Glorious Tarantino

Rating: 9/10 (3 September 2009)

Without the shadow of a doubt, Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is the most expensive, the most profitable, the best crafted and the most enjoyable Nazi exploitation B-movie ever made.
Tarantino is probably the most talented filmmaker of his generation and he shows us why once again with a gem of a picture. "Inglourious Basterds" is a movie which, just like World War II itself, makes the viewer experience a whole combinations of emotions before it's over. Sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious, while also having strong emotion, suspense, fascination and absurdity, the movie is a joyous mix of war movie scenes that we never get to see in any other war movie.
"Basterds" contains a nice cast of stars who make the movie work perfectly. In the main role, Brad Pitt plays Southern-American Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a squad of Jewish-American soldiers (and a few German renegades) whose job in occupied France can be summed up as this: go hunting Nazi soldiers and giving them a free scalping session. "Each man must carry out 100 scalps to accomplish his mission", Raine says to his crew.
The surprising Austian actor Christoph Waltz plays the part of Nazi colonel Hans Landa, also known as "The Jew Hunter". His initial role is more or less the same as Raine, but in the opposite direction. He tracks Jews and... well, you get the idea. And much like Raine, Landa is intelligent, but also very sly. He can simultaneously become as charming as a cat, as rapacious as a vulture and as dangerous as a bear. And Waltz perfectly embodies this man. The acting prize he received at the Cannes Film Festival for his Landa part was fully merited. And he should eventually be considered for the Best Supporting Actor Award at Oscar time.
French actress Mélanie Laurent plays the third character in importance in the movie: Shoshanna Dreyfus, who escaped from the cruel colonel's claws and became the owner of a small movie theatre in Paris. And when she meets the star (Daniel Brühl) of an upcoming German propaganda film, she gets to receive many high-ranked Nazi officers (including Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler himself), which would be the perfect moment to unleash her vengeance against the Third Reich.
Put all of these ingredients in the blender, press the "hi" button, add a few more juicy and spicy scenes, and then you get a full explosion of flavours, each one tastier than the others. Quentin Tarantino is an accomplished director, but his biggest talent still resides in his capacity to write stories and screenplays. If you think that age can get a hold on the great QT and tone down his explosive creative impulses, only a small glimpse at "Inglourious Basterds" will make you think otherwise. Tarantino's talent has remained perfectly intact and everything that turned his other movies into masterpieces is here to create another one.
And the main part of Tarantino's talent consists in grabbing our attention and to keep it firmly without inserting any action, nor making the story move forward in significant ways. Tarantino's dialogues are always filled with fascination and to listen to the movie without keeping much attention to the screen is thrilling. There is simply no other filmmaker in the world who can do such a trick.
And when comes the time to get into the action, Tarantino builds a story filled with twists, as well as surprising and spectacular scenes which hold the moviegoers in suspense until the very end. And you can forget all the historical veracity. "Inglourious Basterds" is not a docudrama, far from it. It's simply the kind of movie that a European director working with a tiny budget would have made if his only goal was to get a mock of Hitler and his Nazi pawns.
Don't try to get into any deep meanings regarding what you see on screen. There's absolutely no symbolic about a Jewish squad who scalp Nazi soldiers or let them live after they carve Swastikas on their forehead with a knife. Don't try to understand anything about the climax of the movie in Shoshanna's theatre, even as brutal, spectacular and unexpected as it can be. The characters' dialogues are tasty, but they are not metaphorical. The entire movie is just one big pollution.
Actually, Quentin Tarantino's entire filmography is one big pollution. Is there anything to understand in "Reservoir Dogs" ? In "Pulp Fiction" ? And especially in "Kill Bill" ? There's nothing to understand. "Inglourious Basterds", just like those movies, is nothing more than an unhealthy drug which you quickly get addicted to, even though you're conscious of its repugnance. But is there anything wrong about that? If the movie is funny, brilliant, intelligent and leaves smiles on the viewers' faces after the credits roll, frankly, what would be wrong about that?
And once again, Tarantino gives die-hard movie buffs the occasion to get into a handful of delicious movie references. Shoshanna's theatre is filled with French movie posters from the Occupation era, something film historians will love. And as for the atmosphere, we're treated with scenes which seem to come out from the more intense Spaghetti Westerns and re-worked the WWII way. And it wouldn't be complete without a few samples of Ennio Morricone's music, would it?
If you consider the sky-high expectations for this movie, "Inglourious Basterds" is exactly what we would have expected from the great Quentin Tarantino. Let's hope he'll never change his style and remain into the unconventional side of Hollywood film-making, because there's really no other man on this planet who treats cinema the way he does.