Nothing About This Film Matters

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2019)

Inglourious Basterd falls prey to a common theme among Tarantino's work: being incredible stylistically but lacking in anything to emotionally connect the viewer to the film.
My main two issues with Inglourious Basterds are the unnecessary existence of a majority of it's characters and plot and the absence of development of any character excluding Shosanna (Laurent).
What I mean when I say 'unnecessary existence' is that if you removed large chunks of plot or character the film would end the same. For example the Inglourious Basterds don't need to exist because Shosanna sets the theatre of fire anyways, rendering their plan useless and vice versa. The characters of Lt. Archie Hicox (Fassbender) and Bridget von Hammersmark (Kruger) don't need to exist because Hammersmark getting shot in the leg which leads to the Basterds being discovered by Col. Hans Landa (Waltz) doesn't matter because Shosanna was still going to set the theatre on fire. Even Landa who I personally thought was the highlight of the film due to Christoph Waltz's superb acting didn't need to exist because he ultimately doesn't affect the end result as if he hadn't killed Shosanna's family the Basterds still would have exploded the theatre, it just would have been the Ritz instead. If Hitler didn't go to the premiere nothing would have changed except his death, his presence didn't make security tighter and significantly complicate the plot. What I'm trying to get at is that by creating double plots Tarantino has cancelled out the necessary existence of the actions of either side leading to the viewer feeling detached from the situation, for no matter what happens the end result will remain the same. It would have been a much more effective film if instead Tarantino had either chosen Shosanna or the Basterds to focus on, meaning their actions will actually hold weight.
Secondly, for a movie that kills of a majority of it's characters it's a wonder that I find myself not caring about any of their deaths. This is because almost every character is exactly what we are given when they are introduced, we find no further information into their past, their motivations, their relationships with the characters surrounding them and this ultimately results in a two-and-a-half hour long movie where I don't care about anything that happens to any of the characters. There are two exclusions to this rule, Shosanna (who I personally think the film should centre on instead) and Wilhelm, the random conscript shot in the bar scene. Why do I care more about Wilhelm then next to any other character in the film? He's only in one scene and has near no lines himself, so why do I care about him? Because we're given emotioanal attachment to him, he's a new father who just had his child, a child who will be fatherless is he dies. We also know his a conscript meaning that he most likely doesn't strongly align himself with Nazi values. Him calling Hammersmark a traitor makes sense within the context, he's most likely seen countless friends die at the hands of American and British soldiers, so why would he see the Allies as so called 'good guys'. This is an issue. The fact that I care more about random Wilhelm's death than I do for any other character displays the absence of development any of the characters emotionally detaches the audience from the film, resulting in a lack of emotional weight in almost every scene.
However, Inglourious Basterds had it's highlights, the most notable of which was Christoph Waltz's acting. He truly has back issues from holding up this film, engaging the audience anytime he came onto screen and making what could have been a boring villain the best part of the movie. The second was, as I said before, how stylistically incredible it was. However, I'm not going to go on and on about that as anyone who has ever seen a Tarantino film should know what I'm talking about.
Finally, how could it be better?
IT SHOULD BE ABOUT SHOSANNA
The film opens with the death of Shosanna's family creating emotional weight for her as character as we now understand her motivations behind her actions. If the Basterds didn't exist her plan to set the theatre on fire would then have more weights if it didn't work there would actually be consequences to the end result. Her relationship with Marcel would've had time to develop and make their ending have more impact, as well as reveal, beyond the fact that they're in a relationship and Nazi's are bad, Marcel's motivations to die to kill hundreds of prominent Nazi figures. Furthermore, in the actual film Shosanna's connection to Landa in never a main plot point and by entering the film around her his role could be upgraded to obtain more screen time (which would only improve the film).
In the end, I rated Inglourious Basterds 6/10 because despite the problems with character and plot that I've just gone on about it's still a fun movie to watch but I'm just disappointed because I feel that it could have been so much better.