Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were dazzling cinematic concoctions – Pulp Fiction was a game-changer for the art form – yet both were also hollow and empty.
Through careful framing, deliberate pauses and precise drops of dialogue, Tarantino masterfully escalates a seemingly benign situation into one of excruciating tension.įrom the start of his career, Tarantino’s abundant filmmaking talent has been simultaneously invigorating and frustrating. Landa visits a French farm to ask the stoic owner what he knows about a nearby Jewish family who has gone missing. Columbo, he subtly lets his targets know from the start that he holds the truth, then verbally tiptoes around them until they crack.Ĭonsider the lengthy, indulgent opening scene, which nevertheless doesn’t waste a second. With circular and seemingly inconsequential dialogue, Waltz keeps us mesmerized in each of his lengthy scenes, most of which involve the questioning of a squirming suspect. Pitt is amusing –Tarantino, like the Coen brothers, understands his true value is as a comedian – but the moments with Waltz are those that have the Tarantino touch. His men – all Jewish-American soldiers with a more vested interest than most in the conflict – are happy to oblige his peculiar requirements.Ĭharged with rooting out these Basterds, as they’ve come to be known, is Col. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Tennessean who claims to have Native-American blood. The story, written by Tarantino and slightly inspired by the 1978 Italian import The Inglorious Bastards, follows a guerrilla team of American soldiers who operate behind enemy lines in occupied France, picking off Nazis and taking their scalps. He uses Jewish vengeance as fuel for brutal comedy, as if he thought that last year’s Defiance didn’t have enough jokes.
That knowledge is Tarantino’s license to kill. The movie may take place in the midst of World War II, before the true horrors of the Nazi agenda were revealed to the world, but our knowledge of the Third Reich’s ultimate evil underlines the entire picture. Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s Holocaust comedy, and if that sounds gauche, it’s nothing compared to the film itself. Quentin Tarantino has finally made a movie that means something, though I think that’s happened entirely by accident.
0 kommentar(er)
