Inglorious Basterds is a film directed by Quentin Tarantino that finds a group of Jewish- American Nazi hunters trying to take down top German officers including Hitler himself at a film premier of a German propaganda film. This is one of my favorite films of all time, and Tarantino is easily in my top 3 directors. The way he is able to tell his story while keeping the audience engaged is unparallel. His humor highlights his films for me and his use of dialogue is unique.
Assuming whoever is reading this, I will touch upon a few scenes that stand out to me in this film. In the opening scene, Hans Landa, a German SS officer, is in the home of a French family. Landa is a pleasant, well mannered person. However the entire scene, the viewer knows there is something awful that is going to happen. Tarantino uses dialogue to build suspense, and a lot of it. The scene seems to last over 20 minutes and it’s just two men talking. All of Landa’s subtle hints that he knows the family is hiding a family of Jews are present in the dialogue and must be picked up on by the viewer. For instance, he asks for milk over a drink because “after all this is a dairy farm” this alerts the viewer that Landa is suspicious of this family. His pleasant demeanor is sinister and evil. And through his conversation alone, he is able to exploit the Frenchman’s anxiety to figure out where the Jews are hiding.
Another suspense moment Tarantino builds is when he is speaking to Shosanna. Something as subtle as ordering a pastry and ensuring that we wait for the cream to be put on top has us sitting on the edge of our seats as viewers. This conversation eventually leads NOWHERE and it takes up a chunk of the movie, yet we find ourselves filled with anxiety and suspense as to what is going to happen between these two who were “acquainted”. The conversation ends with Landa sinisterly saying he has another question, but it slipped his mind. One may find themselves watching the rest of the film waiting for that plot point to be revealed, only to find it never is. It was a conversation between an SS officer and a Jewish woman hiding in plain sight. Although this is a fictional piece, this scene highlights the tense anxiety felt by all those who experienced German occupied territories in WWII.
Tarantino does a masterful job at pulling the viewer into his worlds. He somehow inserts some sort of charm in his psychopathic ragtag group of Nazi hunters as well. The conclusion of the film finds two of the “basterds” engaging in a massacre of hundreds of men and women associated with the Nazi party. Somehow he adds humor to this in a way I can’t even explain as the Jewish men take revenge on those who are trying to exterminate their race. To explain a Tarantino movie is one of the hardest things one can do, you have to witness firsthand what he does to have an opinion on it, which in my opinion is what makes him so great.
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