Review of the film Inglorious Basterds

The Quentin Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds deserves to be seen multiple times. The first instance it is witnessed, there isn’t much that can be made of what has transpired, other than it was highly entertaining. This is a piece that people will talk about, and it will be brought up again and again in the future. After watching Basterds, there is certainly no forgetting it was experienced.

It won’t be surprising in a Tarantino film but the level of graphic violence can be disturbing, even nauseating. This is the director unrestrained, not that he’s ever been very restrained in the first place. Now, though, he is creating historical fiction of the ultimate entertaining nature. Genres are mixed, and there is an undercurrent of significance with this one:  People may take the violent manner of the crime underworld—the one Tarantino has shown us before—lightly, but very few would take lightly in the same way the horror of World War II.

            Be assured, however, this is a rousing revenge story with strong and vivid characters, larger than life, bordering on satirical. Beginning in Nazi-occupied France, viewers meet those who hunt the Jews and their leader, Col. Hanz Landa played with finesse and gravitas by Christoph Waltz. He is at once at terrifying character—intensely dubious, mannered, witty and intelligent—and he is almost besmirched by what he does and at those who hide from him in vain. Under the floorboards of the idyllic country house that his patrol visits is his quarry, and, though for a time they remain hidden, it is obvious to all that they will be revealed and captured. Their heads already belong to him. Col. Landa is only toying with them and the sincere and frightened homeowner he slowly questions with increasing tension. Upon the eventual unveiling of the Jewish family, there are many shots fired, but through the doorway viewers glimpse a young woman escaping, sprinting in her skirts towards the horizon. Col Landa allows her to disappear over the hill.

Then there are the Nazi hunters, the Basterds, led by Brad Pitt’s American Southern-style Lt. Aldo Raine. These men strive to each bring in 100 Nazi scalps. It is with relish that they commit their acts and their visages are notorious among the population that they terrorize. Even if a Nazi under their capture isn’t immediately recollecting of these men, he will be so soon enough. The weapons of death the band of hunters use become the red letter for their captives—there is a flicker of recognition, just before their demise.

Last, there is Shosanna played by Melanie Laurent. She is a beautiful proprietress of a movie theater in Nazi-occupied France. She works feverishly to secure the premiere screening of the newest Nazi propaganda film and the attendance of the highest-ranking members of the party. Moving towards this goal, she strides cautiously but diligently through danger and suspicion. Using her wiles and personal strength to navigate this war-ravaged landscape, at moments of great peril she is nearly trembling with her fear and her desire.

In Basterds, these three characters build the story Tarantino wishes to tell. They inhabit a universe at once similar but then again, much grander and artful than our own. The ensuing events are fictional and not meant to be understood as otherwise. Despite the realization that this experience is meant to be so, this movie produces in me a strange reaction. It’s highly engaging and well done, well acted and produced. But there is a problem in my conscience. The Nazis were horrible; I know this—the majority is in agreement. The violence they committed against the Jewish people and the rest of the world was unspeakable and beyond comprehension. And there is something to be said for bloody revenge—there is something so satisfying in seeing Tarantino’s Nazi hunters dispensing with their targets, especially in the artful manner in which these executions are carried out. The notion that many of the hunters are Jews only makes the deserved carnage more pleasingly entertaining.

            However, this is where I begin to question my and so many others’ satisfaction. Perhaps I want to be too much of a pacifist. Is it wrong to wish that atrocities are not visited upon those who commit atrocious acts as well? It seems like this film’s premise is falling into the notion that violence in revenge is excusable. But my bleeding heart says that this seems like a cycle—that violence begets violence, and killing one, no matter what acts that one has perpetrated, will not stop the killing of others. There should have been no atrocity in the first place. What the Nazis did was wrong; what they did should never have been done. Can’t we go back to that—the first acts should have been prevented, stopped by those people who had the power to do so, right? I guess I must simply remind myself of the fictional nature of the story.

In the meantime, Tarantino makes the ultimate coup of history, doing that on film what has only been discussed infinitely by so many. His is a lingering achievement of verve and sly intent. I only wish I weren’t so troubled by my enjoyment in the carnage of the affair. This is one I will revisit.