The New Classics: Inglourious Basterds
Tuesday, August 20, 2019 at 12:20PM Michael Cusumano here to take a break from batting around Once Upon a Time In... Hollywood to look back a decade.
Scene - Chapter 2: Inglourious Basterds
The Inglourious Basterds marketing team knew what aspects of the film to emphasize ten years ago.
“A basterd's work is never done” boasted the tag line next to the image of a triumphant Brad Pitt brandishing a machine gun atop a pile of dead Nazis. “An inglourious, uproarious thrill-ride of vengeance!” promised another line. The centerpiece of the trailer was Pitt’s Aldo the Apache jutting his chin into a tight close to declare “I want my scalps!”. The promise was clear. The director of Kill Bill is trading samurai swords for hand grenades.
Rewatching it now, ten years later, I can still feel the chasm between the film that was sold and the film that was delivered. Basterds is a sprawling, oddly-shaped, thesis paper of a movie. And while there is no shortage of violence, it takes a back seat to dialogue, mostly arriving in quick bursts to punctuate long scenes of conversation. At times, Basterds could be mistaken for an adaptation of a stage play, and a foreign language one to boot.
“Uproarious” though. The tag was telling the truth about that...