Rewriting history

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'Once upon a time . . . in Nazi-occupied France'. So begins Quentin Tarantino's tale in five chapters of an alternative Second World War. It has characters we don't find in real history, including the Basterds – a team of Jewish soldiers recruited to go far behind German lines and kill as many Nazis as possible. Their leader, Lt. Aldo Reine (Brad Pitt), charges his men to fulfil their debt to him: 100 Nazi scalps. The men collect their scalps with relish, striking fear into the Nazi authorities, even Hitler (Martin Wuttke) himself. As their rampage continues, their story edges closer to converging with that of Shosanna Drefus (Mélanie Laurent), a Parisian cinema owner. In 1941 she had escaped while the rest of her family were executed as Jewish fugitives by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), and is now plotting her revenge.

Inglourious Basterds is two things: entertainment and an experiment. It's certainly not a Second World War film in any style we're familiar with, and is in this sense an original. But on closer inspection, many of the film's details are borrowed from others. We see the influence of Wild West films in the music Tarantino has chosen, and the font used in the titles. The film pays homage to Enzo Castellari's 1978 film, Inglorious Bastards, about another renegade group of convicts charged with risky missions in Nazi Germany, though the similarities between the plots go no further. These tributes are one part of the experiment; another is the language. Only a third of the dialogue is in English (one chapter has none at all), the rest being a mixture of German, French and some Italian. Tarantino is weaving his tale with as much pseudo-authenticity as possible, and with some boldness. A number of famous figures from the period pop up, including Hitler, Winston Churchill (Ray Taylor) and Josef Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), making these characters part of Tarantino's re-defined world of the 1940s. In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino boldly embarks on an exercise in re-writing history, asking how different things could have been, had his characters existed.[1]

Tarantino is reported to have spent eight years preparing the script for Inglourious Basterds. His films have typically split audiences, with hallmark violence and involved dialogue that some find distasteful and others fascinating. They have centred on the theme of revenge before, most clearly in Kill Bill (2003/2004), in which a bride is ensnared by her quest to exact vengeance on those she believes killed her daughter. Inglourious Basterds has already had some success at film awards, winning one BAFTA (Chrisoph Waltz, Best Supporting Actor), and being nominated for three more (including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay).[2] Christoph Waltz has also received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his captivating performance as Hans Landa.[3] The film was nominated for seven Oscars in total.[4] Critics, though, have been divided. Empire's Chris Hewitt praises it as a 'dazzling movie that sees QT back on exhilarating form'.[5] Others tell a tale of earlier brilliance not matched. Peter Bradshaw writes that it ‘fails as a conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp’, and that the 'the boringness is just boring, and the violence doesn't get gasps of shock, just winces of bafflement and distaste – and boredom’.[6] For some, then, Inglourious Basterds fails to deliver on entertainment, while for others, the pace is just right. It's a bold experiment, and unusual entertainment. In other words, a film by Quentin Tarantino.

The first of the film's five chapters opens on a dairy farm, somewhere in Nazi-occupied France. It's quiet; the only sound is of the farmer, M. LaPadite, rhythmically chopping wood with an axe. But, breaking the stillness, a Nazi convoy approaches. Colonel Hans Landa invites himself into the LaPadite home, with disturbingly impeccable manners, and proceeds to question M. LaPadite about the whereabouts of a missing Jewish family. Landa toys with LaPadite, and us. Is he aware that LaPadite is harbouring the Jewish family? Are his manners a sign of his mercy, or of his cold and calculating commitment to duty? We discover, with horror, that it's the latter, and Landa, with disarming efficiency, has the entire family shot. All are killed, except Shosanna, who flees from the bloodbath. The cold violence of this scene is startling, and it sets Shosanna's trajectory towards the film's grand climax.

Next we meet the Basterds. Lieutenant Aldo Reine (Brad Pitt) briefs his men for their mission in a distractingly thick Tennessee accent. They have been selected as a team of Jewish American soldiers with one aim: to kill as many Nazis as possible. They will show no mercy, because of the cruelty of the Nazis. As Reine puts it: ‘Nazi ain't got no humanity’. They will be cruel so they will be known by the Germans, and be feared by them. The Basterds have a number of key weapons to use pursuing this notoriety. One even has Hitler agitated: the one the Germans call ‘The Bear Jew’, who clubs German soldiers to death with a baseball bat. The second mark of their work is engraving a swastika in the foreheads of the victims they don't kill. Both prove effective in getting the attention of the German leadership, and we're subjected to a full view of the Basterds' violent methods. We might expect that a Jewish squad assembled to mete out punishment on the Nazis has some kind of code or honour behind their actions, but it's clear they don't. One of the Nazi soldiers clubbed to death in an early scene has received a medal for bravery, and they kill him because he refuses to give away the location of his countrymen. The honour of that means nothing to the Basterds, and they gleefully watch his violent death. Reine comments that it's the closest they get to going to the movies. Another soldier, spared because he agrees to give away the location of other soldiers, is repentant, but Reine tells him that they don't like the idea that he will be able to hide his Nazi involvement later. They carve a swastika into his forehead, preventing him from ever being able to escape his past. The question Tarantino would like us to ask is, ‘Should he ever be able to?’ That point is not explored any more fully in the film.

A further opportunity for revenge comes in Operation Kino. The British high command have got wind of a special screening of Joseph Goebbels's new film, which the most important figures of the Third Reich plan to attend, including the Führer himself. The plummy Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is charged with leading the operation to blow up the cinema, with the help of the Basterds and a German contact, the actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). She informs them that the premiere location is being changed. The star persuades Goebbels to move the screening to a small Parisian cinema because he is smitten with the owner, Emmanuelle Mimieux – who is really Shosanna. She hatches a plot of her own, vowing to burn the cinema to the ground using flammable nitrate film in a great incendiary act of revenge for the murder of her family.

Events come to a head in chapter five of this tale, titled ‘Revenge of the Giant Face’. Two plots to destroy the same cinema come together so that, as an audience, we feel the futility of Landa's attempts to stop the Basterds' plot. We realise no one has suspected Shosanna, and that the outcome is now inevitable. Some critics have charged that this leaves the film without suspense, that the outcome was too clearly signalled. But perhaps Tarantino was aware of this. The tension of Inglourious Basterds is not whether or not the violence will break out, but when. Of the two plots to destroy the cinema, which one will succeed? The shock actually comes when we realise that the cinema is definitely going to be destroyed, with the audience inside. We just don't know by whom.

It has surprised some and angered others that Tarantino changes the outcome of the war. But he does this with a purpose: to give these two sets of characters, the Basterds and Shosanna, the opportunity to take revenge on the Nazis. Inglourious Basterds is not intended as a retelling of the real events of the war, but it is exploring what could have happened (perhaps what Tarantino thinks should have happened) had his characters existed. Film is Tarantino's medium of expression, and Inglourious Basterds is film changing history, both in Shosanna's plot and in the story of the film as a whole. There is an added contrast with Goebbels's use of film to influence people in propaganda.

We can see why Tarantino's tale of an alternate outcome is attractive: we want justice to be done on those who commit such appalling acts. Tarantino is inviting us to reflect on whether this act of revenge would have been justified, given the nature of the war. Is Raine right to say that they should show the Nazis no humanity, because of the murderous regime they represented? Landa’s proposal is that they end the war that night, saving the lives of the many more who might die in the remaining conflict and, in this sense, burning the cinema provides a much neater ending to the war than history produced: the four key leaders of the Nazi party killed in one evening, a year before the actual end of the war.

Yet the film also demonstrates how imperfect this justice is when the Basterds carry it out. They have no interest in mercy or repentance; and they cannot judge what really lies in the hearts of their enemies. Inglourious Basterds, uses these compromised people to deliver the justice that we all look for. But is this the best we can hope for? A justice that might well be appropriate, but not perfect? The apostle Paul writes of a different way to find justice: ‘Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, “I will take revenge; I will pay them back,” says the Lord,‘ (Romans 12:19 ). When God pays back the guilty for their wrongs, he does it righteously. If we seek real justice for wrongs done, we must look to God. He promises he will judge fairly and perfectly – even the terrible events of the Second World War. We must stand up against these kinds of wrongs, but we must also trust that true and complete justice will one day be delivered by God.

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