Inglourious Basterds- Revisited

This review contains spoilers. For a (boring) non-spoiler review, go here.

Ah, Inglourious Basterds. It has the three things I love most in a movie:

1) Moral ambiguity

2 )Nazis being killed

3 )Michael Fassbender.

Inglourious Basterds is a Quentin Tarantino film narrated by Samuel L. Jackson that recounts the exploits of various (fictional) soldiers and civilians during WWII. In typical Tarantino fashion, the movie is told in multiple parts. Unlike typical Tarantino fashion, the movie is told mostly in chronological order.

The first part, titled “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France,” introduces both Shosanna Dreyfus; a French-Jewish girl hiding with her family in the basement of a farmer’s home, and Colonel Hans Landa; also known by the moniker of “the Jew hunter.” Landa is a Nazi officer who threatens the farmer’s family with harassment and violence, until the farmer eventually tells Landa the location of Shosanna’s family. Shosanna escapes through a window in the basement, and manages to run far enough across a field that she is out of range of Landa’s gun. Or, it is possible, Landa intentionally allows her to escape, believing that allowing her to live with the memories of her family being slaughtered around her would be a worse torture than death could ever be.

In the second part, entitled “The Inglourious Basterds,” we are introduced to the eponymous Basterds, a group of Jewish-American soldiers intent on killing as many Nazis as possible. The group, led by the mystery-scarred (failed lynching? Knife marks?) and morally gray Lieutenant Aldo Raine, consists of the violent, baseball-loving, and semi-psychotic Donny Donowitz, nicknamed by the Germans as “the Bear Jew,” Hugo Stiglitz, who was a former German soldier imprisoned for killing thirteen other German soldiers (the Basterds broke him out), Wilhelm Wicki, who serves as the translator during interogations of German soldiers, Omar Ulmer, who doesn’t speak any Italian, and Smithson Utvich, nicknamed “the Little Man,” at least according to Landa, Gerold Hirschberg, whom we know nothing about, Andy Kagan, same, Michael Zimmerman, same, Simon Sakowitz, yep, you guessed it, same, and the aforementioned Aldo Raine. Of those ten, only Raine, Donowitz, Wicki, Stiglitz, Ulmer, and Utvich have important roles in the movie. This is not to say that the others do not have important roles in the plot itself, or in unseen events, just that they are given very little screen time in the movie.

Part three, “A German Night in Paris,” returns the viewer to Shosanna Dreyfus, who has dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to Emmannuelle Mimieux in order to evade capture by the Germans. Shosanna is now the owner of a small Paris cinema, staffed only by her and boyfriend Marcel. Unfortunately, frequent customer and German soldier Frederick Zoller attempts to gain her affections by doing what he perceives as a favour to her; having the location of an important Nazi movie premier moved to her theatre. Upon learning of this, Shosanna and Marcel formulate a plan to assassinate most of the high-ranking Nazis (bizarrely, Heinrich Himmler is never even mentioned in the movie) by sealing the doors to the cinema while the movie is screening, and using highly flammable film rolls to burn the theatre down. Part three also introduces us to the (awesomely named) character of Deiter Hellstrom, a young Major in the German army. Hellstrom is first introduced when he informs Shosanna that her presence has been requested by Zoller (the scene immediately before she learns that she is to host the premier of Nation’s Pride. Hellstrom has a larger part in the next act, Operation Kino.

“Operation Kino” (kino means theatre) begins with the introduction of British soldier Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), who is selected by General Fenech and Winston Churchill to help the Basterds infiltrate the movie premier. Hicox is selected for this due to his fluency in the German language (only the language) and extraordinary knowledge of German cinema. A meeting between Hicox, Wicki, Stiglitz, and famous German actress/British spy Bridget von Hammersmark is arranged, and takes place in the basement of a bar. This results in what may perhaps be two of the funniest lines in film, bar none; “You know, fightin’ in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. Number one being, you’re fightin’ in a basement!”- Aldo Raine, and “Say ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to your Nazi balls.”- Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz. The first line is spoken upon learning the location of the meeting point; the second when Hicox accidentally reveals to Hellstrom (who is there to watch over several off-duty soldiers, including the non-Basterd Wilhelm) that he is not German, due to his accent and improper hand-signalling of ‘drei gläser.’ (Hicox uses index, middle, ring, whereas a German would use thumb, index, middle.) Hicox’s mistake leads to a shoot-out leaving von Hammersmark as the only survivor.

In the final, and my favourite part, “Revenge of the Giant Face,” despite being shot, and thus having her leg in a cast, von Hammersmark agrees to Raine’s plan (read: badly though-out ‘plan’ that only succeeds through sheer luck, and a chance intersection with Shosanna’s plan) to bomb the theatre. Despite being an actor and spy, two jobs that require lying, von Hammersmarks best excuse for her cast when asked by Landa at the premier is ‘mountain climbing.’ In Paris. Even Landa laughs. I don’t know why she couldn’t say she tripped down stairs, broke a heel, or any other infinately more plausable excuse, but mountain-climbing it was. This less-than-stellar excuse is then made even more obvious a lie by Aldo Raine’s (her escort) attempt at speaking Italian, yet another language in which Landa is fluent. French, German, English, Italian, I’m starting to wonder if there’s any language he doesn’t speak. Landa later confronts her about her lie, reveals that he knew of her presence at the basement meeting, and strangles her to death.

He then abducts Raine and Utivich, but not Ulmer or Donowitz, and reveals that he has figured out the Basterds plan. He then agrees to allow the ‘four major Nazi leaders’ to be assassinated, thus ending the war, in exchange for a deal with the United States government. (Four. Again, where is Himmler?). Shosanna and Zoller murder each other, but not before Shosanna can set her plan in motion, to be completed by Marcel. As the (locked) theatre begins to burn, Donowitz and Ulmer open fire on the theatre with several machine guns. Donowitz liquefies Hitler with one. The explosives planted by the Basterd, and, oddly enough, Landa, begin to go off, and the movie cuts to a shot of the theatre exploding. We, the viewers, do not know whether or not Marcel escaped. (One unfortunate bit of trivia- all of the fire was real, and quickly went out of control. The fire was so hot it burned through the thick metal cables holding up the large swastika prop, which was not intended to fall, and caused the platform of the opera box to collapse mere seconds after Eli Roth and Omar Doom exited it.)

The movie end with Raine and Utivich carving a swastika into Landa’s head, deeper than any of the previous carvings were shown to be, immediately after they shoot the radio operator that Landa made part of the deal to save.

Earlier, I described this movie as having moral ambiguity, and here I will explain this further. While some characters are unambiguously good, like Hicox, or completely evil, like Landa, and the higher-ranking Nazis, other characters, such as Shosanna, or the Basterds themselves, fall less clearly on one side of the moral spectrum.

Shosanna Dreyfus, arguably the protagonist of the movie, commits several crimes during her quest to kill Hans Landa, including arson, manslaughter, and mass-murder. Her actions also leave us with the question of whether it is ever really morally justifiable to kill someone, no matter what crimes they’ve committed (just for the record, I say yes, she was perfectly justified in killing the Nazis). She also is perfectly willing to kill young children, (if Nazi Children) as evidenced by a split-second zoom-out shot of the cinema in which we see a small group of girls from the Hitler Youth, and other not-innocent-but-not-exactly-guilty people, such as the waitresses hired by the German officers for the premier, and the wives of various officers.

The Basterds, while immensely entertaining, mow down a sequence of Nazis with no regard for whether or not the soldier in question willingly participated in the war. Some would say the Nazis had it coming, regardless of their willingness, or lack-thereof, while others would disagree. The movie depicts one of the Nazis killed by the Basterds, Sgt. Wilhelm (a low-ranking soldier celebrating his son’s birthday), fairly sympathetically, as if we were meant to question the actions of the Basterds. Also, most of their actions, if not all, would constitute war crimes. However, it’s not too hard to root for them, seeing as their targets are Nazis.

The aforementioned Sgt. Wilhelm, at least on screen, does not appear to be particularly invested in the goals of the Nazi party, seemingly more interested in cards, alcohol, and movies, and his wife and newborn son. He even voluntarily surrenders to the Basterds (and there’s an apt name, that), before being shot for his troubles.

Marcel is willing to kill all of the theatre-goers, albeit most of whom are Nazis, at Shosanna’s request. He and Shosanna also hold a civilian at gunpoint during the preparation of their plan. Despite this, Marcel is most definitely one of the heroes, not a villain, seeing as he is essential to ending the war, and therefore saving countless lives.

And Stiglitz. Stiglitz single-handedly murder (brutally) thirteen other German soldiers, in one day. While this is admirable, it… Y’know, I can’t really find fault with someone killing Nazis. As much as I’d like to say something about ‘murder being wrong’ or something, well, that’s not going to happen here.

As you can see, there’s a lot of moral ambiguity in the film. Even Landa turns on the Nazis at the end, if only for personal gain.

All in all, the movie is a very entertaining, though not particularly historically accurate, film, and I highly recommend this movie to anyone looking to fill three hours with a good show. (For anyone looking for historical accuracy, I recommend to you Downfall. or Munich.)

Gute nacht,
-AnJ