Pictured (left to right): Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Omar Doom, Daniel Bruhl, Quentin Tarantino, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Brad Pitt.
I feel like every review I give on this blog begins or at some point involves the phrase “When I first saw the trailer for…” and I apologize for how repetitive that is getting, but in all fairness, lately I have been seeing many films that have truly stumped my immediate impressions of them based on their previews. Case in point: Inglourious Basterds.
When I first heard about this film, I wasn’t really sure what to think of it. At first I thought it looked ridiculous and downright stupid. Obviously it was never pretending to be historically accurate, and perhaps at first the history nerd in me was offended by that, but there was a short time in which I did find it intriguing. Yet for whatever reason, I never managed to get to a theater to see it. Thankfully my current place of residence has a projector and decent-sized viewing surface so the big-screen experience was not entirely lost when it came time to watch it on DVD.
Quite frankly, I love everything about this film. My only genuine gripe with it is a glaring continuity error in an earlier scene, in which one frame dispalys a head getting smashed by a bat, when moments later, the head is clearly intact. Literally, that is the only disparaging remark I can make on the entire movie.
I’ve always been wary of Quentin Tarantino as I’m not a huge fan of violence and gore (of which there is a surprisingly minimal amount in Basterds). I certainly appreciate his extensive knowledge of cinema, which is put on wonderful display throughout this, but I cannot help but slightly judge a man who has named “Observe & Report” as one of his favorites of the year. That aside, Basterds is one of his greatest achievements.
The precision of the dialogue is razor sharp, making it easy to believe that Tarantino spent almost ten years writing and fine-tuning it. The acting is spot on for the most part, though to be honest I found Brad Pitt to be the weakest link. The standouts for me were hands down Hollywood newcomers Cristoph Waltz as the menacing Hans Landa (aka “The Jew Hunter”) and Melanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish woman seeking vengeance for the murder of her family at the hands of Landa. Indeed for me, the most emotionally resonating moment comes from Laurent, who, upon the conclusion of a heart-poundingly tense conversation with Landa in which she must maintain a false identity, lets out an enormous exhale that brings her near tears, a reaction the audience bears with her.
The history is absurd but it works. For example, Hitler is essentially a petulant child with Goebbels acting more as a handler than a right hand. However, Basterds does not make a joke of the horrors of WWII (which is what I initially feared) rather it takes the hardcore bloody revenge upon the Nazis that only a filmmaker like Tarantino would have the guts to admit we all sort of wanted. And so, I say tentatively (as I have not yet seen Up in the Air, Avatar, or Nine), Inglourious Basterds is my favorite film of the year.
I loved Inglourious Basterds, and my favourite parts about it was that: (a) it was basically an ode to languages, and (b) it was a commentary about film, audience, humans and fantasy (what a vague description...).
ReplyDeleteAbout (b) specifically: for about half/third of the movie, I was cheering and laughing along with everyone else during the scenes that used our wish to see "Nazis get what they deserved" to maximize on the comedy and drama. However, at one point, when people began cheering during the bar massacre, someone in my theatre yelled out, "WHAT THE FUCK, THIS ISN'T FUNNY," and I mentally took a step back and thought, 'This isn't funny.' And so at the end of the film, when all the Germans are attempting to escape the inferno, I had no desire to cheer and give a standing ovation like they did at Cannes; I just wanted to cry. It was extremely difficult to think about: because you don't want Hitler and his cronies to survive, you want them to die and for the war to end, but at the same time... should you cheer about the fact that hundreds of people are trapped and being burnt alive? Even though they are Nazis? Despite the fact they were Nazis? What does it say if you don't cheer?
It was a moral dilemma I really, really wasn't expecting to have when I walked into that theatre.
Anyways, the point that I'm trying to make in a really roundabout way is: Tarantino is genius in how he makes a commentary about us as an audience. The "Pride of a Nation" film and how the German audience reacted to it was a direct reflection on us and how we were reacting to the movie. It was really just... fascinating, to be honest.
I do agree. For me the real moral dilemma came in the scene with the Nazi who refused to give up the information about the hiding spot. Yes, he's a Nazi and ultimately does on some level deserve what he gets, but he's also doing a very brave and heroic thing by keeping that information, knowing it will cost him his life. In that moment I thought of him mostly as just a soldier rather than a Nazi.
ReplyDeletePS. Is this by any chance Natasha Marks? If it's not, I apologize for the weirdness of that question, but, I'm curious. Regardless of who it is, thank you for commenting on my posts :D