Inglourious Basterds

One of the more pleasant surprises this year in film was discovering that Inglourious Basterds is not strictly the reincarnation of movies like its correctly spelled namesake or Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen where a bunch of misfit soldiers have a mission steeped in violence. Quentin Tarantino's film also makes room for, among other things, a dynamic opening sequence that, despite mostly featuring two men sitting across a table from one another in the French countryside, acts as quite the exercise in suspense. A compelling storyline about the young woman who escapes that farmhouse to run a Paris cinema follows. How exciting, too, that a filmmaker as talented as Tarantino proved he could still create superb, guiltless entertainment for a wide spectrum of viewers. Inglourious Basterds isn't without flaw, but it feels downright refreshing, exhilarating even, after seeing Tarantino spin his wheels for over a decade now.

Complex storytelling, and this is somewhat ironic considering the fractured narrative approach he's often credited with popularizing, has never really been a strength with Tarantino. This shows in his latest, though it's not something I'd classify as problematic. The film is divided into five chapters, which establishes an easy out from using traditional segues and strictly adhering to time lines. There are parts of Inglourious Basterds that play like Tarantino just had several ideas for stray scenes and didn't bother to come up with proper transitions. The scenes are often so strong that it's easy enough to accept the disjointed nature and, again, this sort of approach is hardly uncommon with him. Perhaps the single most effective example is the masterful introduction, labeled as Chapter One and given the title "Once upon a time in... Nazi-occupied France." (Sergio Leone bleeds through the production as a primary influence.) It's both an introduction to Christoph Waltz's brilliant performance as Col. Hans Landa, the so-called "Jew Hunter," and an instruction manual on the cunning vulgarity of Landa's character.

What Landa wants is the unaccounted for Jewish family from this particular French village. He sits down with a dairy farmer, enjoys a couple of glasses of fresh milk, and smokes his pipe. Landa acts friendly, like the man he's more or less interrogating is a pal. You wouldn't know from his demeanor that the command to violently execute a family hiding beneath the floorboards is imminent. Though it might feel a little like a prologue to the film, this scene should hardly be dismissed as mere exposition. The tension registers fully. A later encounter gets classified by Brad Pitt's hillbilly Nazi killer Lt. Aldo Raine as being a "Mexican stand-off," but it's this opening sequence that proves great dialogue mixed with authority always trumps high-powered assault weapons for dramatic effect. As our escapee Shosanna (a devastating and beautiful Melanie Laurent whose performance grounds the film in a key of emotion unrealized by everyone else) is seen making a new life for herself as the cinema lover Emmanuelle Mimieux, she somehow gets entangled by the "German Sergeant York" Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) and finds herself hosting Goebbels and Hitler and various funky fascists at her cinema for the premiere of Zoller's self-inspired biopic. Laurent has a memorable and, it must be said, exceptionally cool enshrinement in the Tarantino film music hall of fame as David Bowie's Cat People theme christens Chapter Five of the movie.

These are, in my opinion, the highest points in the film - the first and last chapters. Both have a clear, unobstructed purpose where the filmmaking avoids distraction to be blissfully alive, albeit in much different, even contrasting ways. The very final encounter manages to be somehow dumb and poetic all at once, a simultaneous call from the director to anyone who'll listen and a satisfying denouement for the especially vengeful among us. The in between is more of a mixed bag, unfortunately. Why Mike Myers and Eli Roth are here at all is anyone's guess. The prolonged Parisian tavern sequence with Diane Kruger as a German movie star doesn't quite work in full or, unlike the vast majority of the film, on repeat viewings. Most of the pre-Operation Kino scenes with the Basterds, particularly the first and most grisly one, are hard to figure. I'm sure they satisfy something in someone, but their inclusion still disappoints me. Regardless of the narrative potential of a Jewish team of soldiers seeking out the Nazis, I can't understand why we need to see them removing human scalps or bashing a German's flesh with a baseball bat. Is this somehow cathartic or fun to watch? I can't relate.

I haven't figured out Pitt's performance either. His casual reaction to most everything comes across as borderline sadistic, though he's rarely less than funny. As a native Tennessean, I kind of like Raine's accent and simplistic approach to this sequel to the war to end all wars. The madness shown by Pitt is at least consistent and, presumably, in tune with his character. It comes across as weird but maybe more entertaining as a result. The man wants his scalps. Is he psychotic or just a military officer in a movie? Is there a difference? Maybe Tarantino deserves some accolades for making a picture where the advertised focus is on an outfit of Nazi-fighting Jewish soldiers which stars one of the biggest movie stars on the planet but actually relegates that entire aspect to a subplot paled by most any appearance of Waltz or Laurent. Waltz will soon pocket an Oscar nomination, perhaps even a trophy, and Laurent will stick in the heart of cinephiles across the globe. Where Inglourious Basterds truly lands is with these two performers and, to a lesser extent, the remaining actors. The film is a sometimes messy, always enthralling escape into the cinema. By the end it seems as though Tarantino is prescribing, some might say again, the power of cinema as infinitely superior to any and all evils of mankind. How about that - the movies as a tool for world peace.

The Disc

For a "limited time only" Inglourious Basterds comes with a second disc which allows access to a digital copy. The sticker on the outside slipcover claims this is adding over $15 in value to the package. I'll take their word for it.

The Universal Blu-ray is a region-free, dual-layered disc. It presents the film in approximately the 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Tarantino and director of photography Robert Richardson tend to opt for warm, reddish colors in the interiors and a foliage-friendly palette of dark greens and browns for the outdoor scenes involving the Basterds. Both are handled with equally impressive results in this high definition transfer. The reds of Nazi flags and Shosanna's dress come through as strong, bold and brimming with emotion. Skin tones look harsh but natural. Most every detail is reproduced with a pleasing crispness. The forest scenes with the Basterds, despite forgoing the blues often used to represent winter, look ruggedly cold and drained of sun. The film on the whole looks identical to how it did at my cinema experience and I saw no defects in the transfer. Quite the excellent image.

An English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track meets or exceeds expectations. It makes for a very full listen as the various gunshots, explosions and scenes of squishy amateur surgery do well in employing the rear channels as needed. You'll cringe, you'll shudder, you'll revel at hearing an actor playing Adolf Hitler yell "nein, nein, nein..." while slapping his hand to a desk. Dialogue at a normal volume sounds equally good and clear. Nothing fails or struggles to register. It's a consistently loud track that never becomes bombastic. Music, too, plays a key role in the film, with one piece after another paying homage, often to an Ennio Morricone score. These sound remarkably rich and almost overwhelming to the film at hand. Subtitles play a vital role in Inglourious Basterds, with much of it being in French or German. These are not removable, best that I can tell, and they appear in a golden yellow color. Additionally, optional subtitles for the English language portions of the film are available in English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish. These are white in color. French and Spanish DTS 5.1 dubs are also here.

Extra features are quite generous and absent the frequently generic making-of malarkey seen on new releases. "Alternate & Extended Scenes" (11:26 - HD) includes a trio of different versions to scenes found in the film. The first, an extended take on Lunch with Goebbels (7:10), adds some dialogue about Shosanna's aversion to showing the more recent German films done by the propaganda minister at her cinema. The longer version of La Louisiane Card Game (2:06) includes a few more exchanges on guessing Karl May's Winnetou character. Lastly, the alternate Nation's Pride Begins (2:09) has Hitler in his seat as the movie gets ready to start. None of these come across as particularly crucial differences.

The "Nation's Pride Full Feature" (6:10 - SD) is kind of dull and obvious, with the best parts already seen while watching Inglourious Basterds. Eli Roth directed under the pseudonym Alois von Eichberg. The black and white, 1.33:1 movie within Tarantino's movie is presented here both windowboxed and pillarboxed to accommodate a 1.78:1 frame. They goofed on the spelling of Goebbels' name in the opening credits. Things improve with a "Roundtable Discussion with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Elvis Mitchell" (30:45 - HD). As with most all of these supplements, it's a Tarantino lovefest but Mitchell does try to inject some less shallow ideas into the conversation like Aldo Raine's status as the only character who remains, basically, inside himself and the benefits of that obstinance. "The Making of Nation's Pride" (4:00 - HD) is a tongue in cheek celebration of the fake feature with director Alois von Eichberg (Eli Roth), Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), actress and mistress Francesca Mondino (Julie Dreyfus), and war hero star Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl).

The rest of the extra scraps tend to be delightfully weird and obscure, especially for a big studio title like this. Director Enzo Castellari and actor Bo Svenson join Eli Roth in talking about "The Original Inglorious Bastards" (7:38 - SD). It's a nice tribute to one of Tarantino's inspirations for this film and concludes with a lengthy trailer to The Inglorious Bastards that runs about four minutes. More up my alley is "A Conversation with Rod Taylor" (6:43 - HD), the venerable actor who cameos as Winston Churchill in the movie. Taylor talks glowingly about Tarantino and seems truly honored by the director's recognition. "Rod Taylor on Victoria Bitter" (3:19 - HD) is not, perhaps disappointingly, the after to the previous piece's before with the star of The Birds now warmly marinated. It is instead sort of an addendum where Taylor tells a story about Tarantino's surprise gift of a beer available only in Australia.

The clapboard compilation "Quentin Tarantino's Camera Angel" (2:42 - SD) shows the many different and bizarre verbal cues given by the director's female clapper operator. "Hi Sallys" (2:09 - SD) is in a similar vein. It has Tarantino and various actors look into the camera after a, typically botched, scene and greet editor Sally Menke. I found enjoyment in all of these extras but maybe the most insightful and downright interesting is the "Film Poster Gallery with Elvis Mitchell" (11:00 - SD), a video essay where Mitchell discusses the significance of the films and posters used by Tarantino. Some of the more focal movies like Le corbeau and Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü are talked about, but so are the even rarer Domino (1943) and L'assassin habite... au 21 as well as the fictional pictures starring Bridget von Hammersmark.

There's a "Killin' Nazis Trivia Challenge" game of the sort you'd typically find on a Disney release, only more demented. An "Inglourious Basterds Poster Gallery" has a collection of 39 different posters from across the world, most all with the same basic design style. The "Trailers" (7:33 - HD) section offers up a Teaser (1:45), the Domestic Trailer (2:23), an International Trailer (2:09), and a Japanese Trailer (1:16). Each territory seems to sell the film in a different way, but none are exactly faithful to the less violent (and, for me, most compelling) aspects.

BD-Live content, the My Scenes function, D-Box and the aforementioned Digital Copy disc are all included too.