are well written and interesting, and the movie builds in suspense to its ridiculous climax, with each scene as entertaining and brilliant as the last. Another thing that Tarantino does well is letting scenes develop. He feels no need to keep rushing through the plot, he is confident enough to let the acting and dialogue carry scenes to lengths that would make 99% of directors nervous. To illustrate this point compare the number of scenes in “Inglourious Basterds” (I would say about 25 or so) to the number of scenes in David Fincher’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (48,391). Not to say that one style is correct and is the only one that works, but I much prefer the slower, more deliberate style.
“Inglourious Basterds,” in my humble opinion, standing against the rest of Quentin Tarantino’s exceptional movies, is eclipsed only by a certain “Pulp Fiction.” The tone of “Pulp Fiction" is much more consistent and is just a better crafted film, while “Inglourious Basterds” feels like it is ultimately a medium for Tarantino’s excesses, as delightful as they may be.
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