Inglourious Basterds
Directed by Quentin Tarantino

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Despite the overwhelming criticism from my fellow cinemaphiles, I have never been a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s films. The first thing that people often tell me when I confess this dislike is that I just don’t understand “it.” For a long time I have simply agreed and considered that perhaps Tarantino’s work does possess some uncanny quality that I’m unable to understand – and his fans are unable to define. Then I saw Inglourious Basterds, a film so divorced from anything resembling storytelling or entertainment that I can finally say to Mr. Tarantino’s fans: it’s not me, it’s you.

From a purely technical standpoint, Inglourious Basterds is a fine movie. The production design by David Wasco and the cinematography by Scorsese regular Robert Richardson are superb and Christoph Waltz, who took home the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, will surely get an Oscar nomination for his amusing, terrifying performance as a Nazi officer. With Inglourious Basterds, form is never the issue. It’s the film’s content that is – to put it mildly – problematic.

In a 1996 interview with film critic J. Hoberman, Tarantino said, “If I had a gun and a twelve year old kid broke into this house, I would kill him. You have no right to come into my house. I would empty the gun until you were dead.” Comments like these give far more insight into the filmmaker’s psyche (and his almost complete lack of critical thinking) than any of his actual movies.

Inglourious Basterds has been billed by many, including its director, as a revenge fantasy. But the question I have to ask is: whose fantasy? Supposedly we’re watching a group of Jewish GIs scour the French countryside for Nazis whom they can ritualistically slaughter. Are we to believe that these young men find carrying out these heinous acts cathartic? Killing a handful of Nazi soliders (and eventually some high-ranking officers) gives them some sort of peace from the horrors of the Holocaust?

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It’s this outrageously simplistic notion of revenge that is the insulting hallmark of Tarantino’s films. Showing his characters deriving some sort of satisfaction from inflicting sadistic torment on Nazis manages to offend Jews on two fronts. The idea that the pain of seeing your entire community systematically exterminated can be mitigated by watching your cohort beat an S.S. officer to death with a bat is idiotic, and to suggest that Jews would automatically respond to the brutality with which they were treated with more brutality is offensive.

Part of Quentin Tarantino’s legend is that he is self-educated, a high school dropout who taught himself everything he needed to know about film from watching movies. In a technical sense, yes, he became a fine filmmaker from his video store tutorials. But perhaps he could have learned some perspective if he’d finished the tenth grade.

These shortcomings are more evident in Inglourious Basterds than any of his other films because in Inglourious Basterds a tragedy like the Holocaust is merely a vehicle for childishly self-referential movie worship. Ultimately, it’s all about him: the filmmaker as hero. In a recent Newsweek interview, Tarantino said, “I like that it’s the power of the cinema that fights the Nazis. But not just as a metaphor, as a literal reality.” So, again I ask, whose revenge fantasy is it?

The Bottom Line: Unless you have deep desire to see Brad Pitt ape Billy Bob Thornton’s accent from Sling Blade – or have a masochistic streak – skip it.

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–Sarah Hudson