Pulp fictionalising World War II

Quentin Tarantino injects doses of pulp fiction while rewriting World War II in his Inglourious Basterds, which opened at Cannes — but this film is not a patch on his Pulp Fiction. Entertaining it is, but too long at nearly three hours. The comic violence and loaded one-liners are missing. This is Tarantino’s comicbook revenge fantasy where the Yankees swagger in with their chewing gums and smokin’ guns — and not only shoot the Nazis dead like dogs, but machine gun Adolf Hitler to death as well. Actually, Hitler shot himself dead in a bunker, but that’s too banal for Tarantino.

Brad Pitt plays Lt Aldo Raine, who heads the Inglourious Basterds, a bunch of Jewish American soldiers whose mission is to literally scalp Nazis in Occupied France. The climax has the Basterds, Allies and a Jewish woman blow up a Paris cinema screening attended by Hitler, Goebbels and Goering—which Tarantino described as, “the power of cinema in bringing down the Third Reich!” Christoph Waltz playing Nazi Col Hans Landa coolly steals Pitt’s thunder.

Likewise, with Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz. His masterly touches are all in place-but where is the manic fun, the razor-edged insights, the provocativeness? Penelope Cruz becomes a minister’s mistress to fund her dad’s cancer treatment (ekdum Bollywood!)-but she is also an actress having an affair with the director of a film produced by the minister. They elope: a car crash leaves her dead and the director blind. The minister releases the film in a rush; but later, the director’s betrayed wife produces the original film reels for the director to re-edit, even though he is blind-Almodovar reaches treacly troughs of Bollywoodian pativrata pap.

(Meenakshi Shedde is key Indian cinema advisor to the Cannes Film Festival and was on the FIPRESCI  International Critics’ Jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2001)