Tarantino's Best....Again!

Rating: 10/10 (8 October 2009)

I've discovered in writing reviews that they tend to actually write themselves. Some reviews demand that a synopsis, others to the themes and style of the movie being reviewed. In either case you're trying to give the reader a sense of the movie and whether it's something they want to see or not. Since Pulp Fiction Quentin Tarantino's movies have so intricately weaved that a synopsis would lead to a lengthy review, and in the case of Inglourius Basterds it's best to see the movie and let all the elements reveal themselves.
As you've seen on the commercial about Inglourious Basterds, it's about a squad of Jewish American soldiers behind enemy lines led by Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine and their mission is to kill "Natzis." There is more to the plot, it also revolves around a Jewish woman Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) who escapes the clutches of German Col. Landa (Christoph Waltz) who is in charge of German occupied France.
Inglourious Basterds reveals the mature artist in Tarantino. The opening scene is confidently filmed letting the characters talk, as we learn just who Col. Landa is, and despite his civilized and cultured demeanor he is a cunning and devious officer committed to carrying out his orders, hunting down Jews. In other parts of the movie when Shosanna comes face to face to with Col. Landa Tarantino lets the camera rest on her and her struggle to remain calm as the Colonel makes small talk with Joseph Goebbels.
While all the action takes place in war time France and Germany, this movie may be more about movies than war. The characters are self-consciously aware of movies Pitt and his band watch a German officer beaten to death with a bat with the stated reason that it's the closest they get to seeing a movie these days. Shosanna is the owner of a movie theatre in Paris and her plan revolves around her knowledge of film. So, is Tarantino just aware of the part movie's played in the lives of people of the war time era? Or is he making a statement that making movies is a war? And a nasty one at that.
Tarantino plays with his usual palette of colors violence, humor, crisp dialogue, and music and mixes all of them that create new colors and shocking results that only Tarantino can pull off. There is violence, you will see people scalped, beaten to death, and shot to pieces, but it is war. Tarantino's violence has always seemed stylized to me, not cartoonish, maybe hyper-real is a better to describe it. The violence looks like it could be real but there is an element that lets you realize the violence is fictional without pulling you out of the movie. And there's Tarantino's dark humor that if were in different circumstances or situations we might not ordinarily laugh at, but Tarantino bends the situation just enough for a dark humor to materialize and that's mostly because of the dialogue Tarantino is noted for. If the movie hadn't had me already, by the time David Bowie's song Cat People (Putting Out The Fire, from the movie Cat People) hit the soundtrack, it would've captured me right there.
At the end of the movie Pitt's character comments as Tarantino's surrogate "this just may be my masterpiece." I think he just might be right.