I Admire Your Pictures Very Much

A Review of "Inglourious Basterds"
By Jeff Webb

There is a scene in the final act of Quentin Tarantino’s WWII drama “Inglourious Basterds” wherein two characters—on opposing sides of the war—shoot each other dead. Said scene is bloody, loud, and fused with wonderful Ennio Morricone music, and, then, Tarantino cuts away from it, as well he should. The characters are dead; their story is done. But, just a couple minutes later, as mayhem ensues in other realms of the story, Tarantino cuts back to the two characters, an overhead shot—almost God-like—looking down on the stillness of the bodies laying side-by-side. It is, perhaps, the most poignant shot in the film.

Likewise, the whole story of “Inglourious Basterds” just might be summed up in that one single shot. Two characters—two forces, essentially, or two ideologies—clash, and they destroy each other in brutal fashion.

Or, perhaps it’s better described with the words of the film’s Lt. Aldo Raine, that he didn’t come all the way from the Smoky Mountains to be humane to the “Natzee” bastards.

In short, war is hell, and both sides, when paired with absolute certainty and fanaticism, are equally capable of destroying one another.

In this meditation on violence, Tarantino does for war movies what Peckinpah’s “Wild Bunch” did for Westerns. That is, Tarantino takes our classic idea of the hero and twists it, perverts it, and, doing so, he reveals that oftentimes the good guys aren’t good.

In this case, it’s the Basterds, a group of American-Jewish soldiers who blaze their way through Europe, scalping and torturing any German soldier that crosses their path. As the audience, we cheer for them because—why? They’re American, yes, and perhaps the Nazis have it coming to them, but do even the Nazis deserve such cruel punishment? And what of the ones who fight more out of compulsion, out of allegiance to home or their fellow countrymen as opposed to out of allegiance to the Fuhrer? Do they deserve to die such horrific deaths?

See, the Basterds use intimidation and torture and suicide-bombings as standard war tactics. Does any of this sound familiar? Yet, we see them as the good guys, and we want them to succeed, but, yet, they are just as savage as the evil in which they fight.

Tarantino isn’t insinuating that the Americans who fought in WWII were just as bad as the Nazis or that they used terrorist tactics, because, in short, this isn’t a real WWII film. It’s an alternate reality, the WWII time period serving more as a filmic allusion than as a historical setting. Tarantino, in his usual style, wanted to make a film that harkened back to war films like “The Dirty Dozen” and Spaghetti-Westerns like “Once Upon a Time in the West.” The WWII setting simply provides Tarantino a setting in which to blend those two genres.

After that blending, though, the story becomes entirely his. He distorts history to his own means, as any artist should. However, to dismiss “Inglourious Basterds” for this reason is a tremendous mistake, for, even with its distortions, it is, still, perhaps one of the best war films to emerge from Hollywood in recent years. The commentary on violence and justice, feminism and nationalism—it’s all there, handled maturely, handled well.

However, perhaps what is most interesting about the film is one of its many subplots. In this case, the subplot revolving around the premiere of a German propaganda film entitled “Nation’s Pride,” and the pride, indeed, the Germans take in such a film. They watch and cheer as a German sniper kills hundreds of Allied troops, and, at the same time, we watch and cheer as a squad of American soldiers kill German troops. This cannot be coincidence on Tarantino’s part. No, this is his own propaganda film, and, perhaps the only reason we ever find ourselves cheering for the Basterds is because Tarantino, very subtly, has conditioned us that way. The Germans are presented on ominous terms, the Americans on light terms. This is Tarantino’s own propaganda film making a statement about propaganda. That is, we are all capable of being fooled, of being roped in under false pretenses, of being tricked by our governments, or, on a more personal basis, our friends, for a thread of deceit runs all throughout the film.

“Inglourious Basterds” is not Tarantino’s best film; that would still be “Pulp Fiction.” However, in its layering of theme and story, it is his most complex film, his one most provocative for discussion. And that’s a good thing.

On a technical level, the film is near perfect. The cinematography—especially in the first fifteen minutes—is so beautiful and, at times, so unbelievably tense, almost delivering Hitchcock-like suspense. As for the acting, there is not a single weak performance. Much has been said of Eli Roth’s Bear Jew, but Roth, exuding arrogance and temper, does just as the part requires. The true stand-outs of the film, though, as many other reviewers have commented, are Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa and Melanie Laurent as Shosanna. Both of them, especially Waltz, deserve nominations when the time comes.

For those that love movies, “Inglourious Basterds” is all the more wonderful with its frequent allusions to older films. For those that don’t necessarily possess quite an encyclopedic knowledge of film as Tarantino does, that’s okay; the film still has much merit. It teaches us about violence, about war, and, with its epic theatre atmosphere, it constantly removes us from the story, asking us to see it objectively, to see it as it is: a story. Thus, at the end of things, we can view it clearly, that the Basterds are just bastards and the Natzees are just Nazis, and there is just so much hatred, so much aggression, that it all just explodes in a hail of gunfire, dynamite, and celluloid.