Inglourious Basterds - Celebrating Death

World War II was a crazy period. There are too many facts and even greater rumors present on the events that had taken place during this period. While history books are laden with eulogies of the allied forces and ignominy of the axis powers, there are aplenty rumors about the exact opposite. I had read somewhere that Tarantino never had a good time in school and that’s the best thing to have happened to Inglourious Basterds. His love for rumors and his ability to gel them with facts results in a fun ride like never before.

P.S. – This post might contain spoilers. Its almost impossible for me write about IB without giving away some of the plot details.

Masked as a war movie, Inglourios Basterds is a saga of revenge. And like every revenge story, it starts off with a massacre. Hans Landa, a colonel with the SS, has been newly commissioned in France and his job includes finding out every enemy of the state (read Jews) and exterminating them. Nicknamed as Jew Hunter, he takes great pride in his job as well as his nickname, precisely because he has earned it. In the brilliantly executed first chapter, we find Hans Landa trying to extract information from a French farmer about some missing Jews from the nearby farm. From the very beginning, almost every one in the audience knew how its going to end, but the way the scene is executed makes it a compelling watch. At the very end of the scene, when Landa is directing his officers about the hide out places to shoot at, the hand movement of his is so terrific that it looked like a musician directing his masterpiece symphony. And just when the shooting stops, we find a surviving Jew trying to make her way out of the house like a rat.

Cut to the next chapter and we find some American Jews swearing revenge on the Nazis. Never before, have I been exposed to such brutal and plain speaking Jews of world war era depicted in Cinema before. Most of the time, Jews are projected as helpless people waiting either for a benevolent man or for fate to help them out. But here we find Jews talking about revenge and I felt great pride for them. Those people land in Germany and get down with their business of Killing Nazis. Very soon their business starts booming and Nazis starts fearing them. They are nicknamed as Bastards and for most of the people around that time, they become a myth. Tarantino makes use of this psychology and creates larger than life characters out of this myth. The entry scene of Beaaaar Jew is so astounding that he looked like one of the most decorated war hero of his times.

Then there is a chapter with a scene at a tavern in the basement. And what a brilliant adaptation of Murphy’s Law it is! Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Watch it yourself to enjoy the cinematic delight of this whole scene.
The movie primarily belongs to Hans Landa and Soshanna.
Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa is THE Devil himself. He comes across as the most polite and well mannered villain ever depicted on screen. Every action his whether switching to English or ordering cream on strudel, has got a purpose. His actions in the movie are like moves in a chess board.

Soshanna is a chance survivor of the massacre at the opening chapter, but never do we find her grieving at the loss. Instead we find her ready to take on the whole think tank of Nazis at the opportune moment. She is not out there just to survive but to have her revenge too. Instead of fleeing to a Spain, she stays back in France and finally finds an opportunity to take her revenge.

There are some fantastic cinematic styles and moments in IB which I would like to delve upon.

The movie has some of best use of fantastic background score. The scene where Landa makes an entry before interviewing Soshanna starts with “hey Landa” which almost has a feel of “hail Hitler”. Just a couple of seconds of background score is enough to rattle you and you make yourself ready for the tension that follows. Same is the case with the entry of Beaaar Jew. The background score gives you a feeling of an immensely powerful and ruthless man.

The use of RED color is so strikingly beautiful and metaphorical in IB! Red is color of blood, Red represents passion and Red represents Revenge!

Death has always looked beautiful in Tarantino’s movies and IB is no exception. No one understands the concept of celebrating death better than Tarantino. The scene where Soshanna is killed is astoundingly musical and celebrates everything her life had to offer. Instead of feeling sorry for her during her death, I felt great pride for the accomplishments of her life. Even death could not defeat the purpose of her life! And such a death demands celebration.

Tarantino’s love for cinema is there in almost every frame of the movie. As a kid, I loved to watch theatre people changing the poster of their currently running movies. No one has captured such scene as elegantly as Tarantino has done it in IB. Add to it, he has a whole flashback sequence depicting the flammability of nitrate films! And then, we have the whole last chapter shot inside a movie theatre.
I am a great fan of movies like Schindler’s List and The Pianist, but IB is something that has never been seen before. For the first time Jews of World War era are portrayed as characters who can hit back. I have already seen this movie 3 times and am still in awe of the cinematic experience that I have witnessed.
If you are interested in watching a docu-drama on World War II, give this movie a miss. But if you interested in watching a MOVIE, where World War II just happens to be the backdrop, this might be just for you.

The movie ends with Aldo Raine saying “I think this might just be my masterpiece”. It’s almost impossible to better movies like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, but IB is certainly one of the most fulfilling cinematic experiences that I have witnessed in recent times. Bravo Tarantino!