Contains spoilers:
Let me start off by saying that if you asked me what PULP FICTION was all about, I could tell you. I could tell you what the film is about, why it works the way it does and why it works so well despite the fact that it's not really about anything. Quentin Tarantino is my kind of director: he doesn't make films for the masses. The people who watch his films are the people who get his films. I like to think of myself as one of those people.
And it's the same with INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. I've seen reviews of it that say it's just World War II with an alternate ending, but that's not the point. Yes, this is a men-on-a-mission war film. Yes, it's an action-adventure film (of sorts). Yes, it takes massive liberties with history. But it's also a tragedy, and has element of noir. It's even an anti-war film in places.
The men-on-a-mission aspect is obvious: the Basterds themselves. And you can also chalk the action-adventure elements up to them as well. But Shosanna's story is all tragedy. She loses her family, and she dies before she can see her revenge through to the end. I don't know Tarantaino's thoughts on the afterlife, but in this film I get the feeling that he shows Shosanna as never knowing that her revegne succeeded.
I see a lot of noir in Hans Landa; I don't think he would be out of place in a pulp magazine, but he works better here. I appreciate that the bulk of this film is in German and French, but I can't help but feel he'd have more presence if everything were in English; it would give him just that little bit more to sink his teeth into. I especialy liked the way he described his so-called involvement with Operation Kino, it was almost as if he wasn't entirely sure he hadn't been invovled himself.
As for the anti-war vibe, it's certainly there. Every single German soldier - Zoller, Wilhelm, the major in the bar, Butz and the man Donny beats to death - are shown as polite and respectful. They're not bloodthirsty, sociopathic monsters. If it were just one character who was written this way, I'd write it off, but as all the major German roles aside form the High Command are shown as actual people, I have to wonder what Tarantino's intentions were. This film is World War II with a different ending, but I think Tarantino is trying to say that to get to that ending, the Allied forces would have to lower themselves to the level of the German High Command. They'd have to commit atrocities against men who are simply following orders, desecrate bodies and massacare people. Would it really be worth that? The Allied forces would then be no better than the Germans.
There were a few things I didn't like. I can't help but feel the film is slightly incomplete. Hugo Stiglitz and Archie Hicox were secondary characters at best, but they received more backstory than the likes of Aldo and Donny. Stiglitz in particular; when we cut to his backstory, I was expecting we'd get to see the stories one by one. I recall reading somewhere that Donny was a barber in Boston who bought a Louisville Slugger when he heard the call-up for the Basterds and got everyone in his neighbourhood to sign it before heading off to Europe. I would very much like to see the story of how a film critic like Hicox became a British spy, or how Bridget von Hammersmark turned traitor. Christoph Wantz, too; how Hans Landa became known as the Jew Hunter would make for an excellent story. Likewise how he found out that Emanuelle and Shosanna were one and the same. Even if they were only two-minute vingettes like Stiglitz's story, I think they were something that was needed, if only to invest ourselves in the characters a little more.
Likewise, I didn't like Samuel L. Jackson as the narrator. If we had those backstories, he'd have more to do, but with just two lines - and one of them being to explain why Shosanna is setting fire to the nitrate film (Shosanna couldn't do a demonstration for Marcel, because Marcel already knows how flammable the film is; to give him a demonstration or explain it to him is a very cheap form of exposition. To have the narrator do it is better, but only marginally) - he's underused and feels way out of place. Also, but the end of the film, only seven Basterds are accounted for; after appearing in the briefing scene and very briefly in the valley where Donny beats the soldier to death, one of the vanishes (I assume he was killed somwhere along the line between the aforementioned scenes and Operation Kino and it was simply never shown).
But this film is made from the love of all films. The fact that Shosanna's cinema is so integral to the plot is proof enough, but Tarantino clearly put a lot into that set from the film posters to the Nazi symbols. And I don't know if it were intentional, but I loved the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK reference of Shosanna's face projected onto the curtain of smoke as everything burns. And the scene where they are talking Italian was probably the funniest I have seen in a long time. That scene represents everything that is Tarantino: it's a simple scene - it's bordering in a sitcom - but he writes it in such a way that it's clever and refreshing. And that's what he does with his films: he takes a simple story, and rather than complicate things - say by having the Basterds plan Operation Kino from start to finish in a Frederick Forsyth The Dogs of War kind of way - he fills it with complex characters and lets them drive the story. Could anyone else get away with the game of Celebrity Head between the German soldiers in the bar?
Overall, I liked it. I think it's going to be one of those films where you pick up on little things each time you see it. I still think it either needed to include the vignettes for two or three more Basterds or simply cut out Stiglitz's short altogether, but it's defiantely Tarantino's most mature work.
