Inglorious Failure

Rating: 1/10 (25 September 2010)

The failure of "Inglourious Basterds" is the failure of "Death Proof" and the "Kill Bill" films. After "Jackie Brown" Tarantino jettisoned any concern with gripping storytelling and decided to focus on constructing fan-boyish collages, like an amateur film maker recreating his favorite moments from the movies. Perhaps though this change of direction for Tarantino isn't merely a matter of choice–he may simply be burned out in terms of generating story ideas. After all, one can't be gifted in every facet. Tarantino can direct and construct involving, musical dialog–but the man may no longer be capable of originating good stories, and his best work — Pulp Fiction — may have been a fluke as far as HIS contribution to the story of the film is concerned. After all, Roger Avery wrote a third of the script, though he merely gets a "stories" co-credit. "Reservoir Dogs" lifted its most important plot and story elements from the Hong Kong film "City On Fire" from the late 80s. And "Jackie Brown" — his second best work — was an adaptation of a work by a writer who Tarantino drew a lot of inspiration from. But Tarantino has given several interviews in which he claimed that he is very distanced from "Jackie Brown," a distance that no doubt stems from the fact that when audiences see it they can't help but appreciate Elmore Leonard as much as Tarantino. In Hollywood, the writer-director is the most prestigious position. But many of the greatest directors have, of course, depended for ideas on novelists and screen-writers. Perhaps Tarantino doesn't care to stoop so low as them again.
In Kill Bill, what happened to the Bride, and her subsequent quest, was largely goofy. Rather than taking a true risk and making an actual film which involved revenge, Tarantino chose a cheaper, satirical route, so that the revenge quest was treated so satirically and frivolously as to preempt any criticism of the film's plot or characters, i.e, the "it's bad on purpose!" defense. The only way to criticize the film was to take issue with the whole cold exercise and observe that Tim Roth getting shot in the stomach in "Reservoir Dogs" and the audience squirming in their seats as he bled profusely was preferable to Sofie Fatale getting her arm chopped off and the audience laughing.
There is no good story in Inglourious Basterds either, and just as in Kill Bill the revenge and dealing out of justice are treated too outlandishly to be taken seriously as plots. It isn't that the lack of seriousness which undermines the story but that the lack of seriousness covers up the poor nature of the storytelling. We are asked to accept the premise of The Basterds solely on the basis of such a group of characters having been featured in World War 2 films previously. There is no reason for the "Basterds" to be comprised primarily of Jews except that Tarantino requires it to fit in with the revenge theme. And it is not required that the film be replete with overt verbal allusions to cinematic figures other that Tarantino wants to be too cute by half.
The use of chapter breaks in Pulp Fiction elegantly delineated the separate plot threads. Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds (and in Kill Bill) has become dependent on chapter breaks as a way to cut into any scene without having to get there through a narrative. Why establish the details of how Shoshana came to possess her a new identity and a theater? Just cut to the exact place the character needs to be to enact her revenge! Why, indeed, bother with the details of how to get from one set piece to another? Just give each one it's own "chapter" to relieve the director/writer and the audience of the bothersome details of a smooth narrative.
Gratuitousness abounds. We aren't shown the bodies of the murdered Jews, yet we're given full view of the scalping of Nazi soldiers. Did Tarantino think that the former undercut his whole "lolzviolence!" shtick? In two instances a narrator intrudes and embellishes arbitrary details. Michael Fassbender's character is painstakingly introducedonly to lamely die the next scene. Tarantino kills of Shoshana in an anti-climatic fashion just so he can resurrect her on the big screen. Two of the Basterds get so carried away in pummeling the Nazis at the theater with bullets that they forget the bombs they're strapped to, but just why they would be suicidal isn't made clear.
But it doesn't make sense, I suppose, to get too worked up over any of its details. As said before, the only recourse is to question the whole exercise and the artistic dead-end it represents. The films of the post-Jackie Brown Tarantino will not inspire anyone. They are the products of a fearful film maker aware that, like Orson Wells, he made his greatest film too young. And rather than settling into a comfortable routine of Jackie Brown like films–i.e, substantive and effective thrillers not stylistically overdone based on novels or screenplays not by him– he has opted to produce a flow of pastiches whose failure on a storytelling and character level critics won't hold him accountable for due to the -mere exercise- nature of the films. But at least he gets sole credit.