Inglourious Basterds

My first theatrical viewing (and review) as a Pitt junior is the much-hyped Quentin Tarantino opus, Inglourious Basterds. After years of being in development hell, Tarantino finally brought his long-cherished WWII project to the big screen. I was extremely leery going in, especially after reading the less-than-great screenplay, and most of my fears were realized. Inglourious Basterds is entertaining enough on a dumb surface level, but it's a mere trifle compared to Tarantino's best works, due to a schizophrenic tone, off-putting sadism, incoherent narrative and nonexistant characters, and surprisingly for Tarantino, a poorly-conceived, if not outright shoddy script.

"Once Upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France", Jewish girl Shoshanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent) sees her family slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), known as "the Jew Hunter", narrowly escaping death. She grows up in Paris under an assumed name, helping to run a cinema which hosts German soldiers and high officials. When she learns that Nazi bigwigs Hitler (Martin Wuttke) and Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) are planning the premier of Goebbels' latest propaganda film in her theater, she begins planning an impossibly-intricate revenge plot. Her plans intertwine with those of a gang of Jewish commandos led by sadistic American Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who have their own plans to assassinate the Fuhrer and his cohorts. Needless to say, it leads to an explosive climax.

Inglourious Basterds is a fundamentally flawed movie in many regards, most of which stems from the awful, disjointed screenplay. Tarantino seems to be making two films; an homage to old-fashioned men-on-a-mission films like The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone, and a fairly original revenge story which pseudo-cleverly takes advantage of Tarantino's considerable film-buffery. Thus, the film's tone lurches from serious to goofy to fun to gruesomely sadistic on a scene-to-scene basis. I applaud Tarantino for his ambition - the scope and scale of this movie is far beyond anything he's attempted to date - but I can't quite credit him since neither half works very well.

The film suffers in pretty much every way. The excellent opening, with Landa interrogating a French farmer (Denis Menochet) hiding Shoshanna's family (shades of Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), works perfectly to establish mood and suspense, but other set-pieces don't fare so well, particularly the far-too-long pub scene where British special agent (Michael Fassbender) and the Basterds attempt to contact Nazi film star/double agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). Tarantino's dialogue isn't even good enough to make these scenes worth all the absurd build-up; the movie lurches from long-winded set piece to set piece with little apparent drive or reason. Character development is virtually nonexistant; only Shoshanna as any real motivation and it is simplistic as possible; the Basterds are sadistic nuts who like to kill and mutilate Nazis. Colonel Landa is all over the place, going from a cultured but sadistic Nazi to a self-serving traitor with seemingly no motivation. Michael Fassbender's film critic-turned-MI5 Agent is completely superfluous. In attempting to create a film of epic complexity, Tarantino simply creates a confused, underdeveloped, unfocused muddle. To be kind, I suppose one can say the film is never quite boring, but the inconsistency of tone and story prevents the movie from developing in any meaningful fashion.

I'm not ordinarily one to complain about violence, but something really rubs me the wrong way about the film's gleeful sadism. I should have been cheering at the climax, but the sheer nastiness of it put me off. The movie's violence is too sadistic and gruesome to work as goofy entertainment but too light-hearted and silly to work on a dramatic level; indeed, in this regard it comes close to cast member Eli Roth's shock gore films, spilling blood in gruesome ways to appease the bloodthirsty groundlings. If it weren't for Tarantino's history of creating strong female characters (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill) I might raise the misogyny flag for the particularly grisly fate of Bridget, but I suppose I should keep my middle-class white male mouth shut. In a film that knew what it was doing, I suppose these complaints wouldn't exist, but again, the movie is let down by its schizophrenic, confused tone.

On the plus side, Tarantino's direction is far more ambitious and impressive than his previous works. He shows a keen visual sense which works wonderfully, with gorgeous art direction, perfect use of camera and cinematography, and a general mastery of things technical. All of these are the sign of a great director who has matured impressively over the years; too bad it seems to have been at the expense of his once-brilliant writing skills. His use of "found" music is clever and often inspired (I loved the use of Morricone's Battle of Algiers theme in particular), with only a few odd blips - most notably the bizarre use of David Bowie's Putting Out Fire (from Cat People). On a technical score, there are no complaints.

The cast is equally schizophrenic. Melanie Laurent is disappointingly one-note as Shoshanna, but I supsect the script is the culprit for giving her a weak character. Brad Pitt is beyond awful, playing some hideous caricature redneck whose only good moments are his hilariously bad attempts at Italian. Eli Roth and Mike Myers (!) are equally obnoxious and out of place, but fortunately their roles are small. Christoph Waltz has gotten early Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Colonel Landa, and with good reason; his character is all over the place but Waltz manages to make Landa a menacing villain. Michael Fassbender, Daniel Bruhl, Til Schweiger and August Diehl do fine supporting work, but Martin Wuttke and Sylvestor Groth are predictably caricatured as Hitler and Goebbels. The real surprise of the film is Diane Kruger, the strikingly beautiful but minimally talented star of National Treasure and Troy; she does a marvelous job with what's basically an extended cameo, and one wishes more had been done with this potentially fascinating character. It's nice to see Christian Berkel (Valkyrie) and Rod Taylor (The Birds) in blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos, but it would have been nicer still if they'd had anything substantial to do. Tarantino vets Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel have pointless voice-over cameos that add nothing to the film.

I guess if you don't have any expectations from the film beyond seeing lots of Nazis die in gruesome ways, Inglourious Basterds delivers. Although it has its share of virtues, Basterds isn't a film I'm likely to come back to. If Tarantino had focused on either story individually - the Dirty Dozen homage or the Jewish girl's revenge - he could well have made a great film. By combining the two story lines into a single film, he creates a bloated, unfocused, occasionally entertaining but mostly disappointing work.