Although it’s as enamored of Nazi paraphernalia as Valkyrie
(or Triumph of the Will), Inglourious Basterds has
nothing new to say about World War II. Quentin Tarantino’s latest
sprawling, self-referential opus is a trashy, muddled celebration of
payback, the movies, and the personal obsessions of its
writer-director, who may be the most fascinating and frustrating major
American filmmaker working today.

Inglourious Basterds‘ first “chapter” is its best,
highlighting Tarantino’s unparalleled gift for building tension with
blocks of seemingly harmless chat. He’s fascinated by the sly, almost
flirty banter that precedes violent action, and he loves to slowly
raise the threat level as one character intimidates another through
off-the-wall pseudo-intellectual disquisitions. Inglourious
Basterds’ hypnotic opening sequence exemplifies this technique, as
Nazi colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) interrogates a French farmer
accused of hiding Jews. Landa’s polylinguistic adroitness is an
unlikely yet important power tool, but his silences, pauses, and even
his particular little personal items — dip pen, Meerschaum pipe
— all contribute to an increasing sense of doom that’s inevitably
fulfilled.

Near the end of this scene, though, Tarantino’s nods to and flashy
borrowings from other movies start to creep in; the famous open doorway
shot from The Searchers is reprised for a grimly ironic affect.
But over the course of 153 strangely slack and diffuse minutes, those
references devour the film, and pop-culture knowingness eventually
triumphs over any emotional response. Ennio Morricone music springs up
at every turn to underscore the numerous “beeg-eyed” Sergio Leone
close-ups and Dirty Dozen posturing, a clever bit of verbal
slapstick is staged and shot in medium long shot like a 1930s screwball
comedy, and a baseball-bat wielding sadist is played by Eli Roth, the
dungeon master behind both Hostel films. Brad Pitt, dressed in a
white Casablanca tuxedo jacket, is jumped in a movie house,
while a femme fatale plots a form of revenge in a projectionist’s booth
that Pitt’s Fight Club alter ego Tyler Durden would applaud. The
horrifying climax is less an inversion of the Holocaust than an
inversion of Joe Dante’s Cold War movie-house comedy Matinee.
Familiarity with history (“Is that Winston Churchill?”) is instantly
trumped by familiarity with celebrity (“Is that Mike Myers?”). And so
it goes.

After a while, it feels like Tarantino’s not-so-hidden obsession in
Inglourious Basterds is the burden of his own movies, which is
appropriate for a film whose characters constantly worry about whether
their menacing nicknames are justified. Still, it’s disheartening to
see such a gifted, subtle, energetic storyteller indulge in his fourth
consecutive blustery revenge fantasy. The noxious racial and ethnic
theorizing (True Romance, which he only wrote, but still),
ominous displays of cordiality that conceal murderous intentions
(Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Death-Proof), preposterous Mexican
standoffs (Reservoir Dogs), and luxurious foot-fetish camerawork
(Kill Bill Vols. I and II) are all present and accounted
for as well. For me, catching the references and spotting the familiar
elements were sometimes all that enlivened the dull proceedings. What
could have turned on the viewer who doesn’t carry around a head
full of names, faces, places, and references?