‘Basterds’ ending self-destructs
I can still remember the morning that I first saw “Pulp Fiction.” It was at the old Magic Lantern and it must have been 8 a.m. or so. Even at that hour, I knew that I had seen something special, a film that played with form and character and that challenged the very assumptions I have about cinema.
At the same time, it was clear that the writer-director, Quentin Tarantino, loved movies. Not only that, he understood what he loved about them and worked hard to pass that love on to his viewers.
Much of that same kind of love exists in Tarantino’s new film “Inglourious Basterds,” the misspelling of which we’ll charitably credit to intention. Problem is, in the case of “Basterds,” as with pretty much everything else Tarantino has done since 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” love simply isn’t enough.
“Basterds” is told in five chapters. The first four set up the fifth, which takes us to an imaginary meeting of the high Nazi command during the final summer of World War II’s European campaign. And those first four are powerfully drawn, beginning with the strains of “The Green Leaves of Summer” and a deceptively bucolic French farm and ending with — at least for me — David Bowie’s song “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” and a Parisian movie house.
Truth is, though, I don’t recall exactly what chapter the Bowie song appears in. It may have been four or at the beginning of five. All I know is that it appears somewhere near the film’s overall end, and it represents that last moment that I liked what I was watching. In fact, up to that moment I thought Tarantino was going to succeed making “Inglourious Basterds” into the kind of audacious success that “Pulp Fiction” was.
But … no. After taking us through the elegantly presented first chapter, the brutally lampoonish second chapter (which regards the recruiting of the roving death squad headed by Brad Pitt, made popular in the trailers) and the other two set-up chapters, Tarantino turns his film into a mere revenge fantasy.
Or make that Revenge Fantasy because the vengeance is as overblown and drawn out as is the wish-fulfillment aspect of the story itself. Note to kids studying WWII history: Hitler died in Berlin, not Paris.
Of course, Tarantino isn’t interested in the facts of history. And I don’t criticize him for this. He uses anything and everything to create a world that draws us in, and he certainly had me with him because of his abilities to tell a story, even as one as absurd as this, in a manner that was both entertaining and, for the most part, respectful of the work done by past masters (Sergio Leone’s influence can be seen throughout).
What I do criticize him for is not writing a better ending. I criticize him for indulging in what essentially is an “Easy Rider” ending of mass extinction. I criticize him for misogyny, which always has been there in his films but has never been made clearer than here. And I criticize him for not caring enough to carry his immense sense of imagination through to his film’s end.
Seriously, making a crappy joke be the last thing we carry away from “Inglourious Basterds,” that is the best Tarantino can give us?
I can’t remember the last time I walked out of a film this disappointed. Of course, not that many filmmakers these days have the capacity to excite me, to make me expect more.
Tarantino is one. Or, I should say, was.
* This story was originally published as a post from the blog "Movies & More." Read all stories from this blog