Inglorious Basterds

[jack]

I saw Inglourious Basterds. I'm curious to know what other people thought, given its controversial topic.

I don't think I enjoyed it as much as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, which I've come to think of (not entirely fairly) as Tarantino's quintessential artistic violence style, but I do enjoy his style and do enjoy this film. However, I'm also more judgemental now, inclined to think that in many ways Tarantino tried to be clever, and sometimes succeeded, but sometimes didn't.

The film starts with a brief introduction to the Inglourious Basterds, an American-Jewish guerilla unit slaughtering German soldiers in France with deadly effectiveness, and then segues into an extended plot to slaughter some of the Nazi high command at a propaganda film première.

However, the second, while dramatic, is a lot more larger-than-life than the first, and I honestly think the film would have been much more interesting if it had spent longer setting up the characters of the soldiers, the "Apache", the officer who has his men scalp captured Germans and Nazis, the "Bear Jew", the sergeant who beats people with a baseball bat and is rumoured to be a golem, etc. The little we see of them in action Tarantino does amazingly well, and I'd have loved to see more of it. But it pared down to make room for about 90 minutes of slick, dramatic climax.

I've seen sufficiently mixed reactions (eg. a summary of some newspaper reviews) that I'm happy to classify the film as "interesting" rather than "not interesting", but I wouldn't say whether its setting in such a controversial topic is sufficiently interesting to justify it, or not.

Comments

[nanaya]

I rather enjoyed it, but that's because it's obviously a series of ideas about art rather than any attempt at serious story-telling. I particularly liked the creepiness of Shoshanna trying to fend off her sniper stalker (look at me! I'm so hot right now!), and the entire pub scene with Archie and Stiglitz trying in vain to talk privately with Bridget Von Hammersmark.

I would have preferred it as a series of shorter interlinking films, but that probably would have been commercial suicide.

[jack]

I would have preferred it as a series of shorter interlinking films

Yeah, I wondered about a TV series, but your suggestion is probably better, given that there's three or four distinct parts of the film all interleaved. I agree it probably couldn't be done (although Tarantino might have a better chance than anyone else, considering he persuaded people to fund Kill Bill pt 1, just because he wanted to do it like that), but that it rings a lot better in my mind. You could have one setting up the basterds, which is what I wanted more of, and another with all the extremely tense bits with Shoshanna, and maybe one setting up the operation, and then one for the climax in the cinema.

a series of ideas about art rather than any attempt at serious story-telling.

Yeah, that's a good description. There any many excellent ideas, but that doesn't make them part of a coherent whole. Setting up the archetype of the bear jew was chilling and extremely memorable, but was all done in 10 seconds, so didn't really need another 2 hours of film, and the same for other bits.

I do applaud Tarantino's attempts to squeeze in multiple layers of stuff into one film -- but it can't all be a hit.

the entire pub scene with Archie and Stiglitz trying in vain to talk privately with Bridget Von Hammersmark

Yeah. I thought that tried a little too hard, but was still excellent.

[andrewducker]

I enjoyed it rather a lot. Very tense in places, very well shot, jolly good fun. Not life changing, but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable.