Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Updates:

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Time Out rating

Average user rating

67 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

You’ve got to admire the sheer, infectious force of Quentin Tarantino’s personality. Is there any other popular American director, who, like Tarantino, is constantly ranting and raving about cinema’s glorious past and giving young filmgoers reason to extend their DVD library back beyond ‘Star Wars’? Even the name of his new film is fondly stolen from a little known Italian movie of the 1970s. It’s only when you turn to Tarantino’s own films that things get more tricky. For the sad truth is that Tarantino, like cheap wine, just isn’t improving with age.

Which is an awkward reality because Tarantino obviously wants to put away childish things with this new film. Not only does Brad Pitt close the film with the self-regarding line ‘This may well be my masterpiece’, but ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is a little more restrained and a little more quiet than films like ‘Death Proof’ and ‘Kill Bill’.

I say ‘a little’ because much of the film is not quiet at all: when the music comes, it’s loud; when the deaths occur, they’re gruesome, even sadistic; and when the plot kicks in, it’s pure, wild fantasy.

The film moves liberally between French, German and English dialogue and takes us through five chapters. First, in 1941, we see a Nazi, Colonel Hans Landa (played by Austrian Christoph Waltz), known as ‘The Jew Hunter’, discover and kill a Jewish family in France; only the youngest daughter gets away.

Then we’re introduced to the ‘basterds’, a gang of eight Jewish-American soldiers who, while deep undercover, roam Nazi-occupied France, murdering German soldiers and collecting their scalps. They’re led by a Tennessee goodtime boy, played by Pitt, but oddly they’re not on screen much. Pitt is lively but he disappears for a long time and is upstaged by Waltz, who gives a teasing turn of sly comedy and cruel charm. His scenes are the film’s best.

For the film’s final chapters, we leap to Paris in 1944, where the two stories collide. The girl who fled the Nazis, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) is now running a cinema (of course) which plays films by Riefenstahl and Pabst. A Nazi private, Frederick (Daniel Brühl), takes a shine to her. It turns out that his gun-toting heroics are being immortalised in a film produced by Goebbels, who decides that Shosanna’s cinema is perfect for the premiere. Shosanna and the ‘basterds’ decide that the screening is their chance to strike.

This might be a period movie, but still we clock Tarantino’s signature style – the extended, know-it-all dialogue, the tricky gunplay, the pop-cultural nods. There’s even a Mexican stand-off à la ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and the obligatory ‘nigger’ reference, this time in French. But this lacks the stylistic pizzazz of Tarantino’s best, and by putting more emphasis than usual on the chatter it makes it more obvious that the talk often lacks wit and verve.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tarantino takes the history of cinema more seriously than the history of Europe. References to films abound: Michael Fassbender’s British spy (who has an amusing, if silly, ‘Dr Strangelove’-like scene with a superior played by Mike Myers) used to be a critic and regurgitates what sounds like a Wikipedia entry on German film, while another character wonders whether he prefers Chaplin or the French silent actor Max Linder.

What’s not clear is what Tarantino wants to achieve: ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is an immature work that doesn’t know whether it’s a pastiche, a spoof, a counterfactual drama, a revenge tragedy or a character comedy. How can we, within a space of minutes, feel adult sympathy for a hunted Jewish family and then childish glee when a Nazi’s skull is crushed with a baseball bat? The one cancels out the other.

But perhaps the biggest faux pas is introducing real historical characters. Tarantino’s inventions are big enough – not least Waltz’s terrific ‘movie’ Nazi – so why does he have to court implausibility by dragging in a loony Hitler (Martin Wuttke, nothing special) and introducing Goebbels? You might imagine, too, that this film was written in the ’60s: Tarantino seems blithely uninterested in more than 60 years of slow reconciliation between Europe and its past.

‘Subtle’ is not a word in Tarantino's lexicon. At the film’s heart is a fatal attempt to conflate fact with fiction and a celebration of vengeance that’s misplaced and embarrassing. Loyal fans expecting a familiar patchwork of Tarantino tics and quirks – ‘Pulp History’ or ‘Kill Hitler’ – might not be disappointed. Those expecting anything approaching progress, cinematically or ideologically, probably will be.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2009-08-18 13:07:20

Time Out London issue 2035, 20-26 August 2009

Bookmark

User reviews of this film

k1w1boy said...

Posted on Aug 19 2009 12:12 I was disappointed. I had avoided more recent Tarantino offerings - Deathproof, Killbill - and after the trailers was hoping IB would be more in the vein of Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. Basically the thing was too clever for its own good: not enough of the basterds on screen, a plodding chapter 2, and though I could have suffered tarantino-esque caricature cameos of Goebbels and Hitler, making them supporting characters in their own right was a bit much. Pretentious rubbish ripe for parody in its own right.

Report as inappropriate
tschill said...

Posted on Aug 18 2009 18:54 Brilliant piece of film making. As a German I am fed up with all those German ritualised commemorative films lacking real empathy for the victims and having too much sympathy for the ordinary Nazi, often covered by a demonisation of Hitler. Tarantino doesn't follow this well-worn path with his fairy tale. But fairy tales allow a deeper look into the psyche, this time into the public psyche under fascist regimes. Tarantino seemingly doesn't aim high, but his film is more honest than the majority of the so-called *serious* attempts. Besides it is an ode to cinematic power, heart stoppingly thrilling and an emotional roller coaster. Go see it and cry, when the giant face laughs!

Report as inappropriate
ella said...

Posted on Aug 18 2009 11:43 Dont watch this its not a good film to watch you might regret paying t watch this film. It wasnt for me or any of my mates. Sorry

Report as inappropriate
dragster said...

Posted on Aug 17 2009 12:57 I went to see this yesterday, not having bothered with any prior reviews. I think that Tarantino put some effort into it but I'm not sure how much. I certainly like the soundtrack clips from A Professional Gun and Where Eagles Dare but I would prefer them with the original films, does he not have enough contacts to get an original score? On the plus side at least you do not suffer the deliberate (f)artistic switches from colour to b/w as in Deathproof but on the other hand there are any number of logical faults in the story. Some sections were entertaining and I think the supporting cast gave the performances the director was after. As Raz has mentioned this is Cinema but it was not educational and I'm not sure whether it actually meets the entertainment hurdle. I came away with the feeling that Tarantino was just having his bit of fun, probably at the expense of others, including the audience. I am not waiting for the dvd.

Report as inappropriate
Temtive said...

Posted on Aug 15 2009 13:15 Don't watch this sadistic movie

Report as inappropriate
Yohan said...

Posted on Jul 26 2009 16:35 this film is brilliant!

Report as inappropriate
raz said...

Posted on May 21 2009 08:56 The cinema violent and sadistic revenge thing is a metaphor for the world today. It's well known that Jews from Europe made Hollywood a place where the reality is made, our world today is a hyper-reality made by the cinema industry. Hollywood movies shape our perception of life - there is where death, love, hate, miracle, wealth, health, family, low and all other human things are happening and coexist. Hollywood became the biggest mechanism of revenge of all. This metaphor is a brilliant way of portraying the American hyper-reality/simulacra that became the reality itself - a very violent praxis of ruling (see Frankfurt School critic on culture).
So, there is no real world.There is just cinema.

Report as inappropriate