U.K. Review: ‘Inglourious Basterds’ An Original, But Ultimately Frustrating Experience

It’s conceivable that every member of The Playlist has a thought on this film. One review from Cannes already ran in May, but I wanted wanted to see what a different perspective from the U.K. and a new writer brought. Though really, it’s not that much different… Ed.

When Quentin Tarantino announced at Cannes in 2008 that, at the following year’s festival, he would premiere his war epic “Inglourious Basterds,” many eyebrows were raised, particularly as the film wasn’t yet cast, and considering he’d been talking about the film for pretty much his whole career. But lo and behold, this May saw ‘Basterds’ being unveiled on the Croisette, to a decidedly mixed reception — our editor-in-chief’s review can be found here. A few months and a re-edit (although one not as radical as initially rumored) later, was it worth the wait?

Hmm.

Steven Soderbergh wrote recently (in the book, Ten Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists) that “currently, I think editing on a micro-level has never been better, and editing on a macro-level has never been worse.” And, while he wasn’t referring to ‘Basterds’ (and in fact, the cutting from Tarantino’s usual collaborator Sally Menke is typically solid), he touches on the structural issue that cripples Tarantino’s latest.

The film’s divided into five distinct, interlinked chapters, and generally speaking, these segments work like gangbusters. The opening sequence, where Christoph Waltz’s Colonel Landa interrogates a French farmer, is tremendous — funny and suspenseful in equal measure. A later section, an abortive meeting between the Basterds and a contact in a bar full of Nazi soldiers playing a drinking game, is even better — possibly Tarantino’s best ever scene (it helps that it features the strongest performances in the film — Diane Kruger, and in particular Michael Fassbender, an actor who seems to be incapable of giving anything other than an electric performance).

The problem is, it just doesn’t hang together as a whole. Even in two-and-a-half-hours (and, to the film’s credit, it flies by), there are too many characters, and you don’t spend enough time with anyone to care. Digression has always been one of the joys of Tarantino’s work, but here, it’s become the entire disjointed point — the Blaxploitation-style origin of Til Schweiger’s Hugo Stiglitz is fun, but the character plays such a peripheral role that it just sits there, in contrast to, say, the anime segment in “Kill Bill.” But Schweiger’s not alone — it doesn’t feel like you spend more than about 25 minutes with any character. Even Melanie Laurent, who felt like the nominal lead in the script, has had her part gutted, and if you’ve seen the trailers, than you’ve more or less seen Brad Pitt’s entire performance. Tarantino’s stated in interviews recently that he was toying with the idea of turning ‘Basterds’ into a TV miniseries, and, as has been expressed on this site before, you sort of wish he had.

In many ways, “Inglorious Basterds” sits side-by-side with another divisive movie from this summer, “Public Enemies.”

Both are lengthy, expensive, violent, spectacularly self-indulgent period epics that could only have been made by their respective directors, and that fail completely as pieces of narrative cinema. The squandering of Tarantino’s talent frustrates. If he hadn’t made “Jackie Brown,” a genuine near-masterpiece, with three-dimensional characters and a humanism that the likes of Mann could never match, perhaps we wouldn’t expect so much, but it almost seems like the filmmaker got scared, and retreated to make films for himself, about nothing more than “hey, look how many kung-fu/car chase/war movies I’ve seen!”

Tarantino long ago reached the point that every filmmaker dreams of — total control over his work, able to indulge his every whim. And, as with filmmakers from Michael Cimino to M Night Shyamalan, it’s been his undoing. There’s a ton of great ideas in “Inglourious Basterds,” more so than in the majority of movies released this year, and we’d rather see an interesting failure like this on screens than almost anything else. But for every great moment (the bar scene, the fiery climax, the brilliant/silly use of David Bowie’s “‘Cat People”), there’s a terrible one — Mike Myers’ cameo isn’t just distracting, it’s like he walked in from a different movie, while Eli Roth should never, ever, ever be allowed to act in front of a camera again.

The result is a frustrating, curiously empty experience. It’s certainly better than “Death Proof,” and this review shouldn’t dissuade you from going this weekend — like “Antichrist,” it deserves to be seen and discussed. But that doesn’t mean it works… [C]