"Au revoir, Shoshanna!" This shot got me get up and really pay attention to Inglourious Basterds on my second attempt at watching it! The first time I tried to, years ago, the moment I saw the "scalping" scene, I had stopped and didn't think to hit the forward button and see what would happen next. Because given that it is a Quentin Tarantino movie, one cannot expect that the entire film was not going to be filled with violent, gory details. But once it came on Netflix, I thought of giving it another try because like everybody else, I like things that show bad guys meet their ultimate fate. I loved the movie Valkyrie and I often play Wolfenstein (I know, its a video game Dinosaur but can you deny that its still charming in 2020?)!
Getting back to Ingluorious Basterds, second time was the charm for me. While without doubt, Tarantino's story telling prowess is a boon, I was kept glued to the movie just because of Christoph Waltz. This guy! What a great actor. He deserved every award that he won in 2009 and more. But more on that later.
In what has become typical of Tarantino's movies of late, Inglourious Basterds takes you through a "what-if" scenario involving real people. It depicts a fictional story of how things could have ended differently for Hitler and his Nazi right hand men, had assassination attempts on him by two separate groups of people succeeded. A Jewish girl, Shoshanna who escapes the Nazis and hides in plain sight in France as a movie theatre owner plots to kill Hitler in her theatre with her black French lover during the premiere of a Nazi propaganda movie. Coincidentally, British Intelligence Corps along with Aldo Reinner and his band of Jewish American soldiers, called Basterds plan to do just the same albeit differently, at the same venue during the same premiere! Once they set their plans in action, chaos follows and despite everything that could go wrong, will both parties succeed? Then there is SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in all of this. I have given up spoilers on old movies before, but this particular story arc, I insist you watch to enjoy the brilliance!
The consistency with which Waltz plays Hans Landa was so precise throughout the movie, it just makes you sit up and take notice not of the story but of the actor and his finesse. With the pretty face that Waltz has, you would think it would be difficult to loathe any of his characters but his other-worldly portrayal of Landa elicits all kinds of feelings - fear, disgust, anger, et al! This guy is funny in parts too, how about that?! Throughout the movie you see his wild expressions change just as easily as he switches between German, French and English (I know I should have just called this post "Christoph Walt appreciation post" ala Buzzfeed!)
Tarantino writes real raw emotions in his characters and his actors breathe life into them perfectly. For eg, the minute I saw Martin Wuttke's Hitler enter the scene, angrily banging on the table screaming, "nein nein nein..", I felt like I was watching the Fuhrer himself despite having never watched him on video! While the others like Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger have done pretty decent jobs too (with whatever limited time they had), everybody's eye candy, Brad Pitt failed in comparison in this movie. I thought his general charm did not light up on this one.
This movie makes one wonder what must go into an actor's performance to reach the highest level of brilliance and how a strong script with captivating characters and the right cast catapults it into a box office success. Bravo Waltz, Bravo!
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