'Inglourious Basterds' is an expertly composed piece of compelling cinema that lacks the spark of some of Tarantino's earlier work.
I waited with some anticipation on the grass of Leciester Square, starring up at the poster for Tarantino's new film looming over me, blocking some of my sun. My anticipation was muted in comparison to the lead-up to 'Kill Bill' when I was dangerously combustible and dragging friends to their very first screenings around the 10am mark. For 'Inglourious Basterds', I simply wanted to see it sooner rather than later.
I had read the mixed criticism that had been filtering out ever since Cannes, but most of the complaints, overlong or Tarantino too much in love with his own voice, simply made me more hungry for the film. Tarantino has always been too much in love with his own voice, from Reservior Dogs onwards, and this is what makes his dialogue fun, it is over indulgent.
A 20 minute interrogation sounds fine to me if Tarantino is the screenwriter. And if 'Inglorious Basterds' was as fun as the trailer promised it would be, I imagined I would appreciate the running length. I had read about a number of scenes before the film and had taken to imagining their potential awesomeness. Though I wasn't leaping to see the film, I was entertaining the idea that this could be Tarantino's best film.
Only one thing threw me off. As I stood to head to the cinema, a bird, presumably a mangy pigeon, shat on me. The people around me observed that this was good luck. I silently yelled at them with my eyes, 'that is easy to say when you don't have shit on you'. As I cleaned it off in the toilets in the cinema, I wondered if this was a bad omen for the film.
'Inglourious Basterds' is not Tarantino's best film. That position still belongs in my eyes to 'Reservior Dogs'. Second place probably still belongs to 'Kill Bill Vol. 2'. It could however be equal third, depending on how I am feeling, to 'Pulp Fiction'.
The film's opening, that 20 minute interrogation, shows off everything immediately. The back and forth between Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) and Perrier LaPadite builds an almost unbearable level of tension as Landa circles his suspect with his words. We spend the entire 20 minutes waiting for the words to give way to some horrible actions that we know are coming. Tarantino manages to build and build to a knocking climax much in the same way he did for the opening of 'Pulp Fiction', but for a much longer running time.
The scene also establishes one of the film's overarching themes, that of the use of language, which gives Tarantino much room to play. It is surprising given the number of languages that made up the battlefields of World War 2, that no film from the 'war genre' has thoroughly addressed the use of words before. The fetish of weapons that is such a defining feature of the war genre is turned on its turn head by Tarantino even as he borrows heavily from the genre's play box.
The fetishism of language is evident nowhere more than in the character of Col. Landa who seems to be getting off as he questions his suspects in all three of his interrogations. Landa's face can barely contain the pleasure as he out manouvers his suspects in words and shifts between German, French and English, a master of all three. Elsewhere Tarantino mines language with jokes on the American's ignorance of other language, and an incredibly suspenseful scene in which an English man tries to pass as German in a tavern packed with Nazis.
The repulsive Landa would not be such a successful character if it wasn't for the performance by Christopher Waltz, striking the many notes (from his charisma to his sadistic tendencies) of the character pitch perfectly. Melanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus provides an emotional counterpoint to Landa and offers the audience the only desire for one possible narrative resolution. She is the only character you want to see succeed.
The film is expertly shot but that isn't surprising as Tarantino again taps cinematographer Robert Richardson. The two again hold what must be a rigourous attention to detail and taste for perfection. This film confirms what I've said before, no working director can match image to music like Tarantino.
For all the strengths, the film lacks something that it is hard to put a finger on. It certainly goes through more boring stretches than perhaps any other Tarantino film. The chapter dedicated to the basterds themselves feels remarkably slow for the filmmaker and could use the kick that he has become known for.
The film is worth seeing, don't raise your expectations too much and you are sure to be blown away.
