Film Review: Inglorious Basterds

To be honest, I have never really been a fan of WWII action films. For me, the genre seems just a little too played out. Once I’ve seen one brave soldier save a fellow soldier from an enemy camp, running toward a helicopter as explosions go off in the background, I’ve seen them all.

Thankfully, this could not be any less true for the new movie, Inglorious Basterds (2009), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film takes place in Nazi occupied France in 1944 and follows two parallel plotlines, each independently fighting for the same outcome (though completely unbeknownst to each other). The first plotline follows Emmanuelle Mimieux (Mélanie Laurent), who as a teenager (when she went by her real name, Shosanna) narrowly escaped death when the rest of her family was shot by Nazis while in hiding. Three years after the incident, we find Emmanuelle living in Paris as the proprietor of a local cinema. How she got here is never explained, but trust me, when the plot starts, we don’t really care.

One day, as the young woman is outside of her theater, a German war hero (Daniel Brühl), who has recently made a movie about his heroic victory in a battle against the Russians, requests that the premier of his movie be shown at her cinema. Knowing that many important Nazis, including Hitler himself, will be in attendance, the young woman decides she will exact revenge by burning down the cinema, taking the Nazis inside along with it.

At the same time the film follows a group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). The group’s sole business, as Raine puts it, is killing Nazis. And killing Nazis is what they do best. When word reaches the group of Hitler’s appearance at the film premier, they too decide that they will infiltrate and blow up the cinema. What is great about these two plots is how unknowingly-intertwined the two are and how the film plays off of this.

One of the biggest breaths of fresh air this movie offers to an otherwise stale genre is how the conflict presented is not completely one-sided. We of course show very little sympathy for the Nazis, this is a given. Yet, they are still portrayed at times as brave in the face of danger and seem to be fighting for a cause they believe in. (The exception is Hitler (Martin Wuttke), who is entirely too funny to be taken seriously.) The would-be protagonists of the story, the Basterds, are hardly better than the Nazis. They are a brutal bunch who almost never take prisoners and who bludgeon, beat, stab, shoot, and scalp every Nazi they encounter. Tarantino’s direction style (like in many of his movies) ensures that the camera never shies away from the violence onscreen. The effect of the gore, such as the frequent scalping that takes place, is to show the irony that the Basterds, who seek revenge against the Nazis’ heinous violence, are often just as violent. In the shot where Lt. Raine is introduced Tarantino even goes as far to fit the frame around Pitt’s face in such a way that his hat and hair resemble Hitler’s classic comb-over and his mustache appears thin beneath his nose. At the same time, however, we find ourselves rooting for them none the less.

In addition to the interesting take on the protagonists, the film also has a lot of great actors going for it. I was particularly impressed by Mélanie Laurent, whose facial expressions are captured perfectly by Tarantino; and by Christoph Waltz, who plays the movie’s intelligent and ruthless villain all too well. Brad Pitt, B.J. Novak, Eli Roth, and Omar Doom (all Basterds) provide a lot of comical entertainment throughout the film, which truly is hilarious at times.

Tarantino, overall, did a great job with this film. The cinematography was very interesting to watch. His use of rotating camera angles and low lighting at times of stress helps the audience to share the unease that the characters on film feel. He pays a lot of attention to expressions—at times letting characters who are involved in a conversation remain mostly cut out of the shot in order to emphasize the reactions of third party observers. He also does a tremendous job with color motifs throughout the film. The use of red is particularly strong in scene in which Emmanuelle stands in front of a window in her red dress, with matching lips and nails, as the red Nazi flag sways in the background. In the scene, the power that the Nazi flag holds as a symbol is transferred to the Jewish girl who plans to overthrow those who nearly killed her. This may be one of my favorite scenes in the movie, just based on how beautiful it is.

The last thing I want to mention is the score. It sounded like music typical of the 40’s and 50’s, but with a Western twist. These scores, which are reminiscent of scenes from Tarantino’s earlier films Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 (2003, 2004), are successful in transforming what could be a typical war movie into the more devil-may-care, Nazi-killing thriller that is Inglorious Basterds.

The movie, like most, does have some down falls. There are a few scenes that are too long, and although they aid in character development, they ultimately fail to move the plot and keep the audience interested. Tarantino also used a narrative to introduce characters and past events at the start of the movie, which was fun and interesting to watch, but let it die off toward the end. Overall, however, the movie is very well done and excellently entertaining. It is as crazy as its director, to be sure. The ending is sure not to disappoint, and the performances put on in four different languages is sure to impress most audiences. This is a movie definitely worth seeing, if not for the cinematography, acting, and plot, at least for the B.A. action.

Our Job

While watching movies, we focus primarily on the actors on screen or the theatrical moves of the director while trying to enjoy and understand the film. We often forget, however, that we the audience play an equally important role in the movie experience. In his essay on Classic Hollywood Cinema, David Bordwell asserts that “classical narration… depends up on the notion of the invisible observer” (Bordwell 24), the people behind the camera.

So what is it we as the silent observers are expected to do to make the movie-going experience all that it is meant to be? Bordwell proposes that our role is to “come to classical films very well prepared” (28), ready to read the emotions of characters, follow the logical flow of events, and of course, interpret the unfolding film in order to understand what is going on. When I first read this I couldn’t imagine a more obvious statement. How could we possibly watch movies and not understand what’s being spoon fed to us (as is often the case in Classic Hollywood Cinema)?

Then I saw this re-cut of the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” (Nora Ephron, 1993) in which some clever editors took clips from a classic romantic comedy and made it into a trailer for Sleepless in Seattle, the horror movie. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frUPnZMxr08

So what is it that makes us root for Annie (Meg Ryan) as she, in a manner that could easily be interpreted as eerily creepy (as seen above), seeks out the man she heard on a radio program across the country? In my opinion, it is a combination of good direction and our deeply ingrained understanding of the romantic comedy plot structure that lets us empathize for Annie.

Annie (Meg Ryan) watching Sam (Tom Hanks) from afar, but not in a creepy way

Certain directional moves are made throughout the movie that help to build a connection between Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) and Annie. There is the obvious sync in words and actions that we see splattered throughout the movie, such as finishing sentences the same way during radio talkshow scene. There is also the less obvious use of eye line matches made between Annie and Sam which help to close the distance between the two. The shots are laced together in such a way that it seems like the two could be standing right across from each other, eye to eye, talking to one another, when in reality, thousands of miles separate them and neither has exchanged words directly with the other.

Musical score also plays a big role in dulling down the creepiness and amplifying the “oh that’s cute” factor. The re-cut trailer uses dark, ominous music during the scene where Annie watches Sam and his son play on the beach. This leads the audience to suspect evil intentions. On the other hand, the original movie keeps the music both upbeat, and at time emotional, to convey a sense of deep connection between the characters and what they feel for one another.

Perhaps the most important contributing factor, however, is our base knowledge of Classic Hollywood Cinema. This entails us “recognizing the recurrence of a star’s persona from film to film and recognizing generic conventions” (Bordwell, 29) associated with the film’s genre. In this case, we know that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks excel at playing sappy romantics (“You’ve Got Mail” 1998) and anyone who has seen one romantic comedy has seen them all. Everyone ends the same. (I’ll give you a hint: they end up together, despite those setbacks). It’s these preconceptions that prevent us as an audience, the invisible observer, to suspect nothing but good intentions from Annie.

In film, it is the director and actors’ job to give guiding cues to the audience, but it is the audience’s job to interpret for themselves what he or she seeing, to insert their own ideas and feelings into the movie to make the film experience a more involved one.

For anyone responding to this, feel free to think about these questions:

How much do our previous conceptions play into our movie going experience?

It is possible for a director to lead us too heavily and not let us think and interpret for ourselves?

Talking Through the Camera

An important divergence between the world of film and the world literature is the use of narrative voice. Its purpose in literature is pretty straight forward: to allow the readers to hear, see, and experience the events unfolding throughout the pages, including the thoughts and emotions of the characters. Narration in film, however, plays a slightly less defined role. Generally speaking, narration in film has not been necessary, as the sound and sights of the film as well as the subtleties of the actor’s movements and expressions accomplish what narration seeks to make clear. There are times, though, when great acting, visuals, and sounds aren’t enough and can’t convey the whole picture that the author or director hopes to get across. Take for example a quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

“She felt no anger toward anyone on earth. The things she had endured had now receded into some outer fog, like pain that still exists but has no power to hurt. Those things could not stand in the face of this moment’s reality, the meaning of this day was as brilliantly, violently clear as the splashes of sun on the silver engine, all men had to perceive it now, no one could doubt it and she had no one to hate.” (Rand, Atlas Shrugged)

For me, it is hard to imagine any actor or director of any skill level being able to fully capture the emotion felt by Dagny Taggart at this point in the novel, nor the full gravity of the situation, nor do so quite so poetically. This is where I feel narration can be an excellent tool to film; it allows the audience to fully appreciate the things that cannot be said other than in words.

I’d like to make a distinction before I go on. Narration’s role in film should never be to say the things that the audience can pick up from an actor or the brilliant moves of a director. Narration of this type is somewhat of a cop-out, allowing an easier (and often times more boring) way of getting a point across. Truly good narration should be a supplement to action and direction, not a substitute. It should provide a further sense of what is going on behind and beneath the scene on screen.

The French Film Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) makes good use of narration. In this case, the narrative voice is used to further the quirkiness of Amélie’s (Audrey Tautou) character and world. It is delivered in such a way as to mirror the child-like perceptions and mannerisms of the main character. For example, in a scene where the narrator speaks of a fictional man standing in a cellar window whispering witty insults for her to use against the mean-spirited vegetable vendor, narration is used. The narrator doesn’t come out and say, the man in the window is really just in Amélie’s childish imagination, but the way in which he presents the situation allows the audience to deduce as much. In a sense, he is building Amélie’s character. This is precisely the way in which narration should be used—to give the viewer a better sense of a character or situation and clarify aspects of the world being shown.

Walter Benjamin, in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, claims that the essence of art in the aura it creates. Good film narration, I believe, adds to this aura. When used correctly, it provides an added layer of depth that cannot be reached by acting or direction alone. It allows its audience to gather emotions nuances that were previously available only in novels and text. For this reason, I feel that narration in film can be a huge asset, that is, when it’s done right.