August 16, 2009
Tarantino tries out the same old shtick in his latest magpie-movie, Inglourious Basterds. A teen to his toes, the enfant terrible is still an enfant with an attention span to boot: Basterds continues the director’s patchwork approach to storytelling, chopping it into chapters. In Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction it was novel, it gripped. Here it’s inglorious.
Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, Col Hans Landa, aka the Jew Hunter, is out to seek and destroy as many Jews as possible. For the Allies, Lt Aldo Raines recruits a bunch of basterds to kill and scalp Nazis. Meanwhile, in Paris, a young Jewish woman runs an arthouse cinema and has her own reasons for hating the Nazis. As the chapters unfold, so does the fairytale nightmare that might just end the war.
Brad Pitt hams it up gloriously as Raines – and Christoph Waltz is outstanding as the urbane uber-baddie Landa. Both mouth Tarantino’s finely-honed dialogue as they’re meant to – Raines mauling it with a Deep South drawl, Landa like a sophisticate. And this is where Tarantino scores big time.
Tarantino’s ability to ratchet tension out of comedic talk is almost Pinteresque. No one else in cinema can quite pull off the powder-keg potency of screwtight scenes, even while characters talk about milk, or play a card game. Trademark stuff for Tarantino, but in Basterds the trick is played repeatedly in each chapter which impacts on the pacing.
Tarantino makes much of his love for movies and in Basterds he gives himself a Paris cinema motif to play with, waxing lyrical about European films; he even features a film-critic Brit agent (Michael Fassbender) . But for all his screen-geek status, his own films are just as suited to the stage: filled with talky, set-bound scenes, the action’s always pared down to a minimum - excepting the car-chase bits of Death Proof. From Reservoir Dogs on, every movie is episodic, most scenes are static.
And in Basterds more than any other, the format creaks – largely because there ain’t no compelling story, no big reveal, and for the most part, no basterds either. The eponymous scalp-hunters are quickly formed then disappear. Only one scene shows their brutality in full – a cat-and-mouse interrogation of a noble Nazi officer, threatened with a baseball bat.
Explosions of squidgy violence are never far away and Tarantino’s signature focus on sudden death and close-up spatter is certainly on show in Basterds. But the films tone spirals from sophistication to silliness. It begins well with a cracking opener, beautifully shot and paced, as Landa arrives to terrorise a French country family. Much of the film is subtitled – credit to a cast competent in French, German and Italian. So far so intelligent.
But Basterds blows it somewhat as the film moves closer to Mel Brooks, with a hammy Hitler, a goofy Goebbels and a made-up Mike Myers (Austin Powers) as a Brit spy-chief. Yet, even so, Tarantino’s rag-bag pop-culture intellect manages to mix his usual movie-mindset with musical riffs, from Bowie to the soundtracks of Morricone and Elmer Bernstein.
It’s not even an original idea – only the spelling is. Inglorious Bastards was a 70s exploitation movie for which Tarantino tellingly does the intro on DVD. But he’s certainly made this one his own. Christoph Waltz’s performance and the unbearably tense card-game standoff in a bar are worth the ticket price.
Here’s hoping Tarantino’s Pinter-like prowess leads to a stage-play sometime. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a war film with screw-tight tension, wit, violence, coherence and characters to care for, then wait for the excellent Hurt Locker. Because Inglourious Basterds isn’t it.
Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, Col Hans Landa, aka the Jew Hunter, is out to seek and destroy as many Jews as possible. For the Allies, Lt Aldo Raines recruits a bunch of basterds to kill and scalp Nazis. Meanwhile, in Paris, a young Jewish woman runs an arthouse cinema and has her own reasons for hating the Nazis. As the chapters unfold, so does the fairytale nightmare that might just end the war.
Brad Pitt hams it up gloriously as Raines – and Christoph Waltz is outstanding as the urbane uber-baddie Landa. Both mouth Tarantino’s finely-honed dialogue as they’re meant to – Raines mauling it with a Deep South drawl, Landa like a sophisticate. And this is where Tarantino scores big time.
Tarantino’s ability to ratchet tension out of comedic talk is almost Pinteresque. No one else in cinema can quite pull off the powder-keg potency of screwtight scenes, even while characters talk about milk, or play a card game. Trademark stuff for Tarantino, but in Basterds the trick is played repeatedly in each chapter which impacts on the pacing.
Tarantino makes much of his love for movies and in Basterds he gives himself a Paris cinema motif to play with, waxing lyrical about European films; he even features a film-critic Brit agent (Michael Fassbender) . But for all his screen-geek status, his own films are just as suited to the stage: filled with talky, set-bound scenes, the action’s always pared down to a minimum - excepting the car-chase bits of Death Proof. From Reservoir Dogs on, every movie is episodic, most scenes are static.
And in Basterds more than any other, the format creaks – largely because there ain’t no compelling story, no big reveal, and for the most part, no basterds either. The eponymous scalp-hunters are quickly formed then disappear. Only one scene shows their brutality in full – a cat-and-mouse interrogation of a noble Nazi officer, threatened with a baseball bat.
Explosions of squidgy violence are never far away and Tarantino’s signature focus on sudden death and close-up spatter is certainly on show in Basterds. But the films tone spirals from sophistication to silliness. It begins well with a cracking opener, beautifully shot and paced, as Landa arrives to terrorise a French country family. Much of the film is subtitled – credit to a cast competent in French, German and Italian. So far so intelligent.
But Basterds blows it somewhat as the film moves closer to Mel Brooks, with a hammy Hitler, a goofy Goebbels and a made-up Mike Myers (Austin Powers) as a Brit spy-chief. Yet, even so, Tarantino’s rag-bag pop-culture intellect manages to mix his usual movie-mindset with musical riffs, from Bowie to the soundtracks of Morricone and Elmer Bernstein.
It’s not even an original idea – only the spelling is. Inglorious Bastards was a 70s exploitation movie for which Tarantino tellingly does the intro on DVD. But he’s certainly made this one his own. Christoph Waltz’s performance and the unbearably tense card-game standoff in a bar are worth the ticket price.
Here’s hoping Tarantino’s Pinter-like prowess leads to a stage-play sometime. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a war film with screw-tight tension, wit, violence, coherence and characters to care for, then wait for the excellent Hurt Locker. Because Inglourious Basterds isn’t it.