Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

To prepare us for creating our own film openings, we watched several in class. A lot of them were Quentin Tarantino films, and Inglourious Basterds, in particular, grabbed me; I went home and watched it that evening.

Tarantino films are always very violent, and incredibly graphic, yet I always force myself to watch them. In Inglourious Basterds, there are several occasions where I would usually look away, but for some reason the film is so engaging it seems impossible; Nazis are scalped, guards have their throats slit, and a swastika is carved into someone’s forehead. This shot was particularly powerful, and just thinking about it makes me feel funny… Blood makes my knees go weak and makes me shiver, but I still love Tarantino films (or at least, the three I’ve seen).

I couldn’t guess the plot either, which is great. I kept getting excited and going ‘Oooh, that’s clever!’ until someone told me to be quiet. The control in the film seems to swap; at times the Nazis seem totally in charge, then suddenly Shosanna/Emmanuelle seems to have everything under control, then the Basterds seem to be in control. This in itself kept me interested – by the end of the film, the plot could have gone in favour of any of these groups… I’m just glad it wasn’t the Nazis.

The acting was brilliant; Brad Pitt is the only one I really recognised, but Christoph Waltz, in particular, was outstanding – he’s kind of evil and creepy and yet strangely likeable, which is even more scary, in a way. I felt a real connection with the characters too, which I don’t often get in films. Shosanna (or Emmanuelle) was wonderfully feisty and brave, and I’m glad the plot played out the way it did (I’m sad that she died though. She was great).
Tarantino often reuses actors in his films, which is usually irritating, but they’re normally so well cast, I stop noticing it after five or ten minutes.

Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981)

Since it’s nearly Christmas (eight days, just saying), school has become a very, very tiny bit more relaxed – as in, we got to watch a film in German, rather than the usual lessons spent learning the difference between regular and irregular imperfect and perfect tenses. This is undoubtedly a welcome change, but when my German teacher said it was ‘the best war film ever made’, I was expecting something better than this.

Having said that, when I looked it up to find out the director’s name, I was shocked that it was made in 1981. Perhaps, in 1981, it probably was one of the best war films ever made. However, I think that the past thirty two years have produced quite a few brilliant war films, and Das Boot didn’t really do it for me. Usually, I like foreign films, but war films aren’t the kind of films I’d choose to watch, given the option.

One of my pet hates is a film which is what I’d call a ‘dark film’. By this, I mean a film which is hard to follow because of the shadows and lack of light. Sadly, this is one of those films. It doesn’t help that I have to focus on the subtitles at the bottom of the screen too, as this makes it difficult to really follow what’s happening. Combine all this with my lack of knowledge about submarines and seafaring terminology, and it all adds up to, in my opinion, a very boring (and confusing) film.

Many people seem to disagree, however, as it grossed the equivalent of $205 million, and is one of the most expensive films in the history of German cinema… Which doesn’t say much for the reputation of German cinema, in my opinion. Maybe I’m being too harsh about it, but I actually think I’d almost prefer the irregular imperfect tense.