. Entertaining Tarantino film with troubling subtext

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2009)

When Quentin Tarantino's new film debuted at the Cannes film festival this year it was met with indifference and derision in more or less equal doses. Although Tarantino managed to win the top prize at the same festival fifteen years ago with his landmark film Pulp Fiction his new film's modest launch was not surprising to many. In spite of a few instances of pandering to both French citizens and cinema-goers in general Inglorious Basterds just isn't the kind of film that does well with the film festival crowd. The film industry folk in the movie reference legendary directors like Charlie Chaplin, Leni Riefenstahl, and G.W. Pabst at every opportunity but the style of Tarantino's movie has a different type of pedigree: once again it's easy to see the influence of "B" film genres such as the Spaghetti Western and Grindhouse.
Still, it isn't just the visual and narrative influence of lurid genre films that divest Inglorious Basterds of its film festival appeal: it also has a muddled (if not downright inhuman) subtext. While the film is tremendously entertaining on the surface level thanks to several cleverly designed suspense sequences and a touch of Tarantino's trademark dialogue it's impossible to examine Inglorious Basterds without noticing some disturbing underpinnings. The film's villain is Nazi Col. Hans Landa, a suave, clever man whose detective skills have earned him the nickname "Jewhunter." His opposite is downhome American Basterd Lt. Aldo Raine. Raine hardly considers his enemies human and he likes it that way, as he explains, "I sure as Hell didn't come...to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity." Raine and his crew of Basterds (as he unlearnedly dubs them) exhibit a bloodthirsty savagery unmatched by any of the Nazis they encounter. In one slightly nauseating scene Raine expresses happiness that the Nazi officer he has captured isn't going to give him information about troop positions since he'll derive entertainment from watching one of his Basterds beat the man to death with a baseball bat. Raine also carries a large knife with him to scalp his enemies and carve swastikas into any Nazi he leaves alive.
Unlike Raine, Landa seems to have at least some respect for his enemies. He generally only uses violence as a last resort and he even admits he is impressed by the Basterds' exploits. Further, he exhibits a fluency in several languages while Raine can barely speak one. With these two characters the film seems to imply that there's something undesirable if not downright evil about intelligence. Further, the one Basterd that performs the most poorly and nearly ruins one of their missions is an intellectual British film critic. At best, Tarantino is playing into anti-American stereotypes by portraying his American characters as stupid but powerful brutes and at worst he's praising this brutality while suggesting that intellectualism is a negative attribute.
Subtextual concerns aside, Tarantino's latest film is a welcome return to form after the feeble barbarity of Death Proof and the puerile pastiche of the Kill Bill films. Inglorious Basterds is exactly the kind of film Tarantino does best: a viscerally exciting entertainment that works really well as long as it isn't taken seriously.