Mansur Ahmed

In 2009 comes Inglourious Basterds (yes it’s supposed to be spelled with an ‘ou’ and an ‘e’), the newest film from Quentin Tarantino. It has come to be that whenever Tarantino releases a film, it is an event of sorts. Our last foray into his universe was the 2007 release of Death Proof, the second half of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino homage to the heyday of self-proclaimed sleaze cinema. Tarantino appears to be obsessed with the nostalgic resonance of exploitation films, from scratched film stock to crackling cheap sound, but his ideas and most certainly his filmmaking sensibilities are uniquely ingenious and transcend the quality of the 70s genre. The elements from them most heavily imbued into Tarantino’s work is the hard edged grittiness and fast paced vitality of that kind of moviemaking. Combined with his own trademarks of quirky storytelling, unique characters, and profanely articulate dialogue, witnessing Tarantino’s tapestry gives the viewer a rhapsodic connection to the material that wholly accentuates his love for movies and creating them to the point that the explosive visuals and soundtrack give us an almost synesthetic sense of being able to smell the celluloid. Now I won’t tell you how, but I managed to come across a copy of his screenplay for Inglourious Basterds and I am ecstatic to say it will be nothing but sheer titillation for fans of Spaghetti Westerns, French New Wave cinema, Bunch-Of-Guys-On-A-Mission movies, Historical War films, and of course, a category all unto himself, Quentin Tarantino.

A lot of research went into this project and it contains so many threads that it feels like a work adapted from literature, which it may well be as Tarantino’s original draft was reportedly over 200 pages. Like all of his films, I would be able to describe the basic narrative in one or two sentences, but they won’t even begin to give you an idea about what’s in store. So I’m not even going to bother telling you anything about Basterds because it would only ruin its surprises. I’m still at quarrel with myself for spoiling the experience of first seeing the movie by reading the script. In my defense, it was a damn good read. It’s one of those stories where you get midway through it and the comprehension that there is a conclusion waiting to be unraveled suddenly jolts you with a kind of pure anticipation. There’s no other feeling like it.

Like all of Tarantino’s films, it’s wholly about the process. One of his greatest weapons is words. It’s as if he constructs full blown action scenes with dialogue. Few writers standout for their ability to create engrossing repartee between characters. Elmore Leonard is a genius at doing this in his prose, but it’s a lot more difficult to accomplish in movies.  Two writers are at the top of the list: Tarantino and David Mamet. While David Mamet has a brilliant style of his own, the dialogue he writes has a kind of exaggerated quality. Nobody talks like that in real life. If they do they belong in a mental hospital because Mamet-speak in real life is almost like breaking out in song and dance in real life. If I came across such a person, I would undoubtedly be impressed with their fanciful sentences and poetic grandeur, but I would probably give them a raised eyebrow and slowly try to escape their presence. What Tarantino does is completely different. His characters are wordy and poetic, and profane, but more than that, their observations and straightforward way of stating them seems to speak to the essentials of the human condition. Tarantino has a gift of getting to that without being pretentious or even giving off a hint of where a conversation might be going.

When Inglourious Basterdsis released, I imagine many people will regard it as the epitome of Tarantino’s work. I agree with that sentiment. I’ve only just read the screenplay, so I can’t even imagine what he has up his sleeve as far as the actual filmmaking is concerned. Apart from dialogue, Tarantino is also in his own element in regards to music, editing, lighting, and cinematography. This time, his sociological commentaries have a broader canvas with the backdrop of the Second World War, and there is plenty of room for powerful and graphic imagery on top of the dialogue to emphasize his statements. I wonder if Tarantino ever gets bored engaging in conversation with ordinary people. Speaking back to them, he must unnerve a few by idiosyncratically, yet insightfully, touching particular notes. Of all the drab qualities to possess, being unable to tell another human being what you really feel is the drabbest. It’s very difficult to find people in the world who are reciprocating of it, who have the courage to be vulnerable instead of safe all the time. Whenever Tarantino gets infuriated by this, he probably resorts to creating the people he needs to talk to. Meeting his characters, who are everything from illiterate hillbillies to intelligent super-assassins, we are often reminded how inarticulate we really are.