Inglourious Basterds

Saw this yesterday with Rachel and some friends. I thought that doing a movie of a more traditional genre, in this case WWII, might temper Tarantino a bit. It did to the extent that the storyline is pretty linear; there’s no time-jumping here. But the funky music, the title cards, the 70’s graphics, the endless dialogue, it’s all here. The use of a spaghetti western theme identifies the film as uniquely Tarantino’s within the first five seconds.

I won’t go into the storyline but to say that it’s interesting, deals with separate lives intersecting, and does have some big surprises. Brad Pitt, as the leader of the Basterds, is a lot of fun, and Christoph Waltz as the main Nazi villain is amazing; it’s an Oscar-worthy performance. (This, even though there is a scene with him fetishistically eating a piece of strudel, over-foleyed so you hear every single chew. That’s Tarantino’s way of upping the tension and as a person who hates to hear other people eat, it was extremely annoying.) The two female leads, Diane Kruger, of National Treasure fame, and Mélanie Laurent are lovely, charismatic and excellent.

My only quibbles are that Tarantino is still self-indulgent to the point of tedium and there isn’t enough of the Basterds. Several of his dialogue scenes go way too long, a trait that rendered his last short film “Deathproof”, part 2 of Grindhouse, absolutely unwatchable. It’s not nearly as bad here as the acting and the writing are much better, but it’s still too much. The problem with the Basterds is that they show up early and then disappear for long stretches. You never get to know any of them and so they’re all underdeveloped.

So, not his best but still a fascinating, interesting film that’s worth seeing. Beware some rather graphic violence (duh) if that kind of thing bothers you.

Further note: Tarantino won’t explain why the title is misspelled. He says explaining would eliminate the artistic reason he did it in the first place. I think he just forgot to spell-check.