Inglourious Basterds (2009)
The Weinstein Company, Universal Pictures
directed by Quentin Tarantino
Inglourious Basterds is not a war film. Nor is it historical. Inglourious Basterds is a spaghetti western. Nazi-occupied France is no more than a canvas for Tarantino to scribble his colorful stories and characters. Sometimes the results are insultingly simple doodles, but more often than not they beautifully coalesce into cathartic assaults of aesthetics from the director's encyclopedic mind of movies. History be damned.
Because of this emulation I found the film decidedly more fun than QT's previous efforts. That distinct "movieness" is more present than ever, in large part due to a literally film-oriented plot. Cinema is the McGuffin here, and there were some unsettlingly surreal moments, for me as a viewer, in which the camera paints the characters as audience members themselves.
Though too high-concept and stylized to resonate emotionally, the film left me pondering the deterrence and deception of not only war propaganda, but the figurehead-edness of modern media. During the climax when the film bravely barrages into alternate history (more so than before I mean), consider the alternative; the obvious fabrication is anything but.
directed by Quentin Tarantino
Inglourious Basterds is not a war film. Nor is it historical. Inglourious Basterds is a spaghetti western. Nazi-occupied France is no more than a canvas for Tarantino to scribble his colorful stories and characters. Sometimes the results are insultingly simple doodles, but more often than not they beautifully coalesce into cathartic assaults of aesthetics from the director's encyclopedic mind of movies. History be damned.
Because of this emulation I found the film decidedly more fun than QT's previous efforts. That distinct "movieness" is more present than ever, in large part due to a literally film-oriented plot. Cinema is the McGuffin here, and there were some unsettlingly surreal moments, for me as a viewer, in which the camera paints the characters as audience members themselves.
Though too high-concept and stylized to resonate emotionally, the film left me pondering the deterrence and deception of not only war propaganda, but the figurehead-edness of modern media. During the climax when the film bravely barrages into alternate history (more so than before I mean), consider the alternative; the obvious fabrication is anything but.
I appreciate the point being made that this movie has nothing to do with the actual history of World War II. My concern about movies like this is that how many people took away the belief from the film that Hitler was killed in a movie theater in France in 1944 instead of a bunker in Berlin in 1945? If you are going to get into alternate history, go further. Be more extreme so that it is clearly alternative history as opposed to being somewhat different than history. My other criticism of the file would be that it dragged at points. Tarantino usually develops his characters like he did in the Kill Bill movies. I wish he would have done that more here. How did Brad Pitt's character get the scar on his neck? We were never told. Speculation could work, but it seems like it would have been an interesting flash back.
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