Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

[Jerry Saravia]

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Four stars

For the most absurd and powerful revisionist war movie in eons, you
can't get any better than "Inglourious Basterds," the loopiest and
most entertaining Tarantino flick since his "Kill Bill" series. To
call it only riveting and exciting is to underrate it - it is a movie
largely about movies. It is about dazzling the audience and thrilling
them to no end with one galvanizing moment of intensity after another.
It is so damn enthralling and exasperating an experience, so blackly
funny and so blood-chillingly and brazenly violent with such top-notch
performances that I am almost ready to say it rivals "Pulp Fiction."
In fact, it does.

The Basterds are comprised of some Army soldiers during World War II
whose job is to hunt and kill Nazis. The way to prove you killed a
Nazi is to scalp them, and if you find a Nazi and let them go, you
carve their foreheads with the forbidden swastika - a Scarlet Letter
of shame. Tennessee-born Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is the leader of
the pack of Basterds. One member of the Basterds includes a nearly
psychotic baseball bat-wielding Donny Donowitz, known as "The Bear
Jew" (Eli Roth, surprisingly charismatic). The rest are the archetypes
of most 20th century WWII movies including a startlingly beautiful
French Jew, Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), who owns a Parisian
cinema where she is forced to show German propaganda films; a British
film critic and expert on German cinema no less, Lt. Archie Hicox
(Michael Fassebender), who is also a spy; and a glorious German movie
starlet, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), also a spy.

The plot involves the Basterds' ultimate mission: to kill Hitler,
Goebbels and the whole Third Reich in the very movie theatre owned by
Shosanna by setting fire to a few dozen nitrate movie reels. If this
mission, known as Operation Kino, succeeds then World War II is over.
Yes, I know, we never heard such nonsense when we learned about World
War II in school but Tarantino isn't so much making a historical film
about war - he is brave enough to rewrite it to fit his own universe.
Back to the mission: a certain dashing, charming, suave and cunning
Nazi may serve as an obstruction. He is Hans Landa (the amazing
Christoph Waltz), who has a calm demeanor and is extraordinarily
intelligent in obtaining information. He can find a Jewish family
hiding out in the French countryside, ascertain the proprietor of a
high heeled shoe in the aftermath of a massacre, and can speak
English, German and Italian with ease. He is the most delectably
frightnening villain in all of Tarantino's ouevre - an officer who can
make anyone quiver and spill the truth without the need of a lie
detector test. Can the Basterds stop this nasty Nazi and finish the
war with Jewish-American suicide bombers and dozens of nitrate film
reels?

"Inglourious Basterds" is the work of a master director who combines
and mixes his love of all war movies into a socko and comical epic
punch of a movie. As I stressed before, he is not making a traditional
war movie nor is he making a serious treatise on war - he is making a
war movie about war movies. But even more interestingly, he adds
touches of humanity even in the face of such homage - the movie is in
quotes and full of irony but there is something deeper here that
touches on war in a way that perhaps war movies have not touched upon,
post-"Saving Private Ryan." For example, there is the Sergio Leone
opening (complete with a score that is reminiscent of Leone's
spaghetti westerns) with the dairy farmer harboring Jews underneath
the floorboards of his home. Landa pays a visit and eventually
discovers that there are Jews hidden under the kitchen. When the dairy
farmer tries to fight back tears, knowing that he had to give away
their presence (and Landa knows it too), it becomes unbearably tense
and it is tinged with regret - this war makes everyone quiver and
shake in their boots. Also consider the Bear Jew who beats a Nazi to
death with a baseball bat - the other Nazis have surrended and see
this horrific display of brutality with tears in their eyes. Such
scenes show that Quentin Tarantino may be a demonic hell-raiser of a
filmmaker, but he is also in touch with the humanity in horror from
both the good guys and the bad.

And then there is the French tavern sequence which rivals even
Hitchcock for building suspense and tension. It is so uniquely
unsettling this sequence that I would say it is among the greatest
suspense sequences of all time. I won't give much away except that it
involves a German actress, a few drinks, a name-guessing game and some
spies masquerading as Nazis. It is all in the telling details (like
how a German is supposed to order a drink) that give away the spies'
true identities. "Reservoir Dogs" also dealt with identity but, here,
it is almost phantasmagoric in its unnerving atmosphere and tension.

But there is so much more to enjoy. I would give a laundry list of
fantastic, tantalizing scenes but there is one that is etched in my
memory. The vision of Shosanna Dreyfus in her precious movie theatre
where her projected laugh on the silver screen in the face of Nazi
deaths will linger (not to mention an aural accompaniment preceding
the climax with David Bowie singing the musical theme from "Cat
People") is haunting and poetic, more so than anything else I can
recall from Tarantino. It is as if Tarantino was recalling the imagery
of Fritz Lang's own striking noir tales, or even aping to some degree
the climax of Lang's own "Metropolis."

And there is the cast, which is as wonderful an ensemble as one can
imagine. Brad Pitt does his Southern twang perfectly, and most notable
is the memorable scene where he rounds up the troops and explains what
he expects from them. I would not count this as his best role (that
honor would go to "Fight Club") but it is a colorful, hilarious role
for the Pitt Man (tell me you simultaneously won't laugh and cringe
when he pretends to be an Italian at a German movie premiere). Also
worth mentioning is Eli Roth who is suitably effective and mean enough
as the notorious Bear Jew; the almost unrecognizable Mike Myers as a
British officer; Rod Taylor who came out of retirement to play Winston
Churchill; Daniel Brohl (who really seems to come out of that 40's
era) as Frederick Zoller, a Nazi war hero and movie star who can't
bear to watch his own life story in the film within the film,
"Nation's Pride"; the aforementioned Michael Fassbender as the classy
British spy who also seems to have dropped in from that era as well,
and Diane Kruger as the sophisticated German movie star in undoubtedly
the best role she's played by far (you'll quickly forget she was in
"Troy" and "National Treasure").

But there is the piece of de resistance, the man whose glowering eyes
and piercing charms will resonate long after the movie is over. He is
Christoph Waltz, an actor who makes all other Nazis in the history of
cinema look pale by comparison. This is an actor who epitomizes the
phrase "devilish charm." He is so evil, so cunning, so humorous, so
subtle and so damn charming that I am surprised that the Hitler of
this movie didn't quake in his boots at the mere mention of his name,
Hans Landa. Shudder, shudder, shudder. Waltz should win the Oscar for
playing the most devious Nazi ever, one who so relishes a Nantucket
Bay home after the war is over. Playing one of the great villains of
all time, Waltz waltzes away with this movie, hands down.

Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is a complete masterpiece
of pop cinema, with Tarantino at his absolute peak and in full control
of his own vision of war as a playful and violent diversion. I don't
think he can top it, but then I didn't think he could top "Pulp
Fiction." Well, he did. After the cartoonish carnival of the "Kill
Bill" volumes, the grindhouse spin of "Death Proof," and the mature
love story of "Jackie Brown," he has delivered his finest achievement
to date. It is more than a movie - it is a reminder of the art of the
cinema in all its lush glory and vivid entertainment.


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