The film is set during World War Two in Nazi occupied France and is played out sort of like a western. The opening ‘chapter’, as the film calls them, sets a pattern that the rest of the film will follow.
SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christian Waltz), the 'Jew Hunter', is at the farmhouse of Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), a local farmer, who is suspected of sheltering a neighbouring Jewish family. The tension builds during the scene as Landa interrogates the farmer with built in German efficiency. Landa is the ‘good cop-bad cop’ all in one, polite friendly official one minute, chilling evil bastard the next.
This is one of those big Tarantino dialogue scenes and during it you're never quite sure what’s going to happen next. The masterstroke here is that we all know what happened in the war and how that turned out but we’re now in a Tarantino parallel universe where he's prepared to take liberties with history. This is a film all about revenge, where he wants to put the boot on the other foot, rewrite history, and give the Jews a chance to get their own back. So anything can happen.
On this occasion, what probably would have happened happened, and the farmer sacrifices the family for his own survival. Only one member of the family, the teenage Shosanna, survives and manages to get away.
Then we finally get to meet the eponymous Basterds. They are a kind of Jewish Dirty Dozen with Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) at their helm. They have arrived in France with revenge on their minds and are intent on brutally killing and scalping as many Nazi's as they can get their hands on. They take immense pleasure in this project, especially baseball bat wielding Eli Roth with his own trademark style of retribution, as they give the Nazi’s a taste of their own inhumanity.
The only downside to the Basterds is that we don’t see enough of them and their crazed brand of vengeance because the film quickly moves back to Shosanna (Melanie Laurents), who is also plotting revenge. She seems to have fallen on her feet and has ‘inherited’ a cinema from an ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’, improbable though this may seem. I'm as suspicious as Landa on that one. When German war hero Fredrick Zoller gives her the eye she shuns him but when he persists in his attention she finds herself in the situation where her cinema is selected for the première of a film paying tribute to Zoller's heroics, also starring him. Equally improbable is that all the Third Reich's highest ranking officers, even Hitler, will be attending. For this reason, the première also catches the eye of the Basterds, who see it as an opportunity to bring about an early end to the war. Cue Mike Meyers, who pops up as the Allies send a film critic turned spy (Michael Fassbender) over to help and David Bowie’s ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire)’ is used to dramatic effect as the two fractions prepare their different plans for destroying the cinema with all inside, and as one of many nods to other films.
'Inglourious Basterds' is a collection of long scenes, loosely connected to each other, which kind of come together but the film's two similar plots never actually meet in the middle. Which I assume is very deliberate, I think he's been learning or unlearning from the Coen Brothers, depending on your point of view.
It’s been said that some of the scenes drag on, I didn't think that at all. They all stay interesting despite their length. Occasionally deeply serious, at other times humorous and you wonder whether you're allowed to laugh or not. Overall it all has a nice pace to it and the two and half hours simply fly by.
A word about Christoph Waltz, who probably stole the show in a film that contained many impressive performances. Throughout the film Tarantino made use of English, German, French and even a bit of Italian and Waltz acted in all three, as well as playing the part of Landa brilliantly. Brad Pitt’s performance is also top draw (again), all the way from his minimalist Italian to his interesting line in forehead carving. I really think I’m becoming a Pitt fan? Another one to single out is Melanie Laurents who easily upstages Tarantino's hailed new muse Diane Kruger.
Certainly one of the best films I've seen this year and I haven't even mentioned the ending.
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