The Films of Quentin Tarantino: Inglorious Basterds (2009)

Inglorious Basterds (2009)

Directed By: Quentin Tarantino.

Written By: Quentin Tarantino.

Starring: Brad Pitt (Lt. Aldo Raine), Christoph Waltz (Col. Hans Landa), Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus), Michael Fassbender (Lt. Archie Hicox), Diane Kruger (Bridget von Hammersmark), Daniel Brühl (Fredrick Zoller), Eli Roth (Sgt. Donny Donowitz),Til Schweiger (Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz), Gedeon Burkhard (Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki), Jacky Ido (Marcel), B.J. Novak (Pfc. Smithson Utivich), Omar Doom (Pfc. Omar Ulmer), August Diehl (Major Dieter Hellstrom), Denis Menochet (Perrier LaPadite), Sylvester Groth (Joseph Goebbels), Martin Wuttke (Adolf Hitler), Mike Myers (General Ed Fenech), Julie Dreyfus (Francesca Mondino), Richard Sammel (Sgt. Werner Rachtman), Alexander Fehling (Master Sgt. Wilhelm / Pola Negri), Rod Taylor (Winston Churchill), Soenke Möhring (Pvt. Butz / Walter Frazer), Samm Levine (PFC Gerold Hirschberg), Paul Rust (PFC Andy Kagan), Michael Bacall (PFC Michael Zimmerman), Hilmar Eichhorn (Emil Jannings).

 

Looking back, it’s become clear that Inglorious Basterds represented somewhat of a change for Tarantino. Up until now, his films were all contemporary, and divorced from history – except movie history of course, as he made his violent genre films without much thought to the wider world. Those films are all great (as this series has shown) – but they were movie movies if that makes sense. With Inglorious Basterds, he took a step back – and tried to integrate his style and his worldview with history – and started addressing the outside world, while still making precisely the films he always has. Inglorious Basterds is the film – better than any other – who fully integrates his love of language and cinema into thematic content – both of them used as weapons in an alternate history of WWII – one in which Jews get the vengeance on the Nazis they always wanted. You could argue, of course, that this isn’t really Tarantino’s place – or that by ignoring concentration camps and not mentioning the Holocaust he isn’t telling the whole story – but that wasn’t really Tarantino’s aim here. Much like Mel Brooks with The Producers – he knows bringing that aspect of WWII in wouldn’t fit with the rest of his vision. I have long since been of the opinion that Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino’s best film – the masterpiece he should be remembered for, and while I know that it’s a minority opinion, this most recent viewing only strengthened my resolve that I am correct.

 

The film is told in five chapters – the first three whizzing by at about 20 minutes a piece, and the last two taking their time, running 45 minutes a piece. The first is one of the best scenes that Tarantino has ever written and directed – an intense set piece that would have made Hitchcock proud. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) – a SS officer known as the Jew Hunter – arrives at a French farm in the countryside, to question Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) – a dairy farmer – about what he knows about the missing Jewish family from the area. They switch back and forth in language – from German to French to English, and back again, as Landa – with an ever creepy smile plastered on his face – questions LaPadite, always with the friendliest tone of voice, although his intent is never not clear. He knows LaPadite is hiding the family – and he’s going to find them – the reveal of the family under the floorboards is perhaps the finest directorial moment in Tarantino’s career. He takes his time here – the whole sequence runs just over 20 minutes, and it’s almost all talk as Landa toys with him – right up until the gruesome finale – it’s there we meet Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) – who will become such an important character in later chapters.

 

The second chapter introduces the Basterds themselves. Led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) – who is part Apache, the rest of the Basterds are American born Jews, placed behind enemy lines, with the express purpose of killing all the Nazis they can (they do have an Austrian Jew as well as a German, who killed a lot of Nazis, before being captured as well). This sequence ratchets up the humor at the start – Pitt’s clipped delivery as he gives his Dirty Dozen speech to the men, before getting into the field – and showing just what these men are capable of.

 

The third chapter is set in Paris, and focuses on Shosanna – know living as a gentile under an assumed name, and running a movie theater. A German war hero and movie lover – Zoller (Daniel Brühl), takes a shine to her. He’s just starred in a propaganda movie – and they are having a big premiere later – perhaps at her theater. More than the other two, there is more plot here – more scene setting – although it ends with a lengthy, intense sequence at a restaurant between Shosanna and Landa – she knows who he is, he doesn’t know who she is.

 

The fourth chapter is one the longest – and again, is a brilliant stretched out set piece, mostly in a small French bar, where Archie Hilcox (Michael Fassbender), a Brit, is to team up with the Basterds to meet their inside man – German film star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) – who will get them into the premiere of that propaganda movie – where all the bigs in the Nazi ranks will be. What they don’t know is that there are other Germans there – a group of drunken grunts, celebrating the birth of one of their children – and an officer, sitting quietly in the corner, who will come out and start a “friendly” conversation – leading to, of course, violence – putting the entire plan at risk. The last chapter, of course, brings all of these people together at that movie premiere – with violent, bloody, fiery results.

 

What all of these sequences have in common is Tarantino’s love of language. He has always had lengthy dialogue scenes in his movies – scenes that go on a lot longer than anyone else would dare, that really get you to know the characters as more than just pawns in the plot. Here, though, he does himself one better. The dialogue here becomes the plot – becomes the driving force behind everything. Every line of dialogue takes on multiple meanings – what is being said, and what isn’t being said. How the characters say what they say, and what it means is layered, and deeper. People are not always telling the truth, they are often playing roles, etc. The dialogue in multiple different languages, is as good as anything Tarantino has ever written – but it takes on meaning beyond luxuriating in the joy of dialogue.

 

This is also true of the way he integrates cinema in the proceedings – the way Zoller and Shosanna talk about it in those early scenes, talking about Riefenstahl and Pabst – the way Archie is a film critic, and points out the difference between 1920s German cinema, and what is going on now. The way that Shosanna will literally use cinema as a weapon in the final act. Tarantino is as in love with cinema’s history as ever before – he got the film’s title from another movie after all, you can see films like The Dirty Dozen throughout. He throws in Emil Jannings – the first ever winner of the Best Actor Oscar, who returned to Germany when talkies came in, and his thick German accent killed his Hollywood career – and then became a Nazi himself. Tarantino understands the power of movies – and has never better expressed it than he does here.

 

Tarantino has never been a modest filmmaker – he is convinced of his own talent, and has an ego of somehow who believes it. Still, he takes it to another level when he ends the film with the line “I think this might be my masterpiece”. In any other hands, this would be self-indulgent in the extreme, and annoying. Here though, it’s true. As the old saying goes – it ain’t bragging if you can do it. In Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino does it.