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Second opinion: 'Inglorious Basterds' - a feminine perspective
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Inglourious Basterds - the one movie this Summer that has everybody talking, arguing, shouting, or spurting fountains of lovey-dovey over. Film fans either loved it, hated the hell out of it, or just flat out were confused by its decadence. As I said in my initial review for the film I'm 99% sure the movie's a big pile of fresh crap, but that's just me. I got a lot of negative response for my layman's appraisal of this new Tarantino film. Which is fine. That's part of the business of tossing your reviews out into the public square for all to see and read. I can dish it out, I'll be the first to take it right back in slings and arrows.
I did get one email this week from female film critic Keelah Rose and what she thought of the new Tarantino venture. I think it's the best thing anybody's written about this movie - love it or hate it. I promised her I would post her thoughts on the film and maybe get her some feedback from other film fatales and what they thought of the new Tarantino movie.
Here's what Keelah Rose had to say about Inglourious Basterds: (Spoiler Alert!)
Once upon a time, ten or fifteen years ago, Quentin Tarantino had a great idea for a movie. He even came up with a great title. And then . . . fast-forward to present day. The film we all heard so much about, and (allegedly) waited in such high anticipation for is finally out. And we see that QT’s grand idea has come to . . . a lot of sound and a whole lot of fury, signifying not much at all. His one good idea for one movie has now been stitched together into several good ideas for several movies, all connecting in only the broadest possible sense, thematically and time-wise. It’s almost a Hitchcockian Psycho-esque fake-out. The person we all thought was the star of the movie is NOT the star of the movie. In fact, he’s barely on-screen. As head of the titular band of Basterds, Brad Pitt talks a good talk in that one scene of his — and you’ve already seen it, because it was all over the trailers. 100 Nazi scalps per man for a regiment of 8 men. Is a whole. Lot. Of Nazi. Scalps. But what happened to the Tarantino of yesteryear? Remember the guy who made us watch in shared agony as Mr. Blonde cut off a man’s ear, then prepared to burn him to death? Remember the long, drawn-out death of Mr. Orange after being shot in the abdomen? And can anyone really forget the events of Pulp Fiction, from a brutal rape to reviving a woman catatonic from her drug overdose to the infamous cleaning of “that n****r’s skull”? If the Tarantino of today had been making these films, we would never have seen any of those memorable movie moments. Instead, we would have watched as several characters sat around discussing them after they happened. We get just one scene that’s supposed to prove why the Basterds are so feared in Nazi Germany. ONE. And in it, the only “scary” thing we see is Eli Roth proving that he’s as lousy an actor as he is a director. We never find out whether the Basterds paid their debt in scalps. We never really see them in action. We see them after the massacre or just before it. The big shoot-out doesn’t even involve Brad Pitt. Nor does the big, burning finale. In fact, Pitt’s character doesn’t kill a single person until the end of the movie, bringing his big body-count to a whooping ONE. Did Brad Pitt have a no-blood-and-guts clause in his contract, or has Tarantino simply lost his grip?
Not entirely. The opening scene is tense and well-written, but it owes everything not to Tarantino’s writing, but to Christoph Waltz’s performance as Col. Hans Landa. Waltz is an Austrian making his first mark on the American movie audiences, and let me assure you, the mark cuts far deeper than the swastikas Pitt’s crew leaves on their surviving captured Nazis. Waltz lives up to his name in a performance that seductively dances with the audience, whether the music is latent evil, malicious glee or swift, sudden, maniacal brutality. He dazzles in four languages. In fact, Tarantino’s writing lets Waltz and his character down. Landa’s strange and abrupt about-face in the end is just a confusing cheat, a way to end the film on a specific image that Tarantino wanted so badly he defied his own film’s interior logic to make it happen. Another major character makes the exact opposite about-face at the end of the movie. His makes more sense in context, but leads to an equally confusing and pointless final scene.
Unfortunately, Tarantino never gives us an opportunity to connect with his characters, save one. We are given one woman to really root for, a French Jew who survives Landa’s massacre at the beginning of the film and lives to plot a massacre of her own several years later. She is our heroine, and, as played by the lovely Mélanie Laurent, she is the only character who has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The other characters are just passing through on their way to either sudden death or sudden disappearance from all relevance to the plot. After awhile, you realize there’s no point in caring about any of these people, because they tend to have a screen-life expectancy of two scenes, max. Luckily, Mike Myers only gets one. His scenes make it difficult to tell whether Tarantino meant this film to be a parody of itself, or not. Sam Jackson’s random, unnecessary (and uncredited) narration along with the football playback slugs identifying the Nazi high command all point to parody. Only Waltz’s Oscar-worthy performance has enough strength to seriously point in the other direction. He is the star of this film, not Brad Pitt. He is the world's biggest Basterd.
There are a lot of set-ups in this movie, a lot of genres blended into a movie milkshake that even Daniel Plainview would have trouble drinking up. But ultimately, there is no real pay-off. We see things pop out of nowhere with no explanation, such as the James Bond weapons two characters suddenly reveal just before shooting a bunch of people in a burning building. They never stopped to ask why the building was burning. The two disparate threads of the movie never actually intertwine. It would have been nice to see Laurent’s character confront her milk-swilling nemesis. It would have been lovely to know what became of the black film projectionist. But most of all, it would have been terrific to actually see a film that was about the Inglorious Basterds. ‘Cuz you know what? That would have been a great idea for a movie.
Thank you so very, very much Keelah. I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm wondering why we both used milkshake references in our reviews of this flick....? Great minds?
So what did you girls think of Inglourious Basterds? Was it as good for you as it was for Q?
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