Thoughts on 'Inglourious Basterds'

 


Hi folks! Recently, I got to watch one of Tarantino's remarkable entries into his filmography, 'Inglourious Basterds'. I've heard quite a lot of rave reviews about the film from cinephiles, most of them being Tarantino fans. The film's one-liner itself hooked me to the film and incited interest in me to go check the movie out. The plot of the movie is this: 

Lt. Aldo Raine, a black ops soldier along with his crew of Jewish-American soldiers sets out to kill Nazi soldiers and finally Hitler himself. On the other hand, a Jewish theatre owner, too, has plans to massacre Nazi Germans while they are attending the premiere of a German propaganda film. What happens next and did their plan work out or not forms the crux of the film. 

Spoiler Alert!

Now frankly speaking, I was a little disappointed with the film. It is a historical fiction, and what intrigues with historical fiction is, you cannot alter history, but still, manage to weave a fictitious tale without taking too much of historical liberties. Eg. Kamal Hassan's 'Hey Ram' was based on the attempt on Gandhi's life and the political and philosophical issues surrounding it. In that film, history was not tampered with and yet, we got a masterpiece of cinema.

But with Inglourious Basterds, history in itself is altered at the end, which was not a suitable finish for such an intriguing storyline I think. First of all when I got to listen to such a line, what were the things that went on in my mind? I know how the war came to an end and how Hitler died, and so I was pretty much excited on how this story was going to turn up without altering the history. But here, that very factor got shunned off. Secondly, at the end, everything ended too conveniently. There were two groups of people focused on killing Hitler, with each completely oblivious to the other party's activities. So, even if one attempt is foiled, another attempt is open. So I was mainly excited on seeing how the end was crafted and felt very much disappointed. Also, for such a line, there was much scope for a lot of tensions, but there were not much tensed scenes there.


The one thing that satisfied me in the movie was the characterisation of the villain, Colonel Hans Landa. He is not only a terrific villain, but one of the most intelligent one which I had been craving to witness for the last few months, as I feel that villainism has lost its scope in cinema itself entirely, from my experiences with Hollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood and Tollywood recently. Anyway, its my opinion and no matter what, Inglorious Basterds would remain one of the significant films in Tarantino's career I guess.

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