Retrospective: Inglourious Basterds (Patreon)

Nazi Sergeant Werner Rachtman is introduced like a movie badass: in slow motion, set to tragically epic Ennio Morricone-lite music, ultimately doomed — every inch the American action hero. When the Bear Jew emerges from his tunnel to beat him to death with a baseball bat, the most American of weapons, Rachtman is framed like a hero facing death. The second Eli Roth's bat makes contact with Rachtman's skull, the fanfare stops. There's no music anymore — just a Nazi getting beaten to death with a bat. Presenting him as a hero has turned out to be a fatuous lie — the Nazis were as sentimental about their heroes as Americans were, and just as proud of their crimes.

Inglourious Basterds is as much of an over-stylized bricolage as Tarantino's other movies, but the atmosphere is markedly different here than in Death Proof or Django Unchained. His sense of homage is politically pointed — he presents film as a weapon utilized by Germans and Americans alike (and to a less effective extent, by the Brits). World War II in Tarantino's world is as much a war of perception as of bloodshed. The Nazis study America, replicating its reservations and propaganda. Both sides are perfectly happy to rewrite history when it suits their needs. The revisionist ending isn't a happy ending to the war — it simply creates a new set of problems. Fortunately, there's no problem that can't be solved by shooting Hitler to pieces or carving a swastika into Hans Landa's forehead. The most successful propaganda in the film is the one nobody survives — Shoshanna's "voice of Jewish vengeance" film, which she plays for the Nazi High Command before she immolates them in an act of spectacular contrapasso. Yet the Basterds never know of her. History doesn't remember her. She is forgotten — a hero remembered by no one.