Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds - a review from Cannes
June 13th 2009 06:11
A film by Quentin Tarantino
Cannes 2009 – apparently more quiet than more most years, but getting an invitation to Inglorious Basterds was as difficult to snatch up as any of the other hotly anticipated films to ever play in the Lumier Theatre. ‘Basterds’ and The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus were two of the biggest films on people’s lips this year at the festival.
Having seen Inglorious Basterds twice at Cannes now, it gave me an opportunity to cement my opinion after a first screening left me unsure – one thing is for certain, this film is destined to divide audiences, even more than Tarantino’s Grindhouse contribution - Deathproof.
The director and his leads at the premier
In it’s build up, Inglorious Basterds, had been hyped as a Dirty Dozen type exploitation film, where 8 Jewish soldiers called, ‘The Basterds’ and their Lieutenant Aldo ‘The Apache’ Rayne, played by Brad Pitt, are sent into Nazi occupied France during the second world war to each do the scalping of 100 Nazi soldiers. However in the actual film, very little time is spent on this actual mission. What we see instead for the most part of the film is planning, scheming and hell of a lot of talking.
If you’re expecting a Robert Aldrich type army film ala The Dirty Dozen – then don’t – you have been warned, no Lee Marvin’s to be found in this one, in fact, aside from a glorious scalping or two and a very brief under the table, testicle based-Mexican stand off, there is a very small amount of action. I’m not saying that as a bad thing, just as a note to some fans of war films, who may have a pre-conceived idea of what kind of film they’re about to see.
Inglorious Basterds seems to be more in the tradition of European films which came out of the 50’s and 60’s. Most of the dialogue is in French or German, with a small amount in English, which is greatly appreciated after sitting through the filmed abortion called ‘Valkrie’ where apparently all the Nazi’s talked in English with British accents. At the same time this is no Visconti film. Having had a brief peek at the script before I saw it at Cannes, I salivated over some bloody well written scenes, many of these had been taken out of the edit, leaving the characters feeling thinly drawn. Even at an overblown length of 2 hours and 40 minutes, the current edit of Inglorious Basterds felt truncated. I longed to know more about some of these character who were seriously lacking in screen time and instead what replaced them were dull, overly long diatribes which seemed to be down right pointless at the worst of times.
No cameras inside the main theatre please
What I suspect however and what makes this review difficult to do is that I’m quite sure what the Cannes audience were seeing was meant to be a rough cut of the film. If you had been keeping track of the films history, you’ll know that there was a very small amount of self imposed editing time that was put on Inglorious Basterds so it could screen at Cannes in 2009. I’m hoping that in the remaining two and a half months left of editing before the film opens theatrically, he irons out the serious kinks in the films editing.
Having said this, Inglorious Basterds looks absolutely incredible playing in all it’s gloriousness and somewhere in the edit I saw the potential for a really brilliant film, the prospect of this excites me to. The prospect that our dancing friend won’t be changing any of these foreseeable flaws is also quite high as a large chunk of the audience responded favourably to it (I finally saw the dance everyone was talking about in all it’s coked out splendour on the red carpet). I hope he does work on the edit as the film in it’s current form is seriously uneven and feels like the director is trying to work out what type of film he want’s to make as he films it. I’ve enjoyed most of his films and I want so badly to like this one too.
Finally! Getting my hands on an invitation!
Finally, there are serious pacing issues. I felt like I was watching a story that had the main plot ripped out of it and all that remained was the sub-plot. Above all this though like I said, is a seriously great film lurking among the current edit. Inglorious Basterds has all the confidence of a masterpiece and only time will tell if the theatrical version plays differently.
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