THE PHONEY war has given way to roaring, unfettered conflict. While the Führer frets in his bunker, two great armies fight to the death across the killing fields of Cahiers du Cinéma, Sight and Sound and, yes, The Irish Times.
It seems a long time since the critical debates surrounding Quentin Tarantino focused on his (always greatly exaggerated) taste for decapitation and evisceration. When the larky, ironic Kill Billfilms eventually followed Jackie Brown, his most grounded and touching picture, the cry went out that cinema's great hope really needed to grow up. Sure, Kill Billwas fun, but, as the director passed 40, it was not unreasonable to ask that he ease back on the snark and engage with reality.
Tarantino has answered with a brash, noisy raspberry. (We are, you will note, pretending that the Death Prooffiasco never happened.) Inglourious Basterds– a title so rude the telly ads ignore the second word – is not quite as besotted with cult trash as was Kill Bill, but it's every bit as tricksy, self-conscious and fantastic.
Annoyingly for the scolds, it is also wildly entertaining and, in its excellent, historically cavalier closing conflagration, open to some serious ideas about the power of art in a totalitarian regime. The conflict continues.
Now, it must be acknowledged that the least satisfactory sequences in Inglourious Basterds concern the Basterds themselves. Tarantino's plan was always to develop a men-on-a-mission war movie in the style of The Dirty Dozenor The Guns of Navarone. With this in mind, he offers us a platoon of Jewish-American soldiers with a taste for (literally) scalping Nazis.
Brad Pitt essays the leader of the gang, an uncouth southerner, and, buoyed by Pitt's celebrity, the character does demand a certain amount of attention. The rest of the gang, played by largely anonymous unknowns, meld into a mass of hair-oil and terse salutes. Eli Roth, director of Hostel, does carry a big stick quite effectively. But, set beside the likes of Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen, the Basterds seem like showroom dummies.
Never mind. The array of subplots and villains that Tarantino has built around his original concept offers more than enough consolation. Indeed, the fulcrum of the picture proves to be Christoph Waltz’s terrifying, crazy, supremely Machiavellian Nazi colonel.
Inglourious Basterdsbegins with the Nazi officer, nicknamed the Jew Hunter, ingratiating his way into a farmhouse and, speaking in both French and German, persuading the owner to betray a local family. It is a brilliant episode that demonstrates that is possible to indulge in postmodern hat-tipping and pointedly theatrical staging without disrupting the accumulation of tension and the piling up of horror.
Later, the picture finds the only survivor of the resulting massacre (Mélanie Laurent) running a cinema in occupied Paris. It transpires that a film based on the exploits of a young war hero (Daniel Brühl) is to premiere in her establishment. Aware that many top brass, including Goebbels and, perhaps, the Führer himself, are to attend, she sets about planning a sabotage attack. Elsewhere, the Basterds have also got wind of the event and are considering their own intervention.
To ask Tarantino to forgo his taste for conscious artificiality would be like asking Sam Peckinpah to embrace suburban conformity. Sure enough, most every scene features strangely theatrical blocking, under-population in the outer edges of the frame and sets that look very much like sets. Yet, this amalgamation of the languages of Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Aldrich provides Tarantino with a pidgin dialect that serves the twisty, self-conscious action very nicely.
The introduction of Michael Fassbender (spiffingly funny) as a British agent who is also an expert in expressionist German cinema could easily have pushed the film too deep into clever-clever territory. But Tarantino is wise enough to point his broadest, most hilarious jokes at the material with the greatest potential for pretentiousness.
Inglourious Basterdsis a little too long, and the stubborn decision to borrow all the music from other sources is just plain irritating. However, in sequences such as the tense stand-off in a basement bar, Tarantino finds a way of balancing his highest and basest instincts. For good or ill, no other film this year will smell quite like this.
Not everybody will appreciate Tarantino’s continued determination to be himself. But it doesn’t look as if he’s going to change any time soon. Enjoy his characteristic emissions, if you’re able.
