Imaginative stories boost "Basterds"
John Gregg
Issue date: 11/9/09 Section: Entertainment
|
The story opens with a classic "Once upon a time…" line, and it is even divided into chapters. But what follows is not exactly a G-rated fairytale. The title characters (Basterds) are an elite team of Jewish-American soldiers who are sent into Nazi-occupied France for one specific reason.
Their bloodthirsty commander, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), has instructed each of them to kill as many "Nat-sees" as possible. Working with a beautiful actress, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), the soldiers soon embark on a daring plot to kill Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke).
Previews for the movie are slightly misleading. This is not a centrally focused, bloody revenge saga like "Kill Bill." "Inglourious Basterds" is instead a tightly packed anthology of stories, featuring many different characters.
The atmosphere of the picture feels a great deal more like "Pulp Fiction," and this is certainly welcome. The Basterds themselves only appear sporadically throughout.
The major focus is on a Jewish woman named Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) who owns a movie theatre in Paris. Her family was murdered by the calculating Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) when she was a child.
Shosanna plots her own revenge against the Third Reich when Hitler himself attends the cinema for a screening of Goebbels's latest propaganda film.
Tarantino proves himself as a master storyteller. He seamlessly weaves together Shosanna's story with the secret mission of the Basterds. All plotlines intersect beautifully with the dark theatre as a backdrop.
Everything up to this climactic night at the movies is relatively historically accurate. However, Tarantino's ending to the Nazi regime is no less than an idealistic fantasy. This is probably how World War II should have ended.
A description of "Inglourious Basterds" could be boiled down to historical fiction. The film is set in a Nazi-occupied country. There is a heavy climate of tension and brutality one comes to expect from World War II dramas.
Of course, Tarantino is at the helm this time, which means the genre is now soaked through with his usual quirks. Many of his director trademarks can be noticed throughout. There is gratuitous violence, dark humor and an artistic edge.