The Academy Awards are upon us. I've only seen a few of the films (like the ones that are available On Demand), but I have some strong feelings about the films I have seen. I loved The Hurt Locker. My boys' father is a Vietnam combat veteran who admits to bringing home an adrenaline addiction, so I particularly loved its ending; and I was already a fan of Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner and am still sad about the cancellation of The Unusuals. The Hurt Locker is getting a lot of buzz for Best Picture; and, while there have been a couple of controversies during the closing days of Academy voting, a big deal is being made about the fact that its director, Kathryn Bigelow, is going head to head with her ex-husband and former collaborator, James Cameron, and his blockbuster, Avatar. But I will be cheering for another film when the final award gets handed out (okay, I'll be cheering if I'm still awake).
Spoiler Warning. Plot reveals below.
I didn't love Inglourious Basterds, nominated for eight Academy Awards, until the second time I saw it. At first I was displeased, even indignant, with Quentin Tarantino's arrogance, his disregard for history, his blatant and obvious self-conscious pleasure, almost glee, so visible in his filmmaking, as if he was somehow giving the whole world the finger, showing off without regard to historical facts, because he can. I came away irritated with him, woke up the next morning wondering, "Just who the hell does he think he is?" But the second time I saw it, I stopped fighting it, accepted it for all its serious silliness and intricate layers, embracing it and holding on for the ride. I've been teased about having watched it so many times, but I've yet to watch it without noticing something new.
It was brilliant, joyful storytelling by exuberant craftsmanship, beautifully written and perfectly acted. Christoph Waltz's menacingly erudite SS Colonel Hans Landa is one of the finest and most interesting character creations ever seen, anywhere. The world will be stunned if he doesn't win Best Supporting Actor, and I'm sure film students will dissect this complex character for years to come. Antagonist to Brad Pitt's protagonist, Lieutenant Aldo Raine, Landa is exact refinement, all elegant formality covering hypocritical evil versus Raine's casual vernacular, distinctly American, Southern just short of caricature, but grounded in insistent consistency between the facade and what's inside, integrity even to the point of brutality, admitting to the SS Colonel, "I'm a slave to appearances," having clarified elsewhere, earlier, "We like our Nazis in uniforms, that way we can spot 'em... so I'm gonna give you a little something you can't take off." Landa is revealed in his reactions to the nickname he's been given during his tour of duty in France, The Jew Hunter, first defending it with feigned pride when discussing it with Monsieur LaPadite in the opening scene, then reacting with honest disgust at it when sharing the matter with Raine, a perceived equal instead of a potential victim, at the end of the film. I could go on and on. The entire cast shone, a pitch perfect ensemble, amidst a script and soundtrack rollicking as one. They all appeared to be having the time of their lives. Every little thing was wonderful, every performance, every line, every haunting intersection of story and score (excellent post about the soundtrack here).
Set in occupied France during World War II, it's ostensibly about war, but it's a film about honesty versus artifice and a film about film, the artists and media as weapons, figuratively and literally, incendiary. It is filled with Tarantino's characteristic references to the work of previous artists, fine and not so fine (can you say The A Team ?). I've watched the climactic Chapter 5, Revenge of the Giant Face, over and over (and over and over) again and highly recommend watching it one time just to focus on his use of the color red, itself a tip of the hat to filmmakers who came before.
One of the most elegant things about Inglourious Basterds is the weighty meaning put into commonplace utterances, the enormity of the strained "yes" answers of LaPadite and "Emmanuel" under Nazi interrogations set at disparate dining tables, the palpable terror expressed in a desperately understated, "Oui." From Hans Landa's threatening, victorious call, "Au revoir, Shoshanna," to Marcel's triumphant, adoring, "Oui, Shoshanna," rarely have such ordinary words seemed so powerful; but my favorite quote from Inglourious Basterds, the one I find myself saying out loud, finding it's meaning applicable more times than I'd like to admit, is delivered at the movie's end by Pitt's Raine, who, when threatened with serious consequences of his misdeeds, perhaps speaks for the filmmaker when he dismisses all worry with, "I'll get chewed out; I been chewed out before."
I hope it wins Best Picture.
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