A Glourious Return to Form

Although he bought the rights to Enzo G. Castellari’s 1978 Italian WWII “macaroni combat” Inglorious Bastards as his ostensible source material, Quentin Tarantino has created, once again, something defiantly sui generis, or as he puts it, “a spaghetti Western but with World War II iconography.”

Structured in chapters, like his seminal Pulp Fiction, the film exists in its own revisionist, alternate history of the Second World War. The first chapter alludes to this sense of fantasy with its title, “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France.” The title is also, no doubt, a reflection of the Sergio Leone-esque opening scene, in which infamous Nazi “Jew Hunter” Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a farmhouse in the rolling hills of the French countryside to converse with a French dairy farmer suspected of hiding Jewish “enemies of the state.”

And what an opening scene it is. Twenty-five minutes of simmering tension as Col. Landa, one of the most memorable and complex Nazis ever brought to the screen, turns the screws of interrogation, with unnerving politeness, on the defiant French farmer. Tarantino has claimed that this is perhaps the greatest character he has ever written and that he would rather have published the script and not made the film than miscast this role. Thank goodness he found his man — in what is surely an Oscar-worthy performance from Austrian actor Waltz. Waltz’s Landa is a master of language, switching effortlessly from French to German to English, and rejoices in the psychological manipulation of the farmer. The Frenchman finally breaks down and German soldiers machine gun the floorboards beneath which the Jewish family is hiding. However, at least one Jew, a young woman named Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), manages to escape the farm. It’s a truly masterful scene.

The story of Shoshanna could have been a movie in itself, as four years later we find her operating a movie house in Paris under an assumed name. However, Tarantino first introduces us to the eponymous Basterds, a motley band of Jewish American soldiers assembled by Tennessean Lt. Aldo Raine to terrorize the Germans with “Apache tactics” and bring him “100 Nazi scalps.”

But if you enter this film for Nazi-killing action, as the trailer seems to promise, then you may be disappointed. The action in this film is in the dialogue and subtext of the words, such as in the fourth chapter, set in a French bar, La Louisiane, where British officer Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), two Basterds, and German double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) try their hardest to escape the suspicions of a brilliantly slimy Gestapo officer (August Diehl).

All the stories converge in the final chapter. Joseph Goebbels, as evil film producer, wants to hold the premiere of a movie celebrating the exploits of German soldier Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), in Paris. Disturbed by the loss of morale amongst the troops, all the top brass of Nazi Germany — Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Bormann — are set to attend. So is Col. Landa, as head of security, and the Basterds, who have a plan to blow up the cinema and end the war in one fell swoop. But the cinema’s owner, Shoshanna, has her own plans for revenge. The finale stretches the fantasy to almost satirical levels, but, somehow, it does all work — even when cinephile Tarantino calls upon highly flammable nitrate film to deliver the fatal blows.

There are no lessons to be learned here. Or even new insights to be gleaned. No — this is squarely movie as entertainment. But it’s nice, for once, that Hollywood has delivered such entertainment by means of terrific dialogue, acting, cinematography and production design rather than vapid explosions and CGI. And, while I still think Pulp Fiction is Tarantino’s masterpiece, I have a strong sense that this is the closest that he has come since to surpassing those very high standards. But I can’t be sure, because like Pulp Fiction this film seems so fresh and so strange that it demands a second viewing; and with Tarantino already hinting that a prequel is in the works, perhaps we will have even more than that to look forward to.

RATING: 8 OUT OF 10

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