4.5 out of 5 stars
Family appropriateness rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Rated R
-Bloody violence: depictions of scalping, blood from gun shots and a depiction of a knife carving into a character's forehead.
-One instance of sexual content: a brief, graphic depiction of anal sex with a heterosexual couple.
-Moderate amount of strong language including the f-word.
"Inglourious Basterds" is Quentin Tarantino's vision of how World War II should have ended. Frankly, it is much better than the history books.
Like "Pulp Fiction," it has multiple stories. However, there are only two, and they are told in a standard, linear chronology that comes together in the end. One of the stories is about Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young, Jewish woman who owns and runs a movie theatre with her boyfriend, Marcel (Jacky Ido).
The movie is set in Nazi-occupied France four years after Shosanna witnesses her family get murdered by the ruthless "Jew Hunter," Colonial Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). When this happens, she narrowly escapes and assumes the new identity of Emmanuelle Mimieux. Needless to say, she does not like the Germans. She finds an opportunity for revenge against some when the Nazi war-hero-turned-actor, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), pulls some strings to have the premier of his movie in her theatre. It is about his patriotic exploits and will therefore be attended by some high-ranking Germans. Shosanna and Marcel plan on using this as an opportunity to burn a large group of Nazis to death.
Unbeknownst to her, the Allies have a similar plan. They want to use the movie premier as a way to end the war with the aid of popular German actress, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) and "The Basterds," Lieutenant Aldo Raine's (Brad Pitt) group of Jewish-American soldiers.
The Basterds are known to the German soldiers as ruthless individuals. They go around killing Nazis and scalping them for proof. The Nazis who survive an encounter with them get a swastika etched into their foreheads with a large knife.
Despite the name of the movie, the Basterds are not the main focus. In fact, there is not one person who can be labelled as the central protagonist. Some may argue that Shosanna is, and that would be fair to say. She is the one person who is given a definite motivation for killing the Nazis. They killed her family, and the audience sees it happen in the intense opening scene. No other person has a backstory that is revealed to the audience.
Quentin Tarantino created a very funny character out of the Basterds' leader, Aldo Raine. Brad Pitt portrays him as a redneck with a southern drawl. He seems ignorant of anything that does not have to do with killing Germans, and he cannot even pronounce the word "Nazis" correctly. The one thing that disappoints me is that he and the Basterds are not in much of the movie. They are only shown together in a few scenes, which are for the purpose of driving the plot forward. It would have been nice for an extra scene to show more about who the Basterds are as people.
This would have been impossible to do because the running time is already two and a half hours, which is surprising because it does not seem that long. Quentin Tarantino knows how to keep an audience involved from beginning to end using smoothly-written dialogue in which the characters have interesting things to say and gives them personality.
The best example of this is found in the opening scene. It involves Col. Landa auditing a French home suspected of housing Jews. He gives a detailed speech about how he is so good at catching Jews because he knows how to think like them. He says this while comparing the hunt for the minority group to a hawk hunting a rat. Not only is this speech worded in such an interesting way, it gives insight into his character. It establishes him as both very confident in his abilities and as a devout anti-semite. This drives the intensity up because it shows that he can more-than-likely guess where the Jewish family is hidden.
In several interviews, Tarantino said Landa is the best character he has written and probably will ever write. He is certainly among the most interesting. He is a strong antagonist who will stop at nothing to get his way. His motivations are complex. At first, he appears idealistically driven because he agrees with the Nazis. However, near the end, it is revealed that his intentions are more self-serving.
Christoph Waltz does such a good job in this movie that he won an Oscar for it. Tarantino wanted so much to work with him again that he wrote a character with Waltz in mind for the movie "Django Unchained." Waltz's characters in both of these movies are polar opposites. In "Django," he is an idealist who believes slavery is wrong. In "Basterds," he is a man who takes pride in killing Jews and thinks black people are less competent. However, the way he talks is very similar. In both films, he has a juvenile charm. He knows how serious certain situations are, but he always attempts to make light of them so he can get what he needs.
A big chunk of the dialogue is subtitled because the characters speak different languages. This does not detract from the entertainment value at all. In fact, it adds a sense of authenticity to the movie. The dialogue is still well-written, but the average American audience member will have to read most of it rather than hear it.
All of the multilingual actors need to be commended for pulling off outstanding performances while speaking other languages. This is especially true of Diane Kruger as the actress Bridget von Hammersmark. She has a two different personalities she gracefully portrays in this film. One of them is the face she makes for the Germans who admire her. The other is who she really is: a spy for the Allies. With the Basterds, she is her real self, but with the Nazis, she is constantly smiling and laughing so she does not get discovered.
Like my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/criticalchristopher
Follow me on Twitter: @ChrisCampbell02
Quentin Tarantino Month:
Introduction
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Jackie Brown
Reservoir Dogs
No comments:
Post a Comment