Results 1 to 4 of 4
  1. #1

    Inglourius Basterds (SPOILER ALERT)

    Did I miss a thread about this film? It's tough to search for since the title is often misspelled ... and I still have no idea why Tarantino intentionally mis-spelled it (the 1978 Italian B-Movie "Quel meledetto treno blindato" that inspired the title was properly spelled in English as "The Inglorious Bastards")

    Anyway, just got back from a second viewing and I'm itching to talk about it. Let me say that while I'm sure some will hate this film, I thought it was a terrific entertainment and, in many ways, a very thought-provoking film.

    I know that the film was promoted as a cartoon war parody with Brad Pitt mouthing a funny/phony Southern accident and Hitler pounding on a table in the previews. And while that was indeed a segment of the film, the larger part was a much more subtle, realistically played battle of wills between hidden Jew Melanie Laurent and Nazi Jew-hunter Christoph Waltz. I suggest that while every role in the Pitt segment is deliberately acted over the top (Pitt doesn't actually chew the scenery, but he does lick it a few times), that most of the performers in the Laurent/Waltz segment perform beautifully (Waltz won best actor at Canne ... he's sure to get an Oscar nomination for reinventing the stereotype of the SS monster).

    It's hard to explain how Tarantino blended his two movies into one -- the two story lines only cross at the climax and even then there is almost no interaction between the two segments until the very, very end when Pitt and Waltz are matched against each other.

    I'm still wrestling with why I thought the climax in the movie theater was so exhilerating. Obviously, it's an element of wish-fulfilment. But driving home today, I thought about one clue -- the scenes from the movie-within-the-movie of the heroic Nazi sharpshooter literally killing hundreds of American GIs from his perch in the church steeple.

    I was struck by a connection between that shot and one of the most disturbing sequences from the 1945 The Story of GI Joe ... when their attempt to take a small Italian town is delayed by a German sniper in a church steeple. I'm sure Tarantino planned the connection -- Basterds is littered with familiar camera angles and shots (for instance, the first meeting between Pitt and his team copies the look and feel of Lee Marvin's first meeting in the prison courtyard with the Dirty Dozen; Pitt's character is named Aldo Raine, an obvious tribute to Aldo Ray, who appeared in Battle Cry, the Green Berets and literally dozens of B war movies, including a 1968 Italian film"Suicide Commandos").

    The connection with The Story of GI Joe got me thinking about the semi-propagandic films Hollywood churned out during World War II. Actually, The Story of GI Joe (built around Ernie Pyle's experiences in North Africa and Italy) is pretty atypical of the period. It was a serious, almost grim, retelling of the story without the rah-rah heroics so typical of the period. That's why it was one of the great films made during the war -- similar to John Ford's masterful They Were Expendable (my choice as the greatest war film ever made).

    Much were typical were films such as Air Force and Bataan, which combined cartoon heroics with moments of real emotional power ... much as Tarantino does in this film. Take Air Force -- John Garfield's famous line "Fried Jap going Down!" was perfectly in tune with the Pitt storyline in Basterds, while the pathos of crew chief Harry Carey learning of his son's death or pilot John Ridgley dying were similar in tone to the Laurent/Waltz story line and had a real pathos for WWII audiences.

    Tarantino is a child of film and his movies always reference his cinema experience. He very much sets this film up with the cinema at the center, battling the Nazis. Laurent, who has escaped the murder of her Jewish family, runs and cinema in Paris and is romantically pursued by Nazi war hero Daniel Bruhl, who is the subject of a Nazi propaganda film that Dr. Joseph Goebbels decides to premiere in Laurent's Paris theater.

    That gives Laurent the idea of using the premiere to murder as many top Nazis as possible. Meanwhile, the Allied high command learns of the plan through their top spy -- who turns out to be an actress in the German film industry. They sent a special agent, who happens to be a film critic (the leading British expert on German films) to link up with Pitt and lead and raid on the same threater.

    Maybe just coincidence, but does anybody find it strange that the British film critic/secret agent is played by Michael Fassbender, a German-born Irishman who shares the last name of one of the most famous families in German film history (although he's no relation to the more famous Fassbenders)?

    I'm sure that's something that tickled Tarantino's funnybone.

    I'm still digesting the film and several questions still bother me (beside the spelling of the title). Did Waltz recognize Laurent as the daughter of the family he had murdered two years earlier -- ordering her a glass of milk to drink with her strudel obviously points to the fact that he did, but why does he take no action against her? I know he was planning to make a deal with the Allies and let Pitt's plan succeed, but if the Allies had turned him down, while he could have stopped Pitt's plot, he wouldn't have stopped Laurent and her lover.

    And what about the scene with Hitler laughing with glee as his sniper kills American after American on screen? Haven't we -- as Tarantino's audience -- just been laughing at Pitt's cartoon heroics as he and his men brutally kill Nazi after Nazi? Is that meant to link us to Hitler, reminding us that this historical monster shares traits with all of us?

    Anyway, I thought it was a great film experience and I'll continue to think about it.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Austin, TX
    There's some discussion on the Summer Movie Thread. I enjoyed it and want to see it again. More thoughts on your comments later.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Walnut Creek, California
    Start with post 124 of Top Movies of the summer thread, currently on the second page of the OTBB

  4. #4
    Michael Fassbender is on the cover of the NYTimes Sunday men's fashion mag and he's just as incredibly handsome as he is in the movie as the British secret agent.
    My goodness, he is gorgeous

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 19
    Last Post: 05-08-2009, 07:13 PM
  2. SPOILER Reminder
    By sue71, esq in forum Off Topic
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 08-13-2008, 12:30 AM
  3. USA--Turkey spoiler
    By roywhite in forum Elizabeth King Forum
    Replies: 14
    Last Post: 08-01-2008, 03:40 AM
  4. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 06-02-2008, 12:44 PM
  5. Survivor (5/1) spoiler
    By OZZIE4DUKE in forum Off Topic
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 05-05-2008, 09:15 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •