Review: “Inglourious Basterds”

(note: there are no typos in that title. That’s how they spell it.)

Rating: 85%

It’s possible to say a lot of negative things about “Inglourious Basterds,” and that may be my favorite thing about it. Like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” this is a movie built for anything except indifference, loaded with as many adjectives as a film can possibly contain: funny, sexy, gory, frightening, tragic, merry, harrowing. There is something positively jazzy about the narrative flow: the script has evolved from over a decade of writing, and yet there’s a sense that gigantic pieces of the film are borderline improvised. Some people will hate this movie, will not tolerate its loud and boisterous nature, but I find too much mastery in its construction to call it anything other than a triumph.

What amazes me about Quentin Tarantino is how much he cares about characters. It’s all too easy to dismiss him as a quick-cut kid of the MTV generation, an ADD storyteller who keeps trying to climax the movie over and over. But his movies don’t bear that out, and I think the accusation comes from lumping him with his imitators. Tarantino’s number one obsession is his characters, and the only consistent trait in all of his movies is an (arguably) disproportionate amount of screen time dedicated to them outside the confines of the plot. His movies are stylized to the point of irony, but they have an amazing and underappreciated ability to sit still that makes their director unique. The opening scene of “Basterds” is a long form, lovingly constructed interrogation, every minutia of the experience hand-carved. It took a lover of cinema to make it, and it takes a lover of cinema to appreciate it.

“Inglourious” is a great movie, but its greatness does not occur in the pages of its script; the same exact lines of dialogue could have crafted an absolute turd. Everything about this movie is the actors. Everything. Any slip on the casting and entire scenes, whole plot lines, would go down in flames. Fortunately, Quentin’s lineup is almost universally spot on. Brad Pitt matches the chutzpah of his director in his portrayal of Aldo Raine, chomping scenery and flying gloriously over the top. I never cease to marvel at this man as an actor: in “Benjamin Button,” he was equally fearless, giving a performance so silent that some would misconstrue it as vacant. But he knew what he was doing. Here, he hollers and yelps like a mad dog, and he still commands his craft. Sure it looks ridiculous from the outside, you can laugh derisively at the trailer till the cows come home, but put your butt in a theater seat and he owns you. I don’t see how it is possible to deny that he has become one of cinema’s legends.

As a constant critic of his films, not to mention his ridiculous cameo in “Death Proof,” I’m almost sad to report that Eli Roth is quite good as Sgt. Donny Donowitz. It’s pretty obvious he’s not an actor, but almost anyone can be brilliant when they’re given the right role. This is his right role. You may have been hearing about Christoph Waltz’s performance as the vicious “Jew Hunter” SS Colonel Landa, and the hype is true. He’s fantastic. Melanie Laurent absolutely took my breath away as Shoshanna, turning a plot line that would have been conspicuously “time spent away from Brad Pitt” into an equal emotional investment. Daniel Bruhl is also terrific as her would-be suitor, and a reluctant hero of the Third Reich. Diane Kruger, who was in some kind of coma during “Troy,” is mysteriously fantastic here. I’m surprised that an actor of her age can play such a mature, world-wise woman. Credit to the wardrobe and make-up people for perfectly capturing the essence of German starlet in her appearance. BJ Novak is also great in a small but fun role.

Alas, there are a few missteps. QT apparently has some kind of Achilles’ heel with the British, because Mike Myers and everyone in his one scene with him are terrible; I can see how these performances probably looked brilliant at dailies, but in the finished product they’re weak (fortunately, Michael Fassbender recovers once his character heads into France). And while I don’t necessarily want to spoil anything, I will say that the resolution of Shoshanna’s plot isn’t quite as good as I would have hoped. It was original, and appropriate enough, but I craved something a little more meaningful. And this is minor, but file her boyfriend under “useless character that didn’t need to be there.” Other than sheer practicality, I can’t fathom why that guy needed to exist. Also, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Tarantino tries to act like his film didn’t have a budget again, and again it gets in the way. His encyclopedic knowledge of movies is a wonderful boon when used to inform his characters, but crazy artistic flourishes—like an infomercial on burning film stock narrated by Samuel L Jackson—work only about 50% of the time. In general, these kinds of rough edges exist aplenty: characters have confusing arcs (if arcs at all), plots wrap up suddenly and clumsily, this is not a plotting masterpiece by any stretch. “Inglourious” works, and maybe even works because of these eccentricities sometimes, but a real emotional journey somewhere in there would have only helped.

And let’s be honest, QT wrote the same scene over and over again here. I can think of at least one example per chapter (and there are five chapters total) of a pleasant conversation that is actually an interrogation, resulting in either violence or skillful evasion. It becomes a little much. Once or twice is fine, but the fourth time the exact same formula is employed you start to…notice.

Peter Travers put it best: lovers of cinema will not be able to resist “Inglourious Basterds.” It is a film of moments, each one rendered with such incredible force that the audience doesn’t see the woods for the trees. When you step back from it, it’s hard to understand how the movie could be good, and yet it really, really is. It works. Perhaps its the bravery that puts it on the screen at all, the courage we implicitly sense in all of the artists involved, that lets us drop our guard and accept the movie for what it is. Perhaps it’s the lingering sense of something underneath the surface, a layer the story is operating on that you haven’t absorbed yet. Or maybe it’s just that Quentin Tarantino is a scoundrel, a man who can spin a yarn so compelling that even when it tangles you love him for it.