Inglourious Basterds

With an enormous amount of caution, I walked into Inglourious Basterds back in August. Though I'm a huge fan of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, no amount of force would get me to admit that the two Kill Bill films and Death Proof were anything more than over-the-top, indulgent japes that only proved exactly how much of a huge and smug film geek Quentin Tarantino is (and despite all of that past film geekery, he apparently watches no movies anymore, based on some of the choices in his best of the past decade; Anything Else? Seriously?)

Though Tarantino focusing his eye on a World War II revenge fantasy ostensibly about a platoon of Jewish-American soldiers lead by a cheerfully sadistic Southern military man seemed intriguing, I worried that all he would do is have his characters spout faux-cool dialogue and then splatter gore all over for somewhere near four hours. Perhaps because Inglourious Basterds isn't nearly as much about the titular characters, even though it's plenty long, plenty talky, and plenty gory. The film made a lot of money, and is likely going to get a fair amount of Academy Award nominations in a few weeks, but it could have easily been a victim of bad marketing.

That faulty marketing is one of my only problems with this incredibly tense, fierce, and enjoyable romp through Nazi-occupied France. The majority of the Basterds only show up for one sequence, and they barely register. There are eight soldiers, plus the leader, plus a surprise wild card. And only about five of them have lines, let alone major character parts. No, this movie is more of an ensemble, introducing us to a truly vile yet completely shrewd Nazi, a vengeful young Jewish woman who has one of the best poker faces, a sly British soldier, and a shrill Adolf Hitler (is there another kind?). Oh, and then there are the Basterds. They're not unimportant, but from the trailers, you'd assume Brad Pitt and his Jewish fighting buddies are in every scene of this 150-minute war drama. Not the case.

Frankly, whatever problems I have with the movie lie with the Basterds. Why are there so many of them, when only a few have lines? Why is a recognizable young comedian like Samm Levine or Paul Rust, or even B.J. Novak (probably most recognizable thanks to his role on The Office and certainly a performer with a bit more to do) in the movie at all? Who can say, especially when the only well-known deleted scene involved a flashback to the life of Donny Donowitz, also known as the Bear Jew, due to his proclivity with a baseball bat when it comes to Nazis. However, whatever flaws I have with the movie basically boil down to: if you're going to feature all of these characters, have more movie. Damn good problem to have.

After watching Inglourious Basterds in theatres, I had a bit of an issue with the finale, which proves exactly how much of an alternate history Tarantino was interested in creating (for the still-uninitiated, I'll say that the war doesn't end in 1945). In only this scene does the famed auteur seem interested in portraying a live-action cartoon as opposed to something that could have really happen. Sure, there wasn't a guy named Donowitz, he didn't have a baseball bat to bash in Nazis, there wasn't a guy named Hans Landa, but the majority of the movie actually feels like it's real. The ending, not just for the obvious reasons, feels fake.

Or, rather, it felt fake. I've watched the film two more times since getting it on Blu-ray, and damn, is this fun. I can't say it's as fun as the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, but watching the major set pieces unfold, as calmly and patiently as possible, is as exciting as anything else I've seen in film this year. I imagine some of the people who saw the movie were a bit bored during, say, the opening scene set in a French dairy farm where Col. Hans Landa of the SS interrogates the farmer without actually interrogating or sounding anything less than friendly. Perhaps they were turned off during the 30-minute scene set in a French tavern, as members of the Basterds attempt to get some intel on a Nazi film premiere in Paris, to bloody effect. All I can say is that those scenes, and countless others, unraveled with so much building tension that it remains one of the more uniquely unnerving films I've seen in a while.

With one notable exception, the cast here is excellent. Brad Pitt is fun and proves that when he's given a character with personality, he's actually enjoyable to watch. Diane Kruger, as a flashy German movie star with a traitorous streak, is also clever, but doesn't make that much of a mark. Melanie Laurent, as Shoshana, the young Jew who ends up owning the cinema where the Nazis premiere their latest piece of propaganda, however, is amazing. Her face-off scene with Landa is breathlessly scary, and her final sigh of relief is a stand-in for the audience's gasps. The exception is, of course, Eli Roth, a director who's...well, he doesn't make movies I'd want to watch, and his acting style is just as over-the-top as I figured it'd be. Granted, his character isn't exactly low-key, but he doesn't help things out. I won't say too much about Christoph Waltz, as Landa, because what else can I say but echo his brilliance? I want an Oscar in his hand, now.

Is Inglourious Basterds, as Tarantino self-referentially states in the film's last line, a masterpiece? It's certainly his best film since 1994's Pulp Fiction, and one of the best films of the year. The word "masterpiece" is too often thrown around movies, but I can say that, after three viewings, and two of them at home, this movie has become one of my favorite films of the year, something that will get more rewatchable as time goes by. The 2000s hadn't been a good decade, in my opinion, for Quentin Tarantino, but he salvaged himself at the very end of 2009. Thank God.