'Tarantino and his G.I. Jews'

Inglourious Basterds

Directed: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt, Dianne Kruger

Universal Pictures, R, 153 minutes

The first thing to understand about Quentin Tarantino is that his primary audience is Quentin Tarantino. That’s who he makes films for, and everyone else is just a bonus. Which is why the mainstream success he’s found has become so puzzling, considering that his film’s intricate layers– you know, the ones that make the movie going experience worthwhile – are so difficult to truly digest, as opposed to just discuss. Yet he still finds himself in the ranks of our top tier American filmmakers. And perhaps rightly so; aesthetically pleasing, superficially assimilated, nauseatingly referential and with a penchant for walking a fine line between homage and plagiarism, -- really, what’s more American than taking things that don’t belong to us? – Tarantino has cemented himself as a post-modern auteur.

Now, at 46 years old – seriously? – and five films later, Tarantino has finally managed to hone his craft, or whatever you call it. And, like it or not, Inglourious Basterds may be the result, a movie infused with Tarantino squire that at once proves to be too much and not enough.

In classic Tarantino fashion, Basterds is broken up into chapters, culminating in a climax that rounds up the independent storylines for one final blow to the screen – a phrase that quite literally rings true for the film’s finale. Set in 1944, roughly after D-Day, but before the liberation of Paris, we're introduced to an alternate World War II, dividing the film’s main narrative into three separate threads. The titular, motley crew of the Basterds is lead by Lt. Aldo Raine (a typically mediocre Brad Pitt), who commissions his soldiers with the debt of 100 Nazi scalps.

Pitt, who is the film’s sole A-list name, is a modern-day superstar in every way, exerting rugged good looks and arguable acting ability; he is our definitive movie star simply because we have no one else. And Inglourious just furthers that divide between who Pitt is and who he should be. His breathy, southern drawl is a wonderful character quirk— as is the unexplained rope burn around his neck – but there is always a clear sense of referential characterization in Pitt’s delivery, one that is all too aware of its role in the film’s narrative.

But with Tarantino, a director who makes films about film, that kind of psychosomatic awareness is feasibly acceptable. To relentlessly preach characateur in the context of a Tarantino production is to truly be in touch with the source material, as nothing is meant to be particularly natural. If traditional cinema is to be watched in reality, a Tarantino picture is to be watched within a film. It’s what characters themselves would enjoy: kinetic and free-flowing energy, with equal parts excitement and ego bursting at the seams.

Dianne Kruger, who plays Bridget von Hammersmark, a German film actress/British double agent, balances voluptuous and vulnerable just enough to put her in the ranks of Tarantino’s other leading ladies de jour. But it’s Christopher Waltz’s Colonel Hans Landa, also known as “the Jew Hunter”, who truly centers this exploration into genre geometry. His every move is calculated, hauntingly still and undeniably shudder-inducing. He exhibits the larger-than-life persona and European sensibility of a top-tier Bond villain, even possessing a few quirky accessories: an oversized tobacco pipe is an unsubtle metaphor for his masculinity, or lack there of; his fondness for milk seems both teeming with eerie innocence as well as a primal instinct. Waltz has been getting unanimous praise, even earning a Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. And deservedly so; from the tense opening scene that may very well be the best of Tarantino’s carrier, Waltz is a force to be reckoned with, leaving all who share a scene with him to be resigned to supporting characters at best.

That is, all except for Mélanie Lauren’s Shosanna, yet another in a superb cast of mostly unknowns. Played with furious subtlety, Shosanna, a French-Jewish runaway whose family was exterminated during a Nazi raid, calculatingly flirts with Frederick Zoller, a Nazi war hero whose recent exploits have been captured in a propaganda film premiering at Shosanna’s theatre. That theater, in fact, is the climactic set piece of the film’s final act, where the three separate narratives – the Basterds, the Nazis and Shosanna – all meet. In true Tarantino fashion, it takes a movie theatre to end World War II.

For all its historical liberties, Basterds is infused with a sort of filmic authenticity - Americans are cast as Americans, French actors as the French, Germans as Germans. And with Tarantino, a director whose films are often injected with a seemingly endless amount of hyperbole, Inglourious Basterds actually manages to become an exercise in restraint, a fact that speaks volumes considering, for example, the film’s cartoonish depiction of scalping. The Basterds’ modus operandi, scalping, is itself a perfect representation of Tarantino as a genre-centered filmmaker, visualizing the constantly referenced but never-before shown torture of choice for the spaghetti westerns of yesteryear.

There is a lot of that, as is to be expected. But things have changed since 1992, back when Tarantino’s constant sampling and pop culture references had resonance for an audience that was feeling the cynicism of an undefinitive decade. Now, Tarantino seems loved because he has to be. To understand him is to understand the basic consumed-cool knowledge of the new millennial film world: shallow in its value, but plentiful in its excess of ingredient. A cinematic masturbator through and through, he’s suffered the sentencing of any director who finds his or herself resigned to an adjective. For one to say a film is ‘Tarantino-esque’ results in head nods, but who really knows what that means, if anything?

Tarantino represents the fundamental postmodern question: can an artist who is so clearly the amalgamation of all that came before – he zooms into people’s hands, just like De Palma! Is that an aerial shot of a Mexican standoff? Here’s looking at you, Leoné – really be branded as original? Maybe, maybe not. But because of his impeccable casting and ability to turn the mundane into magic, or because his very awareness accuses his naysayers of simply “not getting it”, Tarantino gets a free pass.

What Tarantino’s really become is the middle ground of the hip: he’s not particularly original anymore, but he’s cool enough. A catalyst for the 90s independent film movement, he and a host of other film icons, like Kevin Smith, all follow a remarkably similar, but disconnected trajectory, inspiring those around them to be better, only to eventually have their protégés be better than they themselves were. There is certainly no denying that Tarantino influenced a generation of young filmmakers. The issue is that they just managed to outshine him.

Which is why there seems to be a touch of something more important in Basterds, and I think Tarantino sees it too: an unavoidable disconnect that is more present here than in any of his other films. It seems as though he’s become aware of what he’s created, something sprawling and stronger than what he’s use to. Which is why his classic Tarantinoisms are as scarce and sporadic as they are drawn out and repetitive. Tarantino seems to be adhering to our idea of him, not as he really is. He has begun to look at his films objectively, and with Basterds, a film so obviously near and dear to himself (the film’s last line – “I think this may be my masterpiece” – has Pitt staring directly at the camera for a reason), there seems a desire to separate from what we’re use to. So any moment of Tarantino-schtick – Samuel L. Jackson’s explanation of nitrate film’s flammability, on-screen text identifying characters in Tarantino's own handwriting, quick cuts to tangential backstory – seems almost forced, a gift to us from someone who would have preferred to have done it differently.

So forgive this wordy, roundabout praise/lamenting of Tarantino the filmmaker, but there is perhaps no other way to aptly critique a culturally referential marksman like himself. Basterds often hits that same plateau; it fluctuates between brilliance and desperation. But there is a calm that circulates, allowing it to settle as something completely different. Equal parts Aldrich’s Dirty Dozen and Truffaut’s The Last Metro, Tarantino has patience here, allowing his narratives to unfold as they should, his characters to develop as they need and the prickly subject matter to be taken as it may.

Whether it’s his best movie or not depends on which Tarantino you side with: the independently hip writer/director (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction), the homage heavy auteur (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill), or the filmmaker who has put much of his over-the-top style aside for the benefit of actual development. Impenetrable to critique as he may be – his originality is now somewhat secondary to his reputation – he is undeniably gifted, and Basterds marks a turn towards someone a little more aware of themself. For Tarantino, a filmmaker so astute in context, to finally realize his role in the very culture he pays constant tribute to, is in itself a glorious feat indeed.