At last, a real return to form

Rating: 10/10 (23 August 2009)

First and foremost, Quentin Tarnatino's greatest love affair has been with the cinema itself and if he finds masterpieces in trash and the exploitation genre that the rest of us are oblivious to, it's hardly a crime. Indeed his passion for lost and forgotten genre pictures has rescued many a career and put the odd new face on the international map. Referencing other movies is, of course, nothing new and almost every auteur has at least one 'homage' in him. However, for Tarantino, 'homage' has virtually become his livelihood. And, of course, like all homages sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.
Film-buffs love them and often spend most of the movie picking out the references and this can sometimes spoil the fun; the fun of simply watching the movie and enjoying the plot. There is a great deal to enjoy in "Inglourious Basterds". This is Tarantino's homage to the war picture but it's just as much a pastiche of the Spaghetti Western, (the score, from opening bars of 'The Green Leaves of Summer' from Wayne's "The Alamo", is mostly made up of bits and pieces from other films and all sounding faintly 'Djangoesque'). Primarily, of course, it's a homage to the cinema itself, both the notion of 'film' and the place where films are shown.
The Basterds, (the title is taken from the English title of the little seen Italian movie "Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato"), are a kind of Dirty Dozen presided over by Brad Pitt's gung-ho 'Apache' descendant, dropped into Nazi occupied France with the sole purpose of killing (and scalping) Nazis, but while Pitt is ostensibly the film's star the Basterds are only one strand of a diffuse plot, (the film is told in chapters), that introduces a number of other characters, all of whom become involved in a plot to kill the entire Nazi High Command, including Der Fuhrer himself. And since this is a fantasy, a cartoon of extreme violence, (thankfully only amounting to a very short period of screen time), it bears no relation to accuracy or history. Tarantino gathers his protagonists in and around a small Parisian cinema run by Melanie Laurents' Jewish survivor of an earlier massacre of the rest of her family, and it's here that the Basterds, on the one hand, and she and her partner, on the other, plan the events that will bring about an early end to the War. And like any movie set in and around a cinema, movie references predominate. It's fun if you get them but it's just as much fun if you don't.
Long admired for the 'cleverness' of his dialouge, Tarantino's movie is a very talkative picture indeed. From the opening chapter, which is mostly a dialogue between Col. Landa, the SS 'Jew Hunter' and the French farmer who is sheltering the Jews he is hunting, this is a film that is sustained by long conversations and some really first-class acting. Language itself plays a major part in proceedings and Tarantino has a field-day with his use of English, German, French (and Italian!) and the accents with which they are spoken. Indeed outcomes hang on language and what is said and what is meant. Sure, there is action and some very bloody violence, (not to mention some very dubious morality), but this is far from being a brainless, exploitative action picture. But did anyone expect it to be? I doubt it.
In a large cast there are some terrific performances. Pitt hams it up but with a knowing wink at the camera. Newcomer Christoph Waltz is a splendid Landa - it's a star-making performance that has already won him the Best Actor award at Cannes and could well win him a Supporting Actor Oscar next year. Michael Fassbender, (Bobby Sands in "Hunger"), is perfection itself as a stiff-upper-lip British officer who used to be a film critic while Daniel Bruhl continues his upward climb as one of Europe's finest young actors as Fredrick Zoller, sniper extraordinaire, and whose exploits form the basis of the film that is being premiered for Hitler's benefit, with Bruhl playing 'himself' as Germany's answer to Audie Murphy, and Melanie Laurents is superb as the vengeful Shosanna. Here is another French actress about to make her international breakthrough.
It's a brave or a foolhardy or simply a vain director who will end a movie so chock full of film references with the line that 'this may just be my masterpiece'. If it isn't quite, it still marks a major return to form for a film-maker whose place in Pantheon is already assured. It's also the best film I've seen this year.