INGLOURIUS BASTERDS

...the ending was a big letdown. Now, I know that the story isn't meant to be plausible, so criticizing it for a lack of plausibility is silly. However, one of the themes of the film is the building of dramatic tension, and I feel that there is little payoff for any the tension because the ending is an anticlimax.

PULP FICTION *is* dated, but at least the diverse subplots intersect. I was frustrated that Shoshana's plot thread failed to intersect *at all* with the Operation Kino plot thread, even though both concluded, by coincidence more than anything else, at the movie theater. Shoshana never learned about Operation Kino, and the Basterds never learned about Shoshana's resistance effort (except for Eli Roth and that other guy, but they just seemed to take it in stride).

If the Basterds had never gained entrance to the theater, Shoshana would still have killed the entire NAZI high command. The Basterds simply didn't need to be there, except to distract Landa. That's why the film was anticlimactic to me. The Basterds didn't really succeed at anything, except disfiguring Landa at the very end. The main subplot was actually a two-act story about Shoshana: ACT ONE -- family is killed by Landa; ACT TWO -- Shoshana burns the high command to death. That's it. Just another Tarantino movie about female revenge.

So, Tarantino's careful escalation of dramatic tension is admirable, but he kind of blows it at the end, because the story just isn't very well constructed. Throughout the movie, there's all this suspense about the fate of the Basterds, but ultimately, they're the ineffectual thugs that they appeared to be at the outset. Our concern for them was misplaced all along because they were useless, and their heroics were futile. Shoshana didn't need them. In fact, if they hadn't been there, she'd have assassinated Landa, too.

I get that, when we're laughing at the sight of Hitler laughing at the propaganda movie, it's supposed to be heavy irony and shit like that. Whatever. I think that INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS takes the stylized and excessive cinematic violence that is one of Tarantino's most overused stylistic tropes and turns it on the structure of his story and, figuratively, on his audience.

none of the film's ostensible heroes emerge as heroes- the bad guy effectively wins.

didn't know about Operation Kino or vice versa- both were fairly absurd schemes to begin with that were doomed to some degree of failure.

involvement that made both work, and he's the one that really emerged as the winner,

the wronged Jewish woman winds up wreaking infinitely more havoc in the larger scale of things than

It means something to me that WWII, the Nazis, and Hitler all ended more as a result of a personal vendetta than national politics or military action.

...and then it's all wasted, because nothing the Basterds did really mattered in the end. There's no catharsis at the end of all the tension. Tarantino just lets it all deflate, as though he lost interest in his own story.

...Landa was involved with Shoshana's plot to burn down the movie house. He didn't know about it, and he wasn't there. He provoked it by killing Shoshana's family in the first act, but I don't see him as a linchpin that holds together the fifth act. He doesn't know about Shoshana or the fire, and he doesn't react to it in any way. The film would have been way better if he knew what Shoshana was planning and did nothing to prevent it. Then the bargain that he struck with Aldo would have been a deliberate fraud. That way, Shoshana's subplot would at least have had *some* implication to Aldo's. It would have made Landa even *more* evil.

...stereotypically nebbishy Jewish guys, except for Hugo Stiglitz and a couple of others who die before the last act begins anyway. I guess I'm saying that I don't understand their purpose in the movie at all. They don't ultimately do anything, and even Tarantino forgets to tell us what happened to several of them at the end of the film. By my count, four of the original eight Basterds are unaccounted for when the credits roll; they didn't die in the shootout in the basement, they didn't die in the movie house, and they weren't present when Aldo delivers Landa to the Allies. Where did they go?

1. the scene with Hitler in front of the huge stylized map of Europe
2. the fact that Hitler looked like something from a Mel Brooks movie, rather than Bruno Ganz
3. the projection of Shoshana's face on the smoke was cool
4. Hugo Stiglitz *was* pretty kickass
5. Landa, of course
6. the idea of using celluloid film to accelerate the fire
7. the way that Landa figures out about Operation Kino