Inglorious Basterds (2009)
This might come out a bit chaotic but I have so much to say about this movie.
I watched Inglorious Basterds when it came out, and I kept going back to the cinema multiple times that couple of weeks. I was a die hard Tarantino fan back then and to me, this was the event of the year. I watched it many many times since then, the last of them a month ago, and I even used it to do a presentation on "sountrack use" to a subject I had in my bachelor. This was in 2015, and part of my work back then was to watch every film IB referenced in some way, especially through the soundtrack. It was also the year I joined MoFo so this film played an important part in me becoming a cinephile.
That being said, my main problem with the late Tarantino films is the balance between epic scenes and some more boring ones. He has been creating some films that are too uneven to be enjoyable as a whole. I have had huge problems concerning that, with Django and especially The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a time in Hollywood, which makes Inglorious Basterds the last film by the man I truly enjoyed.
Granted it still has some problems, especially in the middle sections, the balance between the great scenes and the not so good ones is mostly positive and that's because the film opens with a scene I believe is among the most memorable and well executed in film history (and that's not an exaggeration). Tarantino chooses to open with a long dialogue, as he often does, but this time there's no "what's Like a Virgin about?". He writes an intense conversation that jumps right to the point, and presents the villain at its most menacing moment, rewriting the rules of movie making once again. The acting is obviously top notch especially from this film's greatest revelation: Christoph Waltz, who jumps from french to english to german displaying remarkable accents in all of them while never losing the character and this dangerous aura around him. This dialogue culminates in a moment that still gives me the goosebumps after so many watches. The soundtrack looks like it was written for this movie and the camerawork is astonishing!
While opening a film like that sets the bar very high, Tarantino still finds a way to create an impressive second chapter, introducing the Basterds, lead by a very impressive Brad Pitt. These characters are rough, menacing, violent but they are killing guys worse than them so we find ourselves rooting for them. There are some really funny moments and again another well executed tension bit with the Bear Jew smashing the brains of a honorable nazi general.
Now, at this time the movie is already going to be a favourite of mine, no matter what happens.
In the next chapter we are introduced to Laurent's Emmanuelle Mimieux, the new identity of the girl who ran away in the first scene. This is where I think the film loses some steam. We see a young nazi soldier, that I really never cared about, trying to seduce her while she plans a way to get revenge. The peak of the chapter is Emmanuelle's meeting again with Hans Landa. There's not much happening in the scene but the tension is almost unbearable! I read what I think was the original script once, and if that was legit, Tarantino had the ideia of shooting a plan under the table and show that Emmanuelle peed on her pants with the fear of getting recognized. I'm glad he took it out and we are let as it is.
Then there's the Operation Kino and the tavern scene. The dialogues here are not as cool and the Basterds lose some of that mystiscim but the under the table stand off blows in a spectacular fashion, with a typical Tarantino burst of adrenaline and over the top blood spilling. About the acting, I usually like Fassbender a lot, but here he didn't convince me. I think you need to have a very particular personality to deliver a Tarantino line and he just doesn't have it. We lose Stiglitz though, waaaay to soon IMO as that's probably the only character I felt I wanted to see more from.
Finally, the big reveal, where all the plot lines must come to an end. We get all surviving major characters under the same roof and the film goes from the epic make up scene backgrounded by Bowie's amazing Cat People theme song, to an hilarious Brad Pitt speaking "italian" (and yet another language Waltz dominates), to the tense confrontation between Landa and von Hammersmark. There's also a BEAUTIFUL death scene when Emmanuelle is shot by Zoller, an hilarious shot of Hitler getting filled of bullets and a twist when Hans Landa tries to help the Basterds, who don't let him off the hook as easily as he expected. This final chapter has indeed many terrific bits but some of them are not tied up perfectly and it loses some speed.
Overall, it's a hell of a movie, hugely entertaining and that's what Tarantino ultimately aimed for.
But I always remember what I read about the making off of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. When Frederic Raphael started working on the script, Kubrick asked him to send immediately every scene as soon as it was written, which Raphael didn't like very much. After the first scene Kubrick got, he phoned Raphael and told him it was too good. He knew that both Raphael and himself wouldn't be able to keep that level so he prefered to sacrifice a terrific scene instead of the integrity of the film. Kubrick understood that a movie worked as a whole and that should be more than the sum of its parts. This is what I think stops Tarantino from being among the true great directors.
That and a lack of emotional and philosophical depth, which is ok if he kept making style over content masterpieces like he did. It's when he tries to be a grown up that shows he's way over his head.
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