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Directed by Quentin Tarantino
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Inglourious Basterds Leave
it to Quentin Tarantino to write and direct a fantasia on World War II. He takes certain inescapable facts
(the Germans occupied France, they did their best to
kill all Jews, etc.). He
didn’t change that; what he did do was invent an 8-man squad of Jewish
American soldiers under the command of Brad Pitt (named Aldo Raines, out of
respect for the old actor in World War II films Aldo Ray), whose job was to
parachute into occupied France and kill Germans. Where
he takes us from there is, well, a rewrite of history, and along the way he
provides us with the most inventive of German villains I’ve ever
seen. His name is Col. Hans Landa, played by the Austrian actor Christoph
Waltz in a smooth performance in three languages (German, French, English),
with a range that goes from over-the-top humor to the most appalling
evil. Tarantino rightly makes him
the most complex and chilling character in the whole film. “Inglourious Basterds”
– the title comes direct from an obscure Italian film about the war,
misspellings and all – begins with Col. Landa’s
visit to a French dairy farmer’s house. He and the farmer talk and talk, until
the Colonel gets what he’s come for: the farmer is hiding a Jewish
family in the cellar. Only one
member gets away, the daughter Shosanna (Melanie
Laurent); the next time we see her she will be running a cinema in Paris
under a different name. And
then Tarantino introduces us to Aldo Raines and his squad, who are dropped by
parachute into France solely to kill and scalp German soldiers, doing their
best to spread fear and panic among them. What
happens then, including a premiere at the cinema of a heroic German film
about someone who’s been called “the German Sergeant York,”
I cannot say. What I can say,
though, is that Tarantino has fooled all of us once again, with the most
inventive film in years. Not
since “Kill Bill” has he been so good, so sure of himself in
taking us along a path that only he can see, and making it all work. “Inglourious
Basterds” may not be his best film – that,
for me, is “Jackie Brown” – but he’s lost none of his
imaginative conceits, and that counts for a lot. |