A Rage Against “Inglourious Basterds”

Every Thursday is Movie Night, which allows a chance to catch up on the backlog or revisit a previous favorite film. Tonight, we viewed Inglourious Basterds, which is not only playing havoc with Mr. Spellchecker, but also with my sense of what is lacking in what we view as a form of art. Incredibly sloppy in terms of continuity, egregiously paced to a drag-out length and stylized to the point that no character of any value can penetrate the bogus scenery, this film is an example of an entire industry giving one of its own a pass simply because they were jazzed by the subject matter.


We’ll examine Christopher Waltz in depth in a moment. I want to cover the many faux pas, obvious in an initial viewing, which lay squarely at the feet of writer/director Quentin Tarantino. First, when using subtitles for translation, it isn’t common practice to project the untranslated foreign word. The reason it isn’t common practice is that such activity is pointless. Yet, the words oui, merci and mademoiselle crop up on the screen throughout scenes where the dialog is in French. Either don’t include words in the subtitles or translate the entire sentence verbatim.


Next, Melanie Laurent’s character Shosanna, in whose very name Tarantino continues to hit the wrong keys. The correct spelling is Shoshanna and is of Middle Eastern origin. Of all the members of her doomed family, hers is the only name not plucked directly out of the Book of Genesis. In diverging from the pattern, the name crashes against his established comic book borders and leaves a puddle that’s both distracting and unnecessary. More on her later.


The Basterds themselves represent a confused effort to establish empathy. In spite of its many flaws, the characters that comprised the Dirty Dozen displayed individual personality and voice. Conversely, Tarantino creates depth only with those non-Jewish members who join later (German Sergeant Stiglitz and British Lieutenant Hicox). The original recruits play cardboard cutout cowboy/soldiers, scalping their way through Occupied France at the behest of Brad Pitt’s overacted mountain man, Aldo Raine. Considering the amount of time wasted in listening to David Bowie’s theme from Cat People (included because, when you think of World War Two, you think David Bowie, right?), the minutes might have been better utilized in developing at least some of the Jewish soldiers.


Christopher Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as the SS Colonel Hans Landa. Not to besmirch the achievement, the fact remains he played the leading role and should not have qualified under the Supporting category. Lead Actor should not be confused with billing order, which places Brad Pitt at the top. Nomination slotting is an annual game the Academy plays with producers who want to improve their position to capture awards. That everyone agrees with the result does not change the unethical nature of the process.


On to continuity, quickly. In the scene immediately after the capture of Aldo Raine and Sergeant Donowitz, seated at a table across from Colonel Landa, we initially see Brad Pitt’s bowtie turned nearly vertical. A cutaway later, we see it set straight, in spite of having his hands cuffed behind him. This is stupid. As minor as such things as ties and cigarette ashes and levels of liquid in a glass appear to be, failing to maintain the illusion of reality by assuming that we won’t notice is simply bad manners. For the five minutes of credits that wind down the end of a movie, you’d think one of those Sammy Slickers would have the responsibility to pay attention to previous shots and point out any variance.


Back to Melanie Laurent, aka Shosanna Dreyfus, aka Emmanuelle Mimieux. As told through the opening scene narrative, her family is hiding from the Nazis in Perrier LaPadite’s isolated dairy farm. The wide vista (more on that soon) and the small size of the house appear too exposed to provide the level of cover one would assume necessary to keep an entire family hidden for long. That she manages to escape to Paris on foot, find non-Jewish family members to take her in and establish a new identity is so far-fetched, even given the depth of unreality permuting the entire film, my ability to suspend disbelief is stretched beyond recovery.


Finally, Tarantino’s stated homage to the genre of spaghetti westerns falls flat, further damaging the impact of the film. Sergio Leone, whether purposefully or through necessity, used a large grain film stock that resulted in an impressionistic feel for the scorched desert setting of his movies. A short depth of field left objects in the distance wavering in an otherworldly shimmer. In contrast, Tarantino opens with fine grain and long focal point, eliminating the effect altogether. Also in contrast to Leone’s hell on earth depiction of the Old West, Tarantino’s Occupied France seems pristine, ignoring the effects of the recent Blitzkrieg and subsequent Allied bombing raids.


In Hollywood, the good pitch is everything. For this project, it probably started out with, “What if the Jews killed Hitler? Picture The Dirty Dozen meets To Be or Not To Be.” It obviously worked as a pitch. As a strict military history discussion, it might be argued, at least metaphorically, that the Jews did kill Hitler. To take such a position literally, even in a fantasy telling, is as incomprehensible as the results in Inglourious Basterds, with two and a half hours of my time added to the death toll.





Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.