Gory? Yes. Intense? Yes. Awesome? Yes. Can you take your eyes off the screen? Definitely not. Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino (yes that’s the foot guy), is one of my favorites in his film collection. Tarantino is known for taking a specific moment in time and slightly altering it to tell a new story of what he believes would have happened if things played out differently. Inglourious Basterds follows this pattern and gives a very different ending to World War II, one where we follow the Inglourious Basterds (a real piece of history, Tarantino did not fabricate them for narrative purposes, but did change them a tad), a group of Jewish-American misfits and assassins, who were solely tasked with killing Nazis all across Europe, typically scalping them (that’s exactly what you think it means) to keep “souvenirs” of their travels, and carving swastikas into the foreheads of the purposeful survivors they leave to instill fear into the Third Reich (sh0wn below).
Naturally, just as WWII was, the opening scene of the film is possibly one of the most intense scenes in all of cinema. This scene is the hallmark of the film, and to me, the epitome of Tarantino’s abilities as a writer, director, and filmmaker. This scene depicts the tension and fear of nearly every European citizen in the 1940s and gives you one of the greatest feelings of suspense a movie can offer.
The film begins in Nazi-occupied France, where we promptly meet Colonel Hans Landa (shown above) of the Third Reich, also called the “Jew Hunter”, the villain of the film, played by Christoph Waltz (who won an Oscar for this role). Hans is regarded as one of the greatest movie villains of all time, yet he is not this big, menacing monster, like a Thanos or a Darth Vader. Hans is terrifying, intimidating, and evil because we are transported to a historical and horrifying time that unfortunately some people alive today had to experience. As an audience, we have a general understanding that some of the nightmarish events depicted actually happened, but words simply aren’t enough for us to fully comprehend the reality of these tragic times. But from the opening scene, we begin to perceive what Nazi interaction may have entailed, where if Hans Landa is in your presence, you’re uncertain whether you’ll be dead, alive, or in an internment camp the next day. Simply placing Hans in the frame immediately alerts us that our beloved main characters are in sudden danger and that things can turn south very quickly. This is called hyperreality, a facet of Tarantino’s arsenal that many directors fail to create in their films. Hyperreality is defined as the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, which to me, is why Inglourious Basterds is able to create a great deal of suspense and tension, and hatred for Hans.
This hatred is shared with the Inglourious Basterds and Shosanna Dreyfus (shown above), a survivor of Hans’ “jew hunting.” Besides Hans, these two groups shared distaste (killing Nazis) becomes my favorite part of the film, not just because they are doing something everyone wanted to do at the time, but because of the way they do it. SLIGHT SPOILERS, but they want to kill Nazis with the power of cinema. Inglourious Basterds itself is an homage to old spaghetti westerns whose influence on film is still seen today, but even the characters in the movie understand the impact experiencing cinema together has. Tarantino’s alternate history is one where movies become the downfall of the Third Reich, which to me is equally both a funny and ironic concept.
Although Inglourious Basterds did not authentically occur, there’s just a little piece of me hoping in the infinite space of our existence, there is another universe out there where this actually happened. This film is slightly out of the box from my regular, make-you-contemplate-life-itself thought provokers, but nonetheless, Inglourious Basterds is an action-packed, gruesome, bloody, and intense piece of cinema featuring one of my favorite villains ever, Hans Landa.
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Your writing clearly shows just how much you love this movie as well as the director. I haven’t heard of this movie, but I feel like I know enough now to have a good idea if it’s something that I should watch. Personally, I’m not very into gore, but I always love movies that allow people to see justice being served when it otherwise doesn’t happen or didn’t happen. It’s almost like justice is being served, and it leaves the watcher to feel slightly satisfied. I never really read film reviews except on your blog and I feel like I get so much good information from you.
I think this post is really well written and vividly describes not only the content of “Inglorious Bastards,” but also its energy. Although I have never seen the film, you describe it well enough that I might have to check it out. I liked how you focused on the film itself but also the director and certain cinematic tactics it employs. I had no idea what hyperreality was before reading your blog, and I can definitely see how it would be an effective tactic throughout this film. I also think you did a good job creating the historic atmosphere of the film in such a short blog post!