Quentin Killed Tarantino! You Basterds!

Little is needed by way of summary for Quentin Tarantino’s latest effort, a ridiculous, revisionist romp through WWII-era France.

We all know that Inglourious Basterds has been a pet project of Tarantino’s since he was knee-high to a movie camera, that it features a garrote-scarred Brad Pitt drawling about Nazi scalps, and, if you’ve seen it, that it is kind of a let down. To be sure, I’ve no wish to malign the director of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, so if what follows reads a bit like a laundry list of complaints about the Basterds, it is so only to the extent to which Tarantino’s new film falls short of the impeccably high standards he’s set for himself.

We might start by pointing out all the tiny problems with the film: Tarantino makes some unfortunate casting choices that, for me at least, really seemed to work against the film (see: Austin Powers and that dude from The Office); the narrative is woefully linear, lacking all the free-wheeling liberties with plot structure I’ve come to love and expect from a Tarantino flick; furthermore, after the choreographed exactitude of Kill Bill, some of action in the Basterds feels a little slight and sloppy, and finally, perhaps under the influence of his fellow director, friend and actor in the film, Eli Roth, the glorious stylized violence characteristic of Tarantino’s earlier work has here given way to a ponderous predilection for gore. These are, however, ultimately petty and forgivable flaws.

The bigger problems facing Inglourious Basterds seem to have more to do with failures of what Tarantino does best.

First, as far as the Basterds go, the movie gives us little that its trailers don’t. Where is the nuanced and fraught interplay of characters we get from the gang is Reservoir Dogs? Where are the grotesque biographic back-stories of the rogue’s gallery in Kill Bill? We want a cadre of complex and strange characters that live up to the title of the film—we want inglorious bastards. What we get, however, are caricatures that are barely on screen long enough to be introduced. To be fair, Tarantino is said to be planning follow up films in which, hopefully, he’ll round out his Nazi-hating sons-of-bitches a bit more.

The real snags in this movie, however, show up where Tarantino ought to be strongest. Take the film’s trudging self-reflexivity. Formerly, Tarantino could slyly poke his finger in the eye of movie conventions and lore with a lovingly clever touch and a renegade grace. But in Inglourious Basterds, when, for instance we get a Samuel L Jackson voice-over lecturing on the properties of nitrate film stock, the whole thing just seems like an obligatory exercise. Moreover, the abiding motif of the film, namely, that in a way, the movies make (and re-make) our own history, is pushed so hard that it begins to feel like a nitwit attempt at profundity. (I must admit, however, that Tarantino’s off-the-cuff survey of Weimar Cinema is a lot of fun.)

Lover of subtitled films that I am, the biggest problem I have with Inglourious Basterds is one that I am almost reluctant to admit, but being principally in French and German, the film lacks that trademark wit, at once incisive and profane, that is Tarantino dialog at its best. This is part of a broader hang-up I have with this film: to put a fine point on it, the film’s subject matter simply doesn’t seem to jibe with Tarantino’s style. While his approach to filmmaking has always been one that synthesizes the ephemeral schlock of worldwide cinema, music and art, in his other films, Tarantino’s stylistic schizophrenia always achieves a sort of cohesion in an American pop-cultural milieu. Inglourious Basterds tries the same operation within a Fascist aesthetic and by way of a reliance on Nazi kitsch, and it just doesn’t work. As a result, the movie feels like it never quite knows how to hold itself together.

Inglourious Basterds has its share of faults, though it has its moments, too. Take for instance, the film’s climactic set-piece: its overwhelming similarity to the finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark aside, it is about two minutes of movie making that can hold its own along side any of the best moments in Tarantino’s career. And if Inglourious Basterds is ultimately a failure, it is at least an interesting one, serving as an object lesson in what Mr. Tarantino usually gets so right.


-Heath Iverson