On Dangerous Ground: Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino simultaneously sends-up and celebrates cinema's corrupt nationalist history in his latest film, the revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds. This contradictory dichotomy in many ways sums up this most confounding film, one that I found exhilarating and exasperating in nearly equal measure; it's simultaneously the director's most sophisticated movie and his most adolescent, at once nothing like what you would expect from Tarantino and exactly what you would expect from him. He satisfies the blood lust of both himself and his audience, all the while turning an extremely critical eye towards the power of illusion in creating these visceral reactions towards violence, and the feelings of jingoism that screen iconography can exploit.

Yet there are many moments where it feels like he is simply making the movie for the adolescent inside of him, attempting to vicariously live in the cinematic wonderland of war movies that he did as a child, and these mostly isolated moments of shallow wish-fulfillment serve as a bizarre counterpoint to the far more numerous moments that indicate a mature artist. The weakest moments of the film are the ones that detail the exploits of the titular band of American soldiers, led by a charismatic (and psychotic) Aldo Raine, played in broad comic strokes by Brad Pitt; and it's in these sequences that Tarantino's "violence is the most fun you can have at the movies!" philosophy wore me down. Revenge has been a vital part of his movies since the Bruce Willis episode of Pulp Fiction, but here it feels like he's using the tailor made emotions that the Nazi uniform brings with it to justify his penchant for violence on the screen. Though this isn't the cartoony violence of the first Kill Bill, the tone of the violence strikes me as decidedly more 'realistic' in this one; there are many instances where the violence is chilling, as it should be (the most chilling one involving no blood at all), but there are also moments where I feel that the violence is supposed to be 'fun' (such as during the aforementioned second chapter, or when Pitt's Aldo Raine sticks his finger in a woman's bullet-wound to get information). I've honestly never been bothered by the violence in Tarantino's films before, but something about the brutality of the head-scalpings (which leave nothing to the imagination), and the glee with which the Nazi's are brutally murdered rubbed me the wrong way.

Far more interesting to me is the personal revenge tale of Shosanna Dreyfus (an enchanting Mélanie Laurent); who, after witnessing the murder of her family in the opening scene, gets a unique opportunity to bring down the Nazi regime when the movie theater she runs is going to be used for a Gala Nazi Premiere. Her story is interwoven with that of the titular basterds, and the two come together in the end for the big finale (set in, appropriately, a movie theater), but the contrast of the two narratives struck me as particularly sharp; whereas the sequence that details the band-of-outsiders is exactly the kind of uber-violent revenge fantasy that the movie was marketed as (it is admittedly a small portion of the overall movie), the tale of Shosanna is poignant and, in the end, the most singularly moving thing Tarantino has ever done. This is the first time I've ever felt he painted an honest and accurate portrait of a female; instead of being in stately awe of them, treating them as Goddesses, this is a multi-faceted, nuanced portrayal of a woman, and Mélanie Laurent's wonderful performance tows the line expertly between vulnerability and empowerment. Those who decry Tarantino's films for lack of 'character development' would do well to take a look at Shosanna's character arc in this film. Part of me wishes she had been the core focus of the movie, because to me she was the film's heart and soul, but Tarantino's vision is much too ambitious to be confined to a single character as it was in the Kill Bill movies.

It's worth noting that the crude nationalism of the film's second chapter bothered me in the same way the misogyny of Death Proof's first act bothered me, but I think he does unique things in both those films that shifts the context of what I had falsely perceived as misogyny in his previous film, and nationalism in this one. We were all hearing for years and years about Tarantino's revisionist-history war epic, and the early plot synopsis I read (this is going back a few years) detailed that it would be Jewish soldiers taking revenge on Nazi's; while there is something amusing about this concept on the surface, there's also something dubious about turning Jews into perpetrators and Nazi's into victims, something that goes far deeper than issues of moral relativism. On paper, this could have been an exploitation of people's personal biases to justify extreme acts of violence, but Tarantino does something unexpected and, later in the film puts the brutal, borderline sadistic second chapter titled "Inglourious Basterds" into a unique context with war movie history. The audience I saw the film with the second time laughed and cheered during a sequence when "The Bear Jew" (Eli Roth, who is not nearly as bad in this as he's made out to be) beats a Nazi soldier to death for not revealing the locations of his fellow soldiers. I truthfully found this incredibly off-putting, as I didn't honestly find anything funny about a sequence that details a clubbing at the hands of a sociopath (Tarantino's Producer Lawrence Bender called the movie a "fucking Jewish wet dream"), but the somewhat troubling response of my audience was mirrored during the climactic premiere of the movie-within-a-movie Nation's Pride, about a German soldier who kills some 300 enemy infantry while stationed in a bell tower in Italy. Of course, this propaganda film is nothing but an exploitation film with political import, and as the in-film audience applauded the killing of soldier's actions in the fictitious Nation's Pride, I couldn't help think that Tarantino was, in some way, critiquing the way some audiences take a giddy, perverse joy in violence, especially when that violence appeals to our innate sense of xenophobia. Of course, many people (his fans included), refuse to accept that Tarantino is capable of such insight, especially because these insights come from within a genre film.

And it strikes me that many detractors were just waiting to rip Tarantino a new one for his revisionist history, deciding their stance based on the marketing ("Jews fight back!") as opposed to what is actually presented on the screen. Many of the negative reviews of Tarantino's latest simply cite what's being referred to as the 'Jewish Revenge Porn' element (leading one to think that they are reviewing the teaser trailer from last year, as opposed to the actual 2 and a half hour movie), ignoring the essence of the film in favor of axe-grinding polemics. Tarantino's movies are never explicitly about what they present on the surface --- be it gangsters or samurais or soldiers --- but rather they are about cinema itself, and this is his most sophisticated rumination on the power of images; rather than stuffing this film to the brim with references to other movies, cinema is an ingrained part of the film's story --- both as an art form and as a physical object (the combustibility of celluloid is a vital element of Shosanna's revenge). This is the first time Tarantino has displayed a deft knowledge of film history instead of trivia, and the way he puts films into a social context --- acknowledging that they can be as powerful weapons in a war as bullets and bombs --- is the first time he's used his encyclopedic knowledge of film to an ends outside of creating an inclusive film universe (one important character is an ex-film critic turned soldier, which gives Tarantino a venue with which to comment on how the German film industry changed under Goebbels). I know a lot of Tarantino's detractors simply won't accept such depth from him, but the centrality of cinema to Inglourous Basterds is an inspired and extremely perceptive storytelling device; it's a wonderful metaphor that celebrates all movies, not just the genres that Tarantino has displayed a special affinity for.

If this is the first time he's put his considerable knowledge to good use, it's also the first time he's ever really encapsulated his idols, while still developing one of the most idiosyncratic directorial voices in modern movies. He spent the entirety of Volume 2 trying to approximate Segio Leone's distinct visual style (which isn't to say I don't think he was directing from his own sensibility as well), and I don't think he quite succeeded --- though he almost did. The opening chapter of Inglourious Basterds, fittingly called "Once Upon a Time... In Nazi Occupied France" (which would have been a much better title for the film, I think), is pure Leone; Tarantino films the gorgeous French countryside the way Leone filmed his barren landscapes, and the recontextualizing of locales is perfect for Tarantino's aesthetic, as the use of color has always been a central element of his compositions (since he tends to be thought of as more of as a writer and good director of actors than anything, his considerable visual panache is rarely discussed). This opening sequence kicks the story into gear by introducing us to Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz, who is justifiably getting praised to the heavens for his turn here), nicknamed "The Jew Hunter", as he is going into the French countryside looking for any potentially hiding Jews. This opening sequence is some of Tarantino's very best work --- wrought with tension, it aligns our sympathies with the French farmer as Landa plays him like a fiddle, knowing exactly which buttons to press and how to manipulate until he gives him the information he wants: where the Jews are hiding. In a very powerful moment, you can see the heartbreak and devastation in the man's eyes as he announces the location where his friends are hiding. Landa, as portrayed by Waltz, is not your typical raging socio-path Nazi (it's just so easy, not to mention convenient, to blame the Holocaust on a couple of bad apples); rather, he is a cunning and artful manipulator, one who takes pride in his job not because he believes in the final solution, but because he's an opportunist.

This opening sequence illustrates how the film will function; each 'chapter' is a self-contained set piece, working both as an individual unit and as part of a much richer whole. The most daring of these is a nearly half-hour long sequence set in a bar, with German actress Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) meeting the German-speaking members of the titular band of soldiers in a pub filled with Nazi's to plot the bombing of the Nation's Pride premiere. This is the mirror of the suspense-filled opening, which similarly drew out the tension with long stretches of dialogue. Some have complained that this sequence stops the movie dead in its tracks, but I think it displays sheer movie-making gusto; Tarantino is audacious enough a film maker to pull in the reigns and allow time for the situation to develop, to the point where we're intimately familiar with not only every detail of the room, but with all of the people who occupy it as well (Tarantino goes to great pains, for instance, to establish that one Nazi soldier is out with his comrades celebrating after the birth of his son), so that when things finally do explode in a shoot-out there is a significant emotional involvement on the part of the audience as well. This sequence is sheer masterful storytelling, proving that Tarantino the goofy, nutty post-modernist is something of a classicist at heart. Though my favorite chapter is aptly titled "Revenge of the Giant Face", where all the loose, seemingly unrelated narrative threads come together in a glorious, exciting, audaciously conceived finale.

But there is something in the film's final sequence that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Hans Landa has surrendered to the United States, but as one final gesture Aldo the Apache carves the Nazi swastika into his forehead, because he can't abide the thought of Landa one day taking off his uniform and living a normal life. In the film's final shot, Pitt's Aldo Raine proclaims directly that this particular carving "just may be my masterpiece". In interviews, Tarantino has always struck me as somewhat arrogant, but in his movies that confidence translates into remarkably assured, supremely confident and idiosyncratic direction; but this narcissistic final shot reminds me of the Tarantino I see on television, as opposed to at the movies. I left the theater with a bad taste in my mouth, so much so that afterward I wasn't sure if I even saw the movie I thought I saw, and seeing it a second time the whole thing went down much smoother; I admired what I admired all the more, while also having a more firm grasp with the few things that bother me about the movie.

But the more the movie fades into hindsight, the more my misgivings with it disappear into the background, to the point that the point where they feel almost trivial. At the end of the day, this represents ultimate Tarantino; virtuoso, expertly crafted entertainment that is rooted in, but not defined by, genre tropes, and a great soundtrack (particular favorites would be the opening theme "The Green Leaves of Summer" from The Alamo, the Morricone, and a gloriously anachronistic David Bowie). That I'm not quite enamored with it (but damn close) simply reflects things that bother me personally about the handling of this particular subject, and don't necessarily speak to the director's intent. All of Tarantino's movies have been about celebrating the guilty pleasures that the movies have to offer, while at the same time supplying the lowbrow with his own unique stamp. But Inglourious Basterds and Death Proof represent the first of Tarantino's more critical takes on genre, where he transcends the more disreputable aspects of his favored genres by expanding them in a cheeky, delightfully postmodern way. It is perhaps best to think of Inglourious Basterds as a unique summation of the history of Nazi's on film --- from Reinfenstal to Spielberg to everything in between.