Triumph of the Will

Rating: 9/10 (5 October 2009)

Quentin Tarantino DARES you to like his new movie, to the point where he'll trash any conventions he sets up, kill off any characters he wants, stray from a storyline for an eternity, cross-pollinate genres and styles and basically give the audience the 'ol "Fuck you, I'm making MY movie, come along if you want, but I don't need you." Such searing macho bravado is annoying in the hands of other directors (this was pretty much Michael Bay's stance making "Transformers 2" – "If I want a hot chick Transformer, I'm gonna do it, sensibility be damned!"). With Tarantino, I was IN early on, and stayed hooked for 153 minutes.
Tarantino mastered a dialogue style in "Pulp Fiction" that I find brilliant – the anticipation of violence. When Jules and Vincent start talking about European food, the dialogue is fun and engaging. When they stop and get guns out of the trunk, there's obviously something more at work here then guys driving, talking about Le Big Mac. What they're doing is, however, delayed and delayed for more banter. They talk about T.V. pilots, they talk about foot massages, they even get to the door where SOMETHING is going to go down, and they pause even further to "get into character". The scene is fascinating, with whip-smart, funny dialogue, and it all feeds into the violent payoff like a symphony reaching its grand chorale. I say this is a Tarantino style, 'cause he's certainly employed it again ("Kill Bill, Vol. 2" – The Bride meets Bill and they talk and talk before ever getting down to business, but the talk is electric and soaked in history).
"Death Proof" had A LOT of talk, and, to me, wasn't as effective because there was nothing underneath the chatter. It was just that, a lot of chatter for the sake of being hip. In "Inglourious Basterds", Tarantino's new World War II epic, the film opens with a "Once Upon a Time in the West"-style meeting between a Nazi officer known as The Jew Hunter and a French man accused of hiding Jews in his home. Right away, the gamesmanship displayed was masterful, both actors steadily at odds, and the sociable dialogue masking the tension and intention of its characters. To see Tarantino deliver an opening scene so solid, controlled and authoritative meant the "glourious" return of a director who I thought was delving into the excess pool a bit too often in his last few projects.
But then, just when you get a handle on the movie, he'll do whatever he feels like doing again. "How's about DIRK DIGGLER-esquire on-screen text to introduce one of the characters? You like Sam Jackson? I got him, for no reason other than we're friends. Has Mike Myers been in too many lousy movies lately? I'LL CHANGE THAT." The balls on this guy! And yet, it's conveyed with such audacity, it ends up wildly entertaining.
Think about the title of the movie: "Inglourious Basterds", a group of Nazi-hunters in WWII. But we don't meet them until after that brilliant opening scene. Then we get a taste of the Basterds, but QT has other stories to tell. We meet an escapee from the opening scene who now owns a movie theater, and the Nazi soldier who is smitten with her. We meet a British soldier who gets new orders to be part of Operation Kino, and we get to see the operation in full effect (and ANOTHER scene where we wait and wait for the violence as layer after layer of the tavern-goers gets peeled away in deliberate conversation). So, if we're going to be sidetracked from Nazi scalp-hunting, Tarantino better bring the goods. This is where the film keeps our attention because the stories intertwine, and a true, can-they-pull-it-off narrative kicks in with an infusion of patented Tarantino energy.
Universally thought to steal the show in this movie is Christoph Waltz as Colonel Landa, The Jew Hunter. He does a great job of playing Nazi soldier as charmer, counterpunching with smarts. He is the real bastard. Tarantino gives him an interesting shift in paradigm near the end of the film that is bold and intriguing, but not wholly satisfying. Brad Pitt is good as Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds, often eliciting laughs from his no-nonsense approach to killing NAH-ZIS. Diane Kruger is good in the complicated role of actress Bridget von Hammersmark, an otherwise high-class citizen who finds herself ingrained in dangerous war scenarios. She also has the line of the movie: "Do you Americans speak any other language than English?" Much has been made of the end of "Inglourious Basterds", and I have to admit it was a little surprising, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility, given the way the film built to the end. Stops were pulled out, extremes were explored, so why not just GO FOR IT? But even in a pulse-pounding finale, there's pause to be had watching Jews enact revenge on Nazis in a blood-soaked fashion similar to that employed by the Reich itself. The climax is a blazing, cinematic extravaganza, and when layered with thought-provoking imagery and haunting ghosts dancing in the smoky light of a movie projector, the result stays with you longer than a baseball bat to the head.