Basterds deserving a tad more glory, I'd say

It's all in the name sometimes. Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece deserved way better than to be boiled down to "a classic Tarantino genre-blending thrill ride, Inglourious Basterds is violent, unrestrained, and thoroughly entertaining," as the critics would have it. The flick did of course make it as a huge box-office hit and got a decent amount of Academy Award nominations. But in the face of Tarantino's trademark for gore unleashed, critics failed to perceive the subtleness and finesse in the background. Be it the plot, the unrelenting movie rhythm, the top-notch acting, Inglourious Basterds is two and a half hours of pure delight and a treasure trove of details for cinema lovers. Also, you need to be able to manage in more than one language to truly relish this tremendous work of art. The movie juggles with English, French, German and a tad of Italian. Being fluent in the first three languages, you can take my word for it that Tarantino did a hell of a good job to make this movie a world-class one in the finest of details, despite an orgy of violence, all in good taste mind you. Allow me to help you revisit or discover this movie with a handful of well-chosen excerpts.

My first excerpt, which I dubbed "The Jew Hunter", is the movie's opening scene. It begins with a slow pace but builds up tension gradually. Christoph Waltz plays Colonel Hans Landa and Denis Menochet plays LaPadite. For this role, Waltz won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and reaped an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. It seems only Cannes thought outside of Manichean B&W lines and understood that Landa was the pivotal, if not the lead character of the movie. Anyway, back to the excerpt. Here you'll see a true picture of France under the Occupation. The manner with which Colonel Landa mentally breaks down the farmer is an intricate piece of genius. An iron fist in a velvet glove. Hats off for the acting, script and the nerve-racking build-up.

Hungry for more? Here's the second excerpt that I've dubbed "Gestapo Games". Here, a group of Basterds undercover meet up with a German spy in a tavern when their plans get foiled by a most undesirable fly in the spy soup, a Machiavellian and cunning Gestapo officer. That's for the context, now I need to give you a few pointers. The German actress, Bridget von Hammersmark (beautifully played by Jennifer van der Schaaf), is an icon of the pre-war German actress, a blue copy of say Marlene Dietrich in Sternberg's "Der Blaue Engel". And did I say spy? The role of Lt. Archie Hicox, the British undercover spy, is an intrinsic pun at the expense of James Bond movies. The part is played by Michael Fassbender, an actor of immense talent who gave the full measure of his worth in his role as Magneto in X-Men First Class. It is worth mentioning, before viewing the excerpt and once you view it you'll understand why, that Fassbender is of German and Irish parentage. Tarantino went to great lengths for his casting! Last but certainly not least, a word on our Gestapo man, Major Hellstrom. He deals the cards  in this excerpt, and makes the Basterds play a little guessing game. The game is far from being devoid of significance. It shows us two things. First how cunning and perfectly methodical the Gestapo Major is in his logical thinking process. So deutsch, ja. And second, w.r.t to his answer and King Kong, we catch a glimpse of the lines along which he thinks. Seriously, just the script for this game bit bedazzles me. 

N.B.: There's a slight quirk in the translation that does not fully render the sharpness of Major Hellstrom's remark when he confronts Lt. Hicox as being "Captain I-don't-know-what" after he cleverly identified  the other two Basterds as Öbersturmführer Munich and Öbersturmführer Frankfort. In German, he says Hauptsturmführer Heimatlos, which means Captain without a country and as such the remark is much more of a jab to our British spy.

I mentioned the meticulous casting earlier on. Quentin Tarantino's trump card in that perspective would definitely be Sylvester Groth for, erm, bringing Goebbels back to life.

This blog post would be incomplete without giving you a glimpse of the ravishing parisienne Mélanie Laurent and letting you hear her lovely honeyed voice. She plays the part of Shoshana, yet another lead character in the movie. I opted for the café scene, nostalgie oblige. 

Here's the last cut, featuring Brad Pitt who does a very good job in impersonating the rugged Lt. Aldo Raine. Spoiler alert: it's the ending scene. I've uploaded it because I think Tarantino wanted you to know something about his work on Inglourious Basterds.

Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it!