While Quentin Tarantino’s movies are a strange mix of violent, loud, clever, funny and disturbing, you have got to hand it to the man, his movies are always entertaining (for good or ill). His latest flick, “Inglourious Basterds” is most definitely not an exception.
Set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, “Basterds” is in many ways a delicious revenge movie. Styled as a “spaghetti western”, the movie follows two corresponding assassination plots, one involving a young Jewish woman and the other involving a group of particularly colorful, brutal and crazy group of Jewish Americans led by Lt. Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt.
While much of the acting is humorously and intentionally over-played and over-done, the acting performance turned in by Christopher Waltz, as Hans Landa, the wickedly demented and charming “Jew Hunter”, is exellent. On the one hand, you will end up hating Landa as you watch his cultured foulness in exterminating the Jews in France, yet Waltz also will cause you to be utterly charmed by this Holmes-esque Nazi detective. Landa is an interestingly complex and “off” character and Waltz will hopefully be remembered when the next awards season comes around.
Additionally, while odd, the division of the movie into chapters was a pleasant play and the comic-book-style drama was hilarious and thoroughly amusing. The score works well within the whole attitude of the film and Tarantino’s patient directing of the scenes subtly builds the movie’s intense tension.
Finally, I was struck by my own hypocrisy while watching the film’s climax. In this particular part of the movie, the entire German command structure of the Third Reich is watching a Nazi propaganda film about the exploits of the young German private, Fredrick Zoller. In this particular scene of the fictitious movie, Zoller is in his bird’s nest, sniping American soldiers one after another. As this filmed battle is being waged, Tarantino directs our gaze to focus on a purely ecstatic Hitler gleefully watching the deaths of the many Americans. As I watched this scene in “Basterds” I felt an intense anger at Hitler’s glee and pleasure. Later, as the assassination plots converge, the theater doors are locked, the theater is set on fire, the attendees start climbing over each other in a pure panic trying to escape through the locked doors, and the two remaining Basterds step into the balcony, shoot and kill Hitler, shoot and kill Hitler some more and then open fire on the frantic Germans below. As I watched this scene I felt the same elation that was previously so apparent on Hitler’s face. In some small way, I saw that the same sin in Hitler’s heart surely dwells in mine.
“Inglourious Basterds” is not for everyone. It’s loud, bloody and deranged. The scalpings are particularly brutal. Yet, I found it strangely entertaining and helpful if only for its ability to make me feel a very real hatred for the Nazis and then for its ability to show me hints of that same behavior in the protagonists and in myself.
Well, they’ve done it again.