Inglourious Basterds Script Chapter One Review
A Spoiler-Free Look at the Opening Scenes
A leaked version of Tarantino's final draft of "Inglourious Basterds" has not surprisingly hit the web well in advance of the film's release. And a read-through of the draft meets every expectation. Despite the shift away from his usual genres the script is unmistakably Tarantino, and one can feel certain the finished film will be so as well.
A Sense of Dread
Conventional wisdom, especially in these attention-deficit times, would suggest opening a WWII action film with a battle. Advance trailers for the film have certainly suggested a kick-ass-and-take-names battle flick. But being Tarantino, he knows he can hold his audience by his name alone, and he doesn't go for the obvious.
Rather, he opens slowly. An idyllic scene in the French countryside, and the gradual arrival of a Nazi motorcade. He takes great pains to create a pervasive sense of dread, lingering on the details of the French family's preparations as the motorcade draws ever closer. We know what's coming, and Tarantino knows we know it, and capitalizes fully on that tension.
What Tarantino Does Best
What follows is quintessential Tarantino. A protracted one-on-one dialogue scene that simmers with tension and a gradually escalating menace. You'll recognize it as the kin of the Sam Jackson/Tim Roth coffee shop scene in "Pulp Fiction", and even more the Christopher Walken/Dennis Hopper scene in the Tarantino-penned, Tony Scott-directed "True Romance". It's twelve solid pages long, the kind of length that would get any novice writer's script tossed on the trash heap, and yet it's completely gripping.
At one point during the conversation, Tarantino describes a pan away from the two characters to reveal a detail elsewhere in the room, no doubt a nod to Hitchcock's "bomb under the table" theory ("A bomb under the table goes off, that's a surprise. We know the bomb is under the table but not when it will go off, that's suspense.") But the scene is so replete with tension even before that reveal that it seems unnecessary and perhaps even gives too much away. There's always a chance Tarantino the director will overrule Tarantino the writer and cut the shot in post production.
A Spaghetti Western in WWII
Tarantino has described "Inglourious Basterds" as a "spaghetti western with WWII iconography". And indeed its opening scene is like a conversational version of the classic "The Good The Bad and the Ugly" standoff: longer than you'd ever expect, yet boiling over with intensity.
"Inglourious Basterds" opens at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and then in wide release in August.
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