Shifting restlessly in my seat during the 2 ½ hour length of Inglourious Basterds, a thought occurred to me: “Has Quentin Tarantino gone mad?” Sure, he can get away with rambling dialog about Quarter Pounders in Paris and foot massages. But when did he get it into his head that people will sit still for references to G.W. Pabst and the outsized respect for movie directors in France?
Seriously, I’m a movie geek and I know my Pandora’s Box very well. I follow Cannes and know how silly the French critics can be at times and yet I found these references tiresome. I can’t imagine the paralysis that must have been setting in with other less movie-geeky members of my matinee audience. Put it this way. Are you familiar with Riefenstahl’s “mountain” movies? If not, proceed with caution. They get mentioned, a lot.
Basterds is Tarantino’s take on the World War II war picture. Told in five chapters in a style that mimics Kill Bill all the way down to the same font used on the title cards, it weaves together two main storylines. One of them, led by Brad Pitt, follows a band of American soldiers, all of them Jewish, who set out to scare the Nazis by scalping and brutally killing as many of them as possible. Their quota: 100 dead Nazis killed.
The other storyline involves Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent); a young woman who narrowly escapes death at Nazi hands, years later inherits a movie theater, and ultimately concocts a plan to secure her revenge when the Nazis force her to premiere their latest propaganda picture on her screen. Hint: nitrate film burns very quickly.
Tying it all together is Col. Hans Landa, otherwise known as “The Jew Hunter.” Portrayed as both a ruthless Nazi officer and as an unflappable detective with a hilariously enormous Sherlock Holmes pipe, Landa (Christoph Waltz) is a monumentally magnificent conception. Whether interrogating a French farmer, eating a pastry with Dreyfus, or laughing uncontrollably as he sees through an adversary’s lie; he is mesmerizing.
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