Inglourious Basterds, a review

The Inglourious Basterds are a motley group of Jewish-American soldiers, led by the pompous and somewhat insane Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), that are sent to German-occupied France to kill Nazis and throw a spanner in the Fuhrer's plans for world domination. The Inglourious Basterds end up playing an important part in the complete and utter destruction of the Third Reich.

The dialogue was, to say the least, interesting -- the kind of dialogue that one wants to listen to over and over. It was an immense pleasure to watch as the stellar cast delivered it.

One particular song stood out for me -- "Putting Out Fire" by David Bowie, from the film "Cat People". It was used in the scene where Emmanuelle/Shosanna (Melanie Laurént), beautifully decked out in red dress and lipstick, stands beautifully, with smoldering cigarette in hand, at a circular window and looks down on the mingling crowd below, as if psyching herself up for the huge task at hand. This scene, in my opinion, contains some of the best costume design and cinematography in the film. Emmanuelle's beautiful red dress and pale skin, partly illuminated by the light streaming through the window, looked absolutely divine.

The violence was unexpectedly graphic and disturbing -- a taste of Tarantino's "Controversial Cinematic Violence" -- but despite the discomfort I felt, I thought it gave the film credibility. It was World War II, one of the worst wars known to mankind, if not the worst -- it had to be gory.

It wasn't difficult to see that this film was made by a film fanatic. What with all the filmic talk sprinkled through the dialogue, the largest and final action set piece taking place in a cinema, the director taking his time to show how a film comes on several reels and how the reels end up inside the film projector, and many other things. What was shown was almost enough to serve as a primer course in film projection! Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it was more detailed than it needed to be.

I liked how the dialogue kept switching between the three romance languages -- French, German and Italian -- and English. It added a great deal of linguistic life and colour to the film, and showed the skill of the actors and actresses.

This film is definitely worth one's time. It's so visually and aurally rich, that it's in a sense, "educational".