Inglourious Basterds Revisited

In 2017, I wrote a piece criticizing Inglourious Basterds. I don’t think I was being entirely honest. After all, it’d been several years since I’d last seen it, so my memory wasn’t fresh. And with it being almost 9 years since writing the piece, I’ve wondered if my thoughts were warranted. So I re-watched it. While, yes, some of my thoughts have changed, I think it’s the most-frustrating of Tarantino’s works. I say that having not finished Jackie Brown.

Let’s start with what I liked. In a landscape where Jewish roles are frequently given to gentiles, that this movie casts Jews in Jewish roles is a miracle. That extends to European casting, with Shoshana Dreyfus going to relative-newcomer Mélanie Laurent. Laurent was in her mid-20s at the time, yet she has enough charisma to lead this film alone. It’s a shame she isn’t the focal point, but we’ll get there...

Speaking of casting, I appreciate the movie’s authenticity. German and French actors were cast appropriately, with Hans Landa going to Christoph Waltz. Waltz earned an Oscar for his take on a slimy-yet-charismatic Nazi with an ability to sniff out Jews. Landa’s the best antagonist this movie has. He’s also the true foil to Shoshana, and, again, it’s a shame their dynamic isn’t the focus.

I like how this movie has urgency and danger in every scene, even the one involving Mike Myers’s character setting up everything. This is best exemplified in the opening, where Landa, using clever language and interrogation techniques, murders Shoshana’s family. This is easily its crown achievement, and it could’ve been a short film had it ended there. I’d argue the remainder of the movie never tops it, too.

Finally, this is a Jewish-centric story. It figures that it would be, it’s a Holocaust story, but it centering around Jews specifically is nice. Holocaust movies, particularly in Hollywood, often show gentiles helping Jews, robbing the Jewish characters of their agency. Inglourious Basterds doesn’t do that. Small moments like Landa getting Shoshana to eat strudel with non-Kosher cream, despite Jewish law allowing that to save your life, feel weighty because the movie makes it so. It’s nice to see this.

Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends. But before I rip it apart, a disclaimer: I don’t have Holocaust survivors in my family. I’m the rare breed of Jew who’s third-generation Canadian, having three grandparents born in Toronto and one in Washington D.C. My experience with the Holocaust is through friends and acquaintances. I volunteered at a geriatric facility with survivors, but none were related to me. So anything I say should be understood through that lens.

The best way to summarize my thoughts would be in one word: frustrating. Inglourious Basterds’s pivotal scene, the theatre massacre, has many moving parts that need to fall into place to work, and on several occasions it nearly collapses. It’s only through a combination of plot armour and story contrivances that it works, and even then it feels forced. There are several moments where I wondered if the the Nazi officers and their associates were dumb enough to gather in a small, sketchy revue like this. Then I remembered that many Nazi officials were that dumb, and I stopped questioning it.

But it raises a bigger issue, one that I still hold by now. Most of the Nazis in the movie don’t act differently than standard soldiers. They wear their SS garb, which isn’t flattering, but there’s little differentiating them from The Basterds Brigade. On that front, said Basterds, a group of Jews, are more evil than the Nazis they’re sent to kill. With one ripping out a sleeping SS officer’s tongue, and another one, nicknamed “The Bear Jew”, bludgeoning a Nazi officer to death with a baseball bat, Quentin Tarantino misses the mark in making these characters feel sympathetic.

Even Shoshana, the one exception, loses me in the finale when her silhouette laughs maniacally at the chaos she’s created. On paper, this should be satisfying, especially since Shoshana has experienced so much misery and grief. But it’s not. Not only does Shoshana not survive, being shot by a Nazi who keeps pestering her, but the image of a Jewish woman laughing demonically as her face is engulfed by flames is…aggressive. It feels Antisemitic, even if that wasn’t the intent.

I could continue ranting all day about the theatre massacre, including how Hitler’s face being riddled with bullets makes me uneasy. And yeah, you could argue how that massacre is Tarantino commenting on the audience’s appetite for excessive violence, something mirrored in the movie the patrons are watching. But because this is Tarantino, a man whose next movie, Django Unchained, involved one of the bloodiest shootouts I’ve ever seen, I can’t help recognizing the irony there. It’s patronizing, essentially. It’s also annoying.

Another sequence that irks me involves the bar shootout. One of the Nazis there, a low-ranking officer named Wilhelm, has recently become a father, and he’s celebrating by getting piss-drunk. As that’s happening, the plan involving the movie revue, which is discussed with German spy Bridget Von Hammersmark, is run down at a neighbouring table. The situation turns when a high-ranking SS officer joins said table, leading to a shootout when someone gives away that he’s a British spy. It’s a gunfight that you’d expect from Tarantino, ending with Hammersmark being badly-injured and Wilhelm surviving the onslaught.

And then, as Wilhelm surrenders to Lieutenant Aldo Raine, Hammersmark shoots him anyway. Even if you’d argue that he might’ve squealed to The SS, it’s still excessive for Wilhelm to be shot. Like Miss Laura’s death in Django Unchained, it’s gratuitous. It also doesn’t serve a purpose outside of giving Tarantino another chance to flex. In short, I didn’t like it.

The part that pisses me off the most is the ending. Specifically, how Shoshana isn’t present. Not only did she not deserve to die at the hands of her stalker, she also should’ve been the one to carve Landa’s head. It’d not only be satisfying, tying her arc to her direct tormentor, it’d make what feels like another, run-of-the-mill art piece into something layered with meaning. I know it’s too late now to suggest that to Tarantino, but it definitely feels like a missed opportunity.

That’s my issue with this movie in general, namely that it refuses to get out of its own way. It’s a problem Tarantino would have again with Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood’s finale, as that would’ve benefited from Sharon Tate killing her failed intruders. After all, that was as much about Tate as this is about Shoshana, so why not? Tarantino’s already making a revisionist piece, so why not go all the way? Or does gratuitous violence override layered storytelling?

When I wrote my initial critique of Inglourious Basterds, I got plenty of flak from people. Specifically, from the “punch Nazis” crowd, who claimed that I was “both sides-ing” what should be straightforward. However, I remain steadfast in my frustrations, even if I no longer romanticize Nazis. And in a time when Jews are harassed and attacked over something they never asked for, that crowd could stand to listen to us even when it makes them uncomfortable. Essentially, “punch Nazis” should include “and listen to their victims, too”.

As a final note, the reason I prefer Django Unchained is because while that movie’s also gratuitous, it doesn’t detract from Django getting closure. Yes, it deals with American slavery. And yes, it has Samuel L. Jackson playing a stereotypical, Uncle Ruckus-type villain in Lawrence. But it lets Django have the last word. Inglourious Basterds, however, doesn’t extend that grace to Shoshana Dreyfus. That matters, and it bothers me. It should bother you too.