Movie 23: Inglorious Basterds

Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France, a band of 8 Jewish soldiers, the Basterds, are given one task. Kill some Nazi’s. Make them shit there pants with fear at the thought of their band.

In another part of Nazi occupied France a young Jewish girl who survived her families killing at the hands of “The Jew Hunter” runs a cinema. A rising star in the Nazi army, who killed nearly 300 soldiers single headedly from a sniper post, takes a shine to her and arranges for the premier of the movie about and staring him to be shown at said cinema.

Attending this screening will be the top brass of the Nazi regime. A perfect opportunity for revenge for the woman, and to kill some fuckin Nazi’s for the Basterds.

And there you have a Natsploitation set up. I have no idea how to actually spell that, but it’s Tarantino so the films genre has to have ploitation at the ends of it and Naziploitation looks silly to me. So considering the director we have its got some of the 70’s Nazi film influence, and a big chunk of Spaghetti Western thrown in. It’s also filled with anachronisms and deliberate fuck ups as that’s just how Quentin rolls.

The narrative structure comes in chapters, up until the last it bounces between the two threads (like you didn’t know they’d meet). This is effective bar possibly the 4th chapter which I think was a little bit too long. It didn’t quite reach Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon levels of forgetting you were watching one film and thought you were watching another (seriously, how fucking long is the Hun love story Tiger? 27 hours?! FAR too long. It’s shit anyway) but I would have liked another scene of the Basterds doing what they do stuck in the middle of that big bit of set up. After all, the film isn’t called “Pissed Of French Jewish Cinema Owner”

But besides that little niggle I don’t have all that much to complain about. The performances are all great. It has the trademark Tarantino “people sit about and shoot the shit about stuff” dialogue heavy scenes that I happen to like, though didn’t quite fit as well in Death proof. It no doubt has a hell of a lot of information about movies I’ve never heard of and will probably never see as the guy is a god damned encyclopedia. And it has some nasty and shocking bits in it.

It’s also 70% in other languages, so bring your reading glasses. I guess this is technically Quentin’s first foreign movie as well, which makes it a little cheeky for it to be nominated for various awards that other foreign movies don’t get nominated for. But that’s not a big deal really.

It’s also pretty damned long, but was allegedly longer before some pre-Cannes trimming. So bring a snack. Maybe some schnitzel.

If you like Tarantino, you’ll like this. If you like crazy World War II movies, you’ll like this. If you don’t like either….what the hell is wrong with you?!

Oh, on a complete side note and just to highlight how film geeky QT is, the soundtrack features stuff from all over the place. Some of it is a bit jarring as its clearly a lot more modern than the setting. I didn’t really pick up on it while watching, but one piece of music he uses is from The Entity which I caught some of very late one night at the gf’s. A big part of that film appears to be a woman being attacked, generally raped, by a poltergeist of some kind while this very loud BOW BOW BOW BOW BOW BOW BOW soundtrack thumps away in the background (like a kid mashing on a keyboard). This became a couple of days worth of joke as its frikkin hilarious.

Eh, you probably have to have been there. Btw, Baader-Meinhof should be next so I’m being steeped in ze German at the moment…