Inglourious Basterds is a "failure" to be sure.
About cinematic failures though -- the term needs some defining. There is a school of thought in film criticism that states a movie should be rated against its goals and ambitions (which is to say nothing of a filmmaker's actual intentions, usually not the concern of a critic or scholar anyway). Maybe that doesn't work for every case, but it stands to reason that it doesn't do anyone much good to compare Ferris Bueller's Day Off against Citizen Kane - apples and oranges.
Basterds doesn't so much fail on its own terms as much as it fails to define its terms. We're not talking about genre-mashing here. Tarantino has pulled off that feat successfully in the past (see Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2) and is a talented filmmaker who knows how to bend and break genre rules to great effect.
Those Poor, Misguided Basterds
No, in this case, Basterds ends up bombing because Tarantino simply must have his cake and eat it too. The title, advertising and overall schlock appeal howls for exploitation, but the writer/director insists on erring more toward exposition -- long stretches of banter cut the wildly inconsistent tone with a sobering edge that feels horribly inappropriate.
To say that Basterds is a choppy film is a ridiculous understatement - it might as well have been several different films. Every little Tarantino whim finds its way into Basterds -- 70s blacksploitation title cards and music, a montage set to David Bowie's "Cat People", Ennio Morricone, Samuel L. Jackson narration, Mike Myers doing his Austin Powers accent as a Brit-officer ... the list just goes on and on, much like the film's indulgent 153-minute running time.
Now, say what you will about a filmmaker's responsibility once he references the Holocaust in a film (we see a Jewish family in hiding get gunned down in the opening), or the sanctity of a period-piece - there are just certain things that should not end up in a World War II flick.
A Strange, Revenge Fantasy
Of course, to even call Basterds a WW II film is a bit dubious. It's less historical fiction than historically-influenced fantasy. Before the D-Day landing, American Lt. Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt putting on a Forrest Gump accent) gathers up a group of Jewish soldiers (Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz, The Bear Jew, BJ Novak, Til Schweiger and others) to go a-Nazi-huntin' across Europe and take 100 scalps for every member of the outfit.
Before long, the Basterds made quite the name for themselves brutally massacring Nazis, marking the rare survivors with a swastika carved into the forehead. Even Hitler (caricatured by Martin Wuttke) has them on his radar. But buyer beware, Basterds is suspiciously thin on the Nazi skull bashing, though we do get several graphic close ups of serious cranium damage.
A good portion of the film is chewed up by another revenge story, that of Shoshanna Dreyfuss (Mélanie Laurent), a French Jew whose family was murdered by The Jew Hunter, Nazi officer Col. Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz). The stories all eventually intersect in the grand set piece -- captured brilliantly by cinematographer Robert Richardson -- at Dreyfuss's Paris cinema, where much blood is spilled.
So Many Characters, So Little Time To Care
In many ways, Basterds, Tarantino's worst effort, is the antithesis of his best, Jackie Brown. The latter film (which for the record, runs almost exactly as long as Basterds) features Tarantino's best character work. His dialogue is sharp and revealing - we know the characters almost immediately.
Basterds -- with its much larger cast -- never gets past the superficial nature of its characters, save maybe Landa who is given one hell of a treatment by Waltz, who makes it around every absurd twist and turn his director demands. Never before has Tarantino had his characters talk so much and say so little.
Homage Overload
By now, we get it - Tarantino is a huge cinephile who is willing to embrace both the high and low ends of the spectrum. But all the prattling on about Pabst, Riefenstahl and Chaplin never amounts to anything other than chatter. Actually making a great film is always a better way to reaffirm the power of cinema than to just come out and declare it (or embody it in the goofy, metaphorical finale).
Around the time of Basterds' lukewarm premiere at Cannes this past May, Tarantino cited the spaghetti western as a driving influence for the film (the Morricone soundtrack bits were sort of a dead giveaway, but thanks for the clue). In theory, it's a natural fit for a WW II fantasy, because after all, weren't the spaghetti westerns fantastical echoes of the true history of the west?
But tailoring the spaghetti western to Basterds proves much sloppier than it did for Kill Bill. It's a question of committing to the premise. Because as crazy as Basterds is, it doesn't nearly go far enough to pull the whole thing off.
RATING: 2 out of 5 stars
VERDICT: This one is only for the Tarantino completists. Or for people who enjoy watching train wrecks ... for two-and-a-half hours.
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