Originally Posted by
DanielBenoit
Inglorious Basterds - I think we all know by now that Tarantino has a knack for story-telling. Film critic Roger Ebert once said that Tarantino could "make a bad film, but never a boring one." That sums up Tarantino. His films reek of cinema, they embrace cinema, they are about cinema, they are cinema in the purest sense possible. One appretiates Tarantino the more and more one sees other movies, for he just having so much goddamn fun with his movie geek knowledge, and if you have seen the right films, you can play along too.
First, the opening. From the very first credit I was enthralled with joy at Tarantino's passion for movies, for the opening credits are done in the style of a nostaligic blaxpotation film from the seventies, stylish titles and all. He even has the old-fashoined Universal logo. Oh, and there's also the film which plays at the movies climax which is a nod to the works of Eisenstein, with many visual refferences, through this Tarantino creates a sort of irony with an entire audience of sadistic Nazi's laughing their asses off.
Tarantino's films are beyond catagorization because they are so masterfully messy. When Pulp Fiction first came out critics were enthralled at Tarantino's simultanious ability to be masterfully controlled and yet spontaneous and even messy at the same time. Tarantino's films presents one of the few cases in which messy is good, it is style. His juxtapositions are probably very discomforting for a mainstream American audience, a certain percentage entering the theater expecting a fun-filled action flick, others expecting a black comedy, and others expecting straight-up war drama. It is far and away none of those three, for it is too delightfully talky to match its advertising, too cruel and violent to be pure comedy, and far too self-consiously fun and absurd to be a war drama. Like all great directors, his films are purely Tarantino.
The plot? Oh **** the plot. I could hardly explain Pulp Ficiton in one paragraph, much less one sentence. Like the great Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino proudly prefers style over substance. But that doesn't mean that his films are empty excersizes, just as much as any of Hitchcock's masterpieces are, they are just all and all about themselves. But Tarantino seems to have matured since Pulp Fiction, and in a sense has lost some of his youth. For while Inglorious Basterds deals with very deep issues concerning morality and torture, it is not as vibrant and exciting as Tarantino's first three masterpeices were (Resevoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown). Those films had a gritty rebelliousness to them which could only be found in the magic of independent cinema. Don't get me wrong, Inglorious Basterds is the best work Tarantino has done since Pulp Fiction, but after the sucsess of that great film, with the high production values of Kill Bill, Grindhouse and this one, the excitment of watching a Tarantino film in all its glorious youth has been toned down a little.
That said, Tarantino is no less a wirter or director than he was fifteen years ago and has made yet another near-perfect film. The joys of watching his camera, listening to his dialouge and recognizing his hommages, is like rexperiencing cinema history all over again. This film probably most explicitly of Tarantino's films exists on three different levels; a postmodern epic, an exaggerated hommage to Dirty Dozen-esque films which in itself becomes one, and on a more philosophical level, a series of long drawn-out scenes concerning characters in extreme moral choices.
Probably the most deepest scene in the film may also the most sadistic. It is one in which one of the Basterds, Aldo Raine tries to get a POW Nazi to give him information concerning the location of German tanks. He "respectfully refuses". Another Basterd comes out known as "The Bear Jew" and pounds his head to a pulp. The next POW is more cooperative. In this age of Guantanimo Bay, American audiences are aware of the implications this scene holds, and while the apolitical Tarantino stays out of creating a message, the audience are respectfully given the decision on what they make of it.
It's also funny how such a cinematic vaudvillean and playmaster like Tarantino would provide his audience with subtle insights on the nature of evil. I may be deriving this conclusion myself, but the film really made me think about the difference between killing a Nazi soldier and killing a Nazi general.
But enough of this seriousness. We need more directors like Tarantino who value cinema too much to carry themselves away in morality plays, and in the end save the subtle ethical dilemas in the story.
Now I must get to Christopher Walken's performance which is masterful in that it is both cunning and evil, friendly and comedic at the same time. He is one of the top SS men and is known as "The Jew Hunter" due to his uncanny ability to detect gentiles hiding Jews. He is a master observer and trickster. To sum up his character in his own words (in slight paraphrase) "Oh I'm only kidding, I'm being rough on you." He says that at a point in which its characters are at a fragile moment in the plot and are under the danger of being found out. His friendly throw-off is vital to his character, for his interrigations are done like a wolf in sheeps clothes, or rather, a wolf in a very friendly and uninquiring guests clothes. He won at Cannes and deserves a nominatoin at the Oscars.
This is an infitintley fun and clever film done at the highest levels of entertainment, just as Pulp Fiction was, with sharp-edgy writing in perfectly balanced scenes which at times last for over ten twenty minutes and have the play and irony of a Shakespearean comedy. Speaking of comedy, Brad Pitt delivers one of the biggest laughs I've ever had from a non-comedic film with his use of Italian. Inglorious Basterds possesses all of the aspects you could ever want out of a Tarantino film, sharp and intelligent dialouge, endless talking, merciless violence, postmodern patiche, a non-linear narrative, great characters played greatly. Now that's a film. 9/10
"It's so mysterious, the land of tears." 
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