Top Ten Movies

There’s this final shot in Quentin Tarantino’s latest World War II flick “Inglourious Basterds” where Brad Pitt almost looks straight into the camera with an admiring expression on his face and says “…I think this is my masterpiece”. This one comment literally summarizes the past two and a half hours screen time and the director’s own observation regarding the film and apparently a huge section of film fraternity all across the globe are quite inclined to agree with him in this regard. With this film, movie buffs will be acquainted with a more thoughtful, matured and wise avatar of this renowned video brat who has already made his place in the medium’s history with films like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and the two volume epic Kill Bill among others.

Unlike his previous offerings, this film has a comparatively simpler plot and is even narrated in a linear fashion. However, the film gathers its strength from various other aspects making the idea of plot and narrative really insignificant compared to them. As Tarantino himself describes it, Inglourious Basterds is definitely a commentary on the Spaghetti Western which becomes quite evident in the opening sequence which is even titled “Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France” as a tribute to the legendary Sergio Leone. Besides using a Leone like choreographed cinematography, editing pattern accompanied by score composed by the inimitable Ennio Morricone, the viewers are introduced in this sequence to Standartenführer Hans Landa, a notorious Jew Hunter played with a delicious relish and panache by Cristoph Waltz and Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) who is a Jewish girl on the run with her family massacred by Landa. Thus the viewer’s are left with the two typical genre archetypes of the western; the lone avenger and the evil antagonist with considerable shades of grey tones.

Despite marked differences in style and approach from his earlier films, there are certain familiar Tarantino touches in the film which are equally enjoyable. Besides the quirky sense of humor injected in unlikely sequences, there is the shadow like presence of his comic strip sensibilities in sequence build up and characterizations along with sudden shifts to non fiction and documentary mode of address of both satirical and serious nature in case of the backdrop of Hugo Stiglitz and the commentary on the flammable nature of nitrate films both narrated by Samuel Jackson. An almost tactile and tangible symptom of Tarantino’s maturity becomes evident in his structuring of the film where he draws his tale not from history but from the concept of war presented in films and the notion of audience sympathizing with a party. In the penultimate sequence where ironically inside a cinema house and during a screening of a war propaganda film a large assortment of German people including a major section of Nazi political leadership are gunned down by the Basterds while the former are unarmed the notion of spectatorship of war films is questioned and thus disturbed in an unprecedented way and on a concluding note one must say that only Tarantino could pull off this thing while keeping up the usual cool and casual demeanor.

Amidst all the hype revolving around Steven Soderbergh’s Che Guevara biopic, there are precious few who were even aware about his other film “The Informant!” releasing this year. However after sitting through the 108 minutes (it seems nearer to 180!) of the slow paced adaptation of the Kurt Eichenwald book, it seems that the majority might just be right about something for the first time! According to the most of post release reports, bulk of the cine goers have apparently decided to give the flick a miss and it can be indeed stated that they are not really missing much.

On the plot level, the film revolves around the real life story of Mark Whitacre who made headlines as the most renowned whistleblower in the American corporate world being a top level executive himself. An employee of the Illinois based conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) who is in the process of steadily climbing up the ladder of success, suffers from a case of bipolar disorder and succumbing to the pressure of his wife decides to turn over to the FBI a whole assortment of evidence in form of written documents and audio and video tapes that charge his company with price fixing in the wake of stiff market competition. An apparent stressful period of three years followed where he worked for the FBI organizing surveillances and gathering evidences to build up the case against ADM, in between which Mark’s own struggle with his psychic disorder gets worse. Finally at the end of it, during the case against ADM, it suddenly gets revealed that Mark Whitacre has been involved in fraud and embezzlement worth $9 million from his own organization resulting in a prison sentence for Mark which is thrice that of his corrupt colleagues.

While Matt Damon’s performance as Mark Whitacre has been generally praised by the critics, it must be said that Damon is not seen doing anything with the character that he hasn’t done in his previous outings. In fact, one can easily detect the shadows of his previous performances in Syriana and the Bourne franchise lurking somewhere behind Damon’s portrayal of Mark. However, the real or rather the essential problem of the film lies with the script. One must admit that it’s a real weak one coming from the man who could go as intense as Lies and Videotapes, Traffic or as tongue-in-the-cheek as the Ocean’s series. “The Informant!” lacks the very fluidity of the narrative expected from a director like Soderbergh and every five or ten minutes duration, the narrative seems to fall flat owing to problems with the pacing and structuring of the film, the weak and feeble attempts at inducing a notion of black humor in certain dialogues, an unsuitable film score and finally what looked like a desperate attempt from the makers at trying their hands on a satirical comedy with a script that demanded a certain different tonality of treatment altogether. It must be said that despite the best efforts from the director to put things into perspective as logically as possible, a lot remains unanswered that gradually takes the attention away from the screen.