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Inglorious Basterds (2009) dir Quentin Tarantino

 

 

When putting together my list of favourite films from each year of my life I picked this for 2009, but until now I had never seen the whole film, all the way through in one sitting, just watched parts when it has been on TV. It's a WWII film, mainly, about a group of Jewish-American soldiers (name as in the film's title) operating behind enemy lines in occupied France, terrorising the Germans, and ultimately taking part in a mission to try and assassinate the entire n*zi leadership. But there is much more to the story than that with other plot lines. It is presented in chapters, each of which is almost like a short film in it's own right, that connects to the others, but they don't all feature the same characters, and some characters never meet each other.

It has a great ensemble cast, too many to mention all in detail. I guess you can just about say Brad Pitt plays the main character, Lt Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds. Christopher Walz won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Col Hans Landa. Often the bad guy roles stand out, and this is no exception to that. Landa is a truly evil, virulently anti-Semitic n*zi, assigned by Hitler to find all remaining Jews France. Melanie Laurent is also worth a mention as Shosanna Dreyfus, the lone survivor of a Jewish family that Landa had found and killed, now running the cinema in Paris where different plot elements come together. The others in the supporting roles include Eli Roth, Daniel Bruhl, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger and August Diehl. There's also a couple of cameo roles from Mike Myers (almost unrecognisable as a British General, who refers to distances in kilometres not miles! - I think that must have been deliberate) and Harvey Keitel (voice on other end of a radio conversation). The soundtrack is great, from a variety of composers and performers, featuring quite a few Ennio Morricone pieces, from other films he worked on, such as The Battle of Algiers and various westerns.

It's a very well written script, as you would expect from Tarantino. It's not a comedy but not that serious at times, like most of his films. Similarly can be quite violent, not hard given the genre, but there are rather more graphic scenes than your average war film includes. There are a couple of scenes of intense drama. One that stands out is when Shosanna is forced to  meets Landa, she knows who he is but he does not remember her. The meeting is just about a film the Germans want her to screen for them. She just about manages to keep her composure before breaking down after he leaves.

 

9/10