'Inglourious Basterds': Revenge of the Genre Conventions

by Brett Parker

It’s a prominent imbalance that has been present in American World War II films since the genre’s origins. The American side has been portrayed as glorious, heroic, and emotionally touching while the Germans, and all of our enemies for that matter, have been drawn as cold and vicious villains. Even the most sophisticated and penetrating of American war films have been diminishing in our enemies’ screen time and can’t help but show the other side as nihilistic and inhuman. There have scarcely been complaints though, for how many Americans would pay to see a film that portrays enemies from our past in a compassionate light? There are proud comforts in these genre conventions that no filmmaker would dare to threaten.

That is until Quentin Tarantino came along. His Ingluorious Basterds has been advertised as the ultimate WWII cartoon, one in which bullish and ballistic American heroes deliver the ultimate punishments to evil German putzes. But Tarantino has a slyer agenda that may be rather shocking to American audiences: he has delivered the first American-made WWII film in which the German side is given more dimension and sympathy than the American side. Upon close examination of the film, there is no denying that the Nazis present here are given more humanity, dimensions, and screen time then their American counter-parts. Tarantino’s use of his characters, as well as his standard arsenal of self-reflexive tricks, allows us to meditate on the way movies can affect a national view on historical events.

The film takes place “once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France…” We meet the Inglorious Basterds, a guerilla unit of American soldiers who’ve been dropped behind enemy lines with one single-minded mission: murder as many Nazis as possible with the utmost viciousness. Under the command of the gung-ho hillbilly Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the Basterds conduct a years-long campaign in which countless Nazis are shot, scalped, scarred, and slammed. The Basterds’ exploits strike a mythic fear into the hearts of the Third Reich and even attract the assistance of a suave British Lieutenant (Michael Fassbender) and a German Actress turned Spy (Diane Kruger).

The Basterds’ mission takes on a grander significance once they are placed in the path of Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), the owner of a movie theatre in France. Through the influence of a German soldier-turned-actor named Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), the Nazis wish to hold the premiere of a Germanized war film named Nation’s Pride at the young woman’s theatre. Almost all of the highest-ranking officers in the German Army, including Hitler himself, plan on attending the premiere, giving the Basterds the perfect target to dramatically alter the course of the war. What the Basterds’ aren’t aware of is the fact that Shosanna also has a revenge plot up her sleeve. The theatre owner is secretly a Jewish-refugee hiding under a French occupation. Her family was massacred years earlier at the hands of a wily SS officer named Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). On the night of the premiere, she has a calculated plan for retaliation that promises to clash violently with the Basterds’ shrewd plotting.

Inglourious Basterds has been described as “kosher porn” in which Jewish and American moviegoers can vicariously live out their revenge fantasies of slaying the Nazis in devilish ways. Yet you’d be surprised by how much we don’t see of the Basterds. Most of their juiciest exploits are kept off-screen and we barely get to know them individually. The most fleshed out Basterd is Aldo, and even he is a goofball caricature lacking real human depths. He’s an amusing, one-note comic character meant to represent opaque patriotism gone awry. The fact that a Hollywood megastar is cast in the role and is allowed to riff on utter-silliness diminishes our outright investment in the character. We can’t help but realize that these bloodthirsty buffoons represent the same crudeness and broadness that has been reserved for American enemies in countless War films.

Even though the Nazis did undeniably evil things and undoubtedly earned their titles of notoriety and villainy, there is no denying that the film paints them in a more curiously sympathetic light than the supposed “heroes” of the title. The German characters hold most of the movie’s screen time in their grasp and they convey more realistic human emotions than their nemeses. Fredrick Zoller is not seen as an arrogant creep, but a sincere and proud soldier who wants to do right by his country. He even feels uneasy about how he is gloriously portrayed in Nation’s Pride. And what is to be made of the film’s villain, Hans Landa? Sure, he is diabolical and sinister, but he is so giddy, delighted, and intelligible, that it’s rather difficult to label him as outright loathsome, a fate reserved for most Nazi characters in American films. He is not merely an iron sociopath, but a colorful observer who relates thoughtful logic in carrying out his actions. If he were on the American side, we’d relish him completely. Even Hitler himself is allowed a human moment in which he shows real concern and compassion for his nation and decides to attend the film premiere himself.

The most telling scene regarding this risky cinematic ideology comes during the final moment between Shosanna and Fredrick in a projector’s booth. Throughout the film, Fredrick tries to pursue Shosanna romantically and win her over with his affections. Given her background, there’s no way a woman like Shosanna could ever allow someone like Fredrick into her graces. Even though she understands the genuine and heartfelt place he is coming from, in the end she is true to her ideals and sees her wartime stance all the way through. Shosanna’s final moment reveals our feelings towards these characters: we too almost want to accept them as real people like us, but our patriotism and overall knowledge of the war causes us to endlessly regard them as our enemies.

Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker of self-reflexive delights and he employs his tactics to make us reflect on the way cinematic language can affect our thinking. With Inglourious Basterds, we realize how movies hold a great impact on how we learn and remember past events regarding wars. He even demonstrates this by painting the British Lieutenant as a film-critic-turned-soldier who bases most of his military knowledge on his expertise in national cinema (it’s worth noting that Fassbender, doing a suave play on Errol Flynn charms, creates the coolest film critic character to ever grace the silver screen; something I’ve been waiting patiently waiting for). What’s interesting is the way the German army hopes Nation’s Pride will launch a popular cinematic genre in which the Nazis will be seen as glorious heroes and the Americans will forever be branded as cold villains. This undoubtedly happened in America, in which the U.S. Army worked with Hollywood to spark a national pride in military efforts, forever altering the genre conventions of American war films. With these plot revelations, and the delicious historical inaccuracies of the film’s violent climax, Tarantino shows us how trusting movies for our views on history can seriously skewer our outlook on war.

With Tarantino at the helm, you can always expect a heightened cinematic universe filled with colorful characters and surprisingly elaborate dialogue. Tarantino is a filmmaker hopelessly in love with his own words, but he demonstrates that grand dialogue can be just as exciting as grand action. There’s a peculiar resonance in the film’s final words, in which Aldo regards his own act of violence and exclaims “this might just be my masterpiece!” Is this Tarantino speaking through Aldo? Tarantino has undoubtedly been trying to mount this labyrinth screenplay for ages with an aueteur’s most fevered passion, but does he honestly feel like this is his masterpiece? It’s certainly not his best film; its dialogue lacks the sparkle of Pulp Fiction and it doesn’t have the energetic bounce of Kill Bill. Yet one thing’s for sure, no other war film could possibly hold the grand meditations of war films that Inglourious Basterds so zestfully displays. Tarantino may not have the WWII history right, but he certainly knows how WWII cinema works and he forces us to look at it in a way we never dreamed we could.