Inglourious Basterds


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The UK's Leading fantasy & horror film festival.

The Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, London 27th to 31st August 2009

It's so good it's scary - The Guardian

The premiere event of the year for horror fans - Time Out

Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Bruhl, Eli Roth, Samm Levine and BJ Novak and Til Schweiger. War drama, USA, 145 min. Web Site.

Cannes has come and gone. But one movie more than any other is lingering in my memory like a favorite old song. Of course that may be because it does indeed feature cues from some of my favorite old Ennio Morricone soundtracks!

Now the dust has settled around the manic frenzy to see the first ever screening of Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, I can finally put his history-bending homage to war movies from Leni Riefenstahl and STALAG 17 to ‘Allo, Allo’ and THE GREAT ESCAPE in proper critical perspective. I proclaim it hugely enjoyable despite being overlong (that may change before its final August release), somewhat disjointed and absolutely nothing to do with the 1978 Enzo Castellari directed cult exploiter from which it takes its misspelled name. Divided into five chapters, each focusing on a particular movie style like Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns or reworking war genre conventions, Cinema, with a resounding capital C, saves the world in this beautifully crafted series of witty dialogue-driven vignettes containing sudden flashes of violent action. The chamber pieces involving Jewish Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) avoiding Gestapo capture, Tennessee’s finest Lt. Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt) commanding a Dirty Dozen of feared Nazi hunters (Eli Roth for one, silent Til Schweiger another) and German movie star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) being a British double agent eventually roll into the main plot to blow up Adolf Hitler during a Joseph Goebel’s (Sylvester Groth) propaganda film premiere in Paris. Less self-consciously clever than QT usual, despite the deliciously tricksy wordplay, cineaste jokes and references regarding G. W. Pabst and Max Linder, this inspired resistance fairytale changing WWII history (Roth calls it ‘kosher porn’) is always great fun. Despite the likes of Pitt, Roth and Schweiger being sidelined for much of the time, and Rod Taylor (playing Winston Churchill) and Mike Myers (General Ed Fenech – wonder where that name came from! – being too upper class Austin Powers) feeling pointless additions, Tarantino’s endlessly entertaining direction (the CARRIE on ‘Kill Adolf Parts 1 & 2’ climax) makes for epic showy melodrama in the grand CASABLANCA fashion. The tense highlight is a tavern rendezvous where English spy Lt. Archie Hicox’ (Michael Fassbender) Nazi officer disguise is gradually uncovered; the most elegant moment is the double shooting in the cinema projection booth, choreographed to one of Morricone’s loveliest tunes. How David Bowie’s ‘Putting Out The Fire’ from CAT PEOPLE is effectively used too is one of those vintage Tarantino tingle moments. It’s the German cast who carry off the acting plaudits, especially Christoph Waltz’ snaky, sneaky but charmingly evil SS colonel Hans Landa, one of the few deserved Cannes award winners.

The final line in the movie belongs to Pitt who says, “I think this just might be my masterpiece”, while carving a swastika into a character’s forehead. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS isn’t Tarantino’s but it is a welcome and terrific tonic to the current barrage of formulaic American crassness.

Alan Jones

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - 2009

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