Inglourious Basterds

[Note that this post is mostly discussion. If you're reading this to decide whether or not it's a movie for you, skip to the bottom.]


Spoiler alert:

This movie is a movie. You can tell because only in movies do people like Brad Pitt's character exist. Only in movies do theaters explode and gunfights happen in bar basements ending in the death of everyone involved. Only in movies can you mother-fucking kill Hitler, bitches.

Yeah, that's right. Hitler dies. What are you going to do about it? It's a movie; it's not historically accurate. In the movies, The Jew Hunter was a real person. In the movies, enough Nazis have been killed to wipe out the entirety of German's forces several times over. In the movies, time travel is possible. In the movies, some guy figured out how to extract dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes and set up a dinosaur park for tourists before it all went bad and a bunch of people got eaten. Also that last one lead to a childhood fear of raptors for thousands, but that part was real. That part wasn't in the movies.

Inglourious Basterds is a movie about film making. This is something my cinema professor last year said about nearly every movie we watched, but I think in this case it's actually true. Quentin Tarantino knows he's hot shit, and hot shit directors like to be clever. Nothing says clever in the world of film like a good movie about movies, so that's what he's delivered. I first thought this might be the case when it was revealed that the most important location in the film was a movie theater; that's a big hint. I wasn't totally sure, however, until Hitler died. This is the most important event in the movie to me. It's like Tarantino has turned to us directly and said "Look, I'm directing here. I can do whatever I want, and there's no one to stop me. I could have aliens show up right now, in the middle of WWII, and that would be what happens. I can do anything. I can kill Hitler. Yeah. Look, there I go. I'm killing Hitler. Anyone stopping me? No? Didn't think so. This is my art, this is my self expression. Fuck you." Then Hitler's dead, and the film doesn't even make a big deal out of it. It focuses on the flames and the crowd and the explosions than on some dumb historical figure. Of course the point needs to be made that, yes really, Hitler just died, so one of the generic good guys throws some extra bullets into him for good measure.

The other scene where I really felt this was just before Hitler's death. It was the scene where The Jew Hunter (I don't remember his formal name) has P J Novak and Brad Pitt captured. He sits them down at a desk, excuses his guards, and sets a telephone on the desk between them before explaining the situation. The all important cinema and location of our film's climax currently has Hitler, a bunch of important German leaders, and a helluvalota explosives in it. The Jew Hunter explains that he can either make one phone call and put a stop to the American's mission, or he can do nothing and cause the end of the war and the end of the Third Reich.


What's it going to be, he seems to ask? Does he make the call and have history go back to its regularly scheduled programming, or does he do nothing, sit back, and enjoy the ride? Tarantino presents this as a real choice. And in the movies, it is a real choice. And this being the movies, this story is in the business of delivering us a happy ending. What's happier than Hitler biting the big one, taken down by a combination of a hot chick and Brad Pitt?

The phone scene is made even stranger by The Jew Hunter being at his most absurd. He's been a great character the whole movie. He's smart, he's cunning, he's creepy, he's German, he's evil, etc. We hate him. So when he delivers his "Bingo" lines, you're caught completely off guard. What is going on, you ask yourself. The whole theater laughs awkwardly. This guy can't possibly be for real. Of course, he's not. He's in the movies. He's like the 'toon from the end of Who Killed Roger Rabbit?. He's fake, and so is this whole piece of work. Sort of.

Sort of.

Shortly thereafter, Hitler's death happens in the background of the climax, and it involves the burning of several hundred films, a projection screen, and a whole cinema. I haven't quite wrapped my head around what exactly is being said here, but I can tell for sure that it involves the fragility of movies, the fact that you can use films for lots of different things, and specifically that you can destroy people with them. Look at Fahrenheit 9/11. It didn't single handedly destroy anyone, but it and media like it brought a ton of crap down on the Bush administration. Films can be destructive.

On the other hand, films are also easy to destroy. The flames created by those old movies brought down the Third Reich, but it was only because film is so combustible that this was possible. Film is fragile; you can tear it apart or burn it up. You can change it - you can edit in a giant picture of your face telling a bunch of Nazis they're about to die into an action flick.

Which makes me question the seriousness of the whole thing in the first place. Tarantino may have some cool stuff to say, but can we take him seriously when some modern Brad Pitt caricature of a Tennessee-ian Nazi killer running around scalping people and carving swastikas into their foreheads? Maybe the whole thing is just mind games and good times.

Oh, and then there's all the anachronistic stuff. The film is constantly breaking (or at least taking a swing at) the 4th wall by putting modern looking titles over old looking places pointing out important people or explaining important things. Sometimes it takes first-act-of-Juno-esque breaks from the action to just run off on a tangent and talk about something else. I'm sure this is again commenting on the nature of the viewer watching this "historical event" through modern eyes or something like that.

Quick Summary (Sans Spoilers)

With my analysis done, let's get back to basics. Who is this movie for? Well, it's a bit of a mind-fuck in that it's just... odd. It's probably all that post-modernism. Don't see it if you can't take Tarantino levels of violence, because those exist. It's funny and well written.

SAM'S VERDICT: A very lighthearted telling of a very gruesome tale. Great writing. Expect all of these things, but go see it if you're okay with that violence thing.

Man, I've gotten this far and haven't even mentioned the formatting. The films takes place primarily in just 4-5ish twenty+ minute scenes, each awesomely written and tense all the way through. Even when the characters are laughing, you're wondering when someone else is going to get twitchy with their trigger finger and flip out. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole thing. Such writing.

And The Jew Hunter! Oh man. He's such a good character. Remind me to do a "Top 5 Villains" list sometime soon. He probably won't be on it, but he's the kind of guy that makes me want to make such a list. I'm also going to have to come up with my own categories for Best Ofs come Academy Awards time. Best New Character will probably go to Malcolm from In The Loop. Mm... Exciting...

...

What a nutty movie.