From annoyingly isolated to cynically satisfying

Rating: 6/10 (15 October 2012)

I do not consider Quentin Tarantino to be the godfather of auteur-driven cinema nor do I consider him to be one of the men who continue to "ruin" it, so to speak. I consider him to be a director with a solid style, a talent for witty, eccentric dialog, a natural at erecting characters that we like for their quirky societal views and their strange talking points, and overall, the non-linear coherency of it all. What I like about Tarantino can easily be turned into what I do not like about Tarantino without changing a single word above. After viewing Grindhouse: Death Proof, Pulp Fiction, and Reservoir Dogs, I was convinced that the man was a breath of refreshing cinematic air; a man more concerned with the things in cinema that can easily create a wonderful cacophony of energy and spunk. But after viewing Inglourious Basterds, my enthusiasm for the man hasn't lessened but came to a stunning, unexpected trip back to reality realizing like many other directors working in the medium, the man is not perfect.
Perhaps in the right eyes, Inglourious Basterds is a perfect movie. I suspect that everyone who will see it or has seen it has emerged with completely different viewpoints. That's the beauty of a Tarantino film, again, one person can like specific things about the film and love it for those reasons and another can point out those same little things and hate the movie just for that. Dissent is a beautiful thing, and it seems that's one of the many things that "The Tarantinian Formula" intends to do.
The film begins rather maturely as we are presented with a title card saying that the film is set in the Nazi-run areas of France, and then we see Colonel Hans Landa (also known as "The Jew Hunter," played by Christoph Waltz) arrive on a desolate country farm to meet farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet). Landa is going around to different locations to try and find out if people are hiding Jews to protect them from Nazi persecution, and after a lengthy discussion with Perrier, the farmer informs Landa that he does in fact have Jews hiding in the house and Landa's goons immediately try to kill them under the floorboards of the house. The scene is particularly tense and gratifying, mainly because of its constantly unsettling nature and intimate shots, and serves as one of the best scenes in the film.
From there on out, we are greeted with a number of other scenarios seemingly taken from all over the grid. Now we are three years in the future and see Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) giving a mean pep talk to his boys, eight Jews recruited to accomplish one assignment; to kill Nazis, or in Raine's southern, twangy accent, "nat-zees." Among Raine's crew is Donny "Bear Jew" Donowitz (Eli Roth), a rather unnecessary, obnoxious caricature who is used as the violent soul of the whole operation. In a later scene, we seem him viciously beat a man's head in with a baseball bat, even after he breaks his neck upon being struck the first time. Certain scenes like that do not offend me, particularly, but I question their presence in a film dominated by dialog and sequences set in bars or elegant locations.
Another subplot, arguably the most interesting, involves a German sniper (Daniel Brühl) striking a friendship with a young Jewish woman who owns a French cinema (Mélanie Laurent). And another subplot involves a German film critic named Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), who will become involved with a secret operation to bomb the premiere of the Nazi propaganda film the German sniper is a part of.
Now that we've got the continuously twisty, absurd narrative out of the way, we have the content and the aesthetics to explore. For starters, one can not deny, this is probably the strangest work of Tarantino yet, drastically different from his previous installments, for the sole reason that it does not rely much on the things that I listed above. He breaks form, creating long, somewhat poetic dialog scenes to set the mood, rather than the cut-throat, bloody, unapologetic goriness the trailer promised us. The problem with Tarantino, which even existed in Pulp Fiction, a film I awarded a perfect rating of four stars to, is that once the man gets started, he doesn't know when to stop. Certain scenes become long and winded, many of them overstaying their welcome, and consistently thriving on repetitive, uninteresting chatter that obscures the purpose and the enjoyment one anticipates walking in.
On the plus side, the film has some of the finest, rawest performances of the 2009 year. Brad Pitt gives a fine, no-nonsense performance as Raine, Eli Roth is capable as "Bear Jew," and Michael Fassbender, once more, is continuously wonderful in one of the many diverse roles of his career. Yet the highlight here is the merciless, unmatchable, truly divine work of brilliance done by Christoph Waltz as "The Jew Hunter." His performance alone elevates the film to the point where when he's on screen, we forget all the monotony and watery dialog we've just sat through.
Consistent readers of my work will take note that I do greatly appreciate dialog in my films. But even I have a limit. There is enough dialog here to sustain two or three films, and that's a sign of a prolific, uncompromising auteur. If only the dialog had been easier to listen to, rather than just a good chunk of it being nonsensical, irrelevant banter would we have had some substantial meat to this story. This is a film that fluctuates from annoyingly isolated from its audience to cynically satisfying during a majority of its highlighting scenes. For a Tarantino fan, I can't expect they'll look for anything less.
Starring: Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, and Christoph Waltz. Directed by: Quentin Tarantino.