Inglourious Basterds

We watched the beginning of Inglourious Basterds in film class last week, and I rented it and watched the rest over the weekend.  I didn't remember being very interested in it from the previews, but the beginning of the film was really engaging and I had to see the rest.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, but there were a few things about it that bothered me.  In talking about those things, I'm going to completely spoil the film for anyone who hasn't seen it, so if you haven't seen it and you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

Continue for spoilers...


I had a problem with Landa deciding to betray the Nazis.  It wasn't really that I didn't believe he would do it.  I got the feeling from very early on in the film that he had no great loyalty or respect for the Nazis, and that he really only cared about himself, so I didn't really have a problem believing that he was the type of person who would turn traitor.  The problem was that he had just strangled von Hammersmark for doing the exact same thing, and he seemed to be pretty pissed off at her for doing it.  So how does he go from being mad enough at a traitor to jump up and strangle her to deciding to become a traitor himself just like that?

This seemed like a major contradiction to me until I thought about it for a while.  Then it occurred to me that he probably wasn't angry at von Hammersmark for being a traitor, he was angry at himself for being fooled by her for so long.  He prides himself on being a great detective, but she had been working with the enemy without his knowledge for quite a while presumably.  That would have been quite an insult to his pride.  Of course that explanation isn't anywhere in the movie at all, but I think it's valid.  It makes a hell of a lot more sense that way than it does the other way.

The only other big thing that bothered me about the movie was that they actually succeeded in killing Hitler and Goebbels and everybody and ending the war.  Don't get me wrong, it was satisfying on a visceral level.  The problem with it was that it broke my suspension of disbelief.  I had managed to get caught up in the reality of the movie up until that point, and when Hitler died, the reality of the movie evaporated.

I think Tarantino realized that this would happen, and did a lot of things to try to keep it from happening.  I think part of the reason there are things in the movie like the chapter titles, the big "Hugo Stiglitz" title, and the Samuel Jackson narration, are to periodically remind you that you're watching a movie so that you don't get too caught up in the reality of it and are able to accept Hitler getting killed and the war ending.  But those things didn't really work that way for me.  Maybe they did briefly, but the thing is that the characters and story were so engaging that it was impossible not to get lost in the reality of it all, and that's where I was right until Hitler got shot, and then the spell was completely broken.  I still enjoyed the end though, but it just doesn't have the magic the rest of the movie had up until that point.

I'd also have liked to have seen more of the Basterds.  There were several of them we didn't really get to meet at all.  I'd have liked to have seen all their personalities and what other nicknames the Germans might have come up with for each of them (because if they gave "the Little Man" a nickname, they must have given them all nicknames), but it was such a long, full movie, and if they had done that, they probably wouldn't have had as much time for Shossana and von Hammersmark and all the other great characters, so it's understandable.  Overall, it's a great movie, which I'll probably be buying in the near future.