Adolescent Fantasy

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2009)

It is interesting that the day after I saw this movie, I saw a B/W WWII movie, "Sahara," with Humphrey Bogart in the lead role. It was a much better movie to me than the pretentious interpretation of war savagery envisioned by Tarantino. That 1943 movie had a quality of realism Tarantino's did not: the action was plausible, the actors seemed like actual humans. Tarantino's movie is for all intents and purposes a video game rendered in cinematic form. I can understand why it appeals to many; like a video game, it has its intriguing moments. A lot of people like hardcore video games. A lot of people like the violence in video games...
On the plus side, there are some true strengths to IB. The lighting, and color, and camera work are at times very very good. But they are not consistent: Tarantino must have watched WWII movies before making this and occasionally mimics the static single angle camera, almost as homage to those films. There is one shot of Laurent bathed in the light of the projectors worthy capture for a museum.... Truly beautiful cinema at times. The acting is wonderful. Brad Pitt shines: his charicatured good ol' boy from the American south never falters. Chris Waltz's "Jew Hunter" evil SS man should place in Oscar contention for Best Supporting actor, he's excellent. The entire cast is very very good. Taratino's writing (if he in fact is the writer... Tarantino has used others' talent previously and claimed it as his own) sparkles. Laurent is also most believable as the French cinema owner with an ax to grind.
I only wish Tarantino was more grounded as a human being. His puerile fantasy could easily have been a more credible movie. What he has produced is art, but it is not art rendered by a mature artist with polished composition. My complaint is his inability to create anything with serious depth. His movie works on many levels but fails totally on one in particular: credibility.
Damn shame, that. Work this good deserves to be taken to that next level. And even though Tarantino will disavow that his intent is anything more than reveling in movie making and the glorification of cinema, I don't believe him. I don't think he is capable of taking a movie to that missing realism---it is missing in him.
On a personal note, I also believe that QTarantino is incapable of understanding human suffering past an intellectual construct of it. He is so cerebral he studies human cruelty just as a child pulls wings off a fly without any empathic sense of the event. Those who enjoy violence, cruelty, won't get this themselves, but there is strong rationale for making violence hideous since we are already so desensitized to it. Tarantino will himself not understand what I just suggested. I don't think he feels as much he thinks about feelings. He lives in his head, not his heart. Empathy is for Tarantino an abstract concept.
I give this movie a 7.5 . . . . it is in ways much better than that but the storyline left me wishing for more so much so it detracted from my final experience. Tasty with the first mouthful, but a little bland after the final swallow.