Wednesday 13 August 2014

Inglourious Basterds - a history lesson by Quentin Tarantino

  When I first watched the trailer to Inglourious Basterds I was quite excited to see how Tarantino would translate his auteur directing style on to a WW2 movie, utilise his renown dark humour and awesome soundtracks. Sadly I was pleasantly disappointed, I wasn't expecting a perfect masterpiece of war cinematography and a storyline that would be accurate to the timeline, I expected a well paced, funny yet serious, original story set during World War Two with over emphasised characters using dry and witty dialogue to paint a crazy picture that only Tarantino can provide. 


 There is no denying that this movie did have a lot of those elements, but they were accompanied by content that didn't need to be there; like the long drawn out scenes, the focusing on mundane items, the random acts of sadistic violence and that its practically one giant revenge fantasy for Jewish people which is fair in every right but that something that shouldn't be displayed on the big screen is such horrific manners.


  Set in Nazi occupied France in the year of 1944, the story revolves around a set of characters that will (in Tarantino style) converge for a climatic ending. First there is SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) a.k.a The Jew Hunter, he interrogates a milk farmer who is hiding Jewish runaways, Waltz' intense acting is displayed very well in this scene and pretty much every scene he's in just resonates tension, it's a shame his acting is let down by certain directing choices. 

  Obviously Hans figures him out and then kills all of the Jews except for one teenage girl; Shosanna Dreyfus who changes her name to Emmanuelle Mimieux (Melanie Laurent) who then goes on to own a theatre that will be premièring a Nazi propaganda movie that all of the heads of state will go to see giving her the perfect chance to exact her revenge. Laurent's acting is quite simple and wooden in most scenes, this works really well for the scared girl routine but for everything else it just doesn't fit. Next there is the Bastards, a group of American Nazi hunters behind enemy lines led by 1st Special Service Force Lieutenant Aldo Raine and with his eight Jewish soldiers, there mission is simple. Killing Nazi's and scalping them to send a message, which Hitler himself receives in the form of a private they let live to tell the story. Brad Pitt's performance was better than most predicted, showing that he could play the role of a lieutenant in the U.S. army and make it believable but at some points Pitt looked alot like he didn't want to be there in the film and wasn't involved in the scene, its unknown to me that its genuine or just part of his acting style.     

  Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) a film critic that specialises in German cinema that will be air dropped into occupied France and rendezvous with The Bastards and then meet the spy Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) a famous actress who is also giving the allied forces information with her they will plant a bomb at the premier at Mimieux's theatre. Both Fassbender and Kruger both acted perfectly to their abilities there wasn't really any flaws in their acting at all. Everything goes smoothly but at the rendezvous the plan suffers complications, Hicox and two of the Bastards are caught out by an sharp witted SS officer and die in the shoot out, Bridget suffers a bullet to the leg and has to wear a cast and what's left of the Bastards must escort her to the premier posing as an Italian film crew. 

  They are inevitably found out by none other than Hans Landa, but he allows the plan to go ahead but only if he's allowed to walk free when the war is won. While this is happening Emmanuelle is planning her own assassination using highly flammable film reels this creates a fire that traps everyone in the theatre and thus burning everyone alive but two of the Bastards get in and kill everyone in the private viewing box including the Fuhrer himself (because that's  how he died according to Tarantino). At the end of it all Landa and Raine have their last meeting but it doesn't end well, Landa is let free but first they carve a German swastika so that he's forever reminded and remembered as an SS German officer who committed horribly acts of evil.

  One of the first negatives of this film that appeared to me was the strange fixation on mundane items and action, like the first scene there is an entire shot of Landa drinking milk, this I found quite distracting and I found myself lost wondering where the scene was going. At first I thought it was to create tension so I assumed it was Tarantino's directing style, but in another scene where Landa and Emmanuelle are having strudel and suddenly the camera focuses on the whipped cream that's being served and once again I am at a loss not knowing the context of the shot or camera angle and after that the camera focuses on Emmanuelle cutting a chunk of strudel and eating it. 


  These strange moment broke up the flow of the scenes and made them very hard to keep up with, there maybe hidden meaning behind the directors choice of action but personally it a major contribution to ruining the movie for me but the main element I found unsettling was the barbaric scenes of violence.

  The first there's the scalping of German soldiers that was completely unnecessary and that it also insulting and also that its desecrating the human body once they're dead, in essence it supposed to be a war movie but all I see are things that normal soldier wouldn't do or at least the majority of the allied forces, yes there was a minority but that was minuscule compared to the atrocities . 


 The seconds scene I find highly disturbing is the entrance of the Bear Jew and how he mercilessly batters the German officer to death and all of his fellow soldiers laughing and finding it funny, the scene literally glorifies beating an unarmed man. I found this scene to be in poor taste and down right sadistic, the first time I watched it I genuinely thought they swung a bat at a man's head for real and was repulsed by the sound the bat made when it connected, which left me feeling incredibly uncomfortable. 

  Its actually very interesting that its Eli Roth who plays the Bear Jew and actually starring in the film. He's renowned for directing both Hostels (not for family films) and Cabin Fever, also known for starring in many horror films. Roth had worked with Tarantino before on other projects. He even gets one of the last major shots shooting Hitler (for some reason, because that happened). Maybe it due to his love for horror but I got the impression majority of the realistic violence was Roth's influence. 

  This film is a cinematic representation of violence be-gets violence, it shows American soldiers stooping to the enemies level and committing heinous acts and then these acts create more chaos and violence. If you look at the problems the world faces today in the middle east and eastern Europe, you'd think we'd learn not to see this specific horror as entertainment but as a warning of what we are capable of. What this movie actually should be is a presentation of what not to do to your enemy during war.  

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