MVedR

Oct 01, 2022

Why Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece

A young woman’s face appears on a movie screen, gigantic in close-up and starkly black and white, interrupting a Nazi propaganda movie. In a Paris theatre, where Hitler and other Nazi officials are attending the German film’s premiere, the haunting screen image of Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) tells them, “You are all going to die.” She has set a fire that will kill them, unaware that her plot overlaps with a US-and-British military operation to blow up the theatre. The entire exhilarating sequence ­– from the film within the film, to Shosanna’s fire, the soldiers’ bloody shootout, and the wish-fulfillment of Hitler’s death – unites the strands of Quentin Tarantino’s underrated masterpiece, Inglourious Basterds, released 10 years ago this month.

Right now critics and audiences are focused on Tarantino’s latest film,Once Upon A Time In Hollywood . With its colourful evocation of 1960s show business, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt gleefully playing a fading actor and his stunt double, and a revised version of the Manson murders, the new film is hugely entertaining and clever, if a bit over-long and indulgent.