think Basterds is more reflective of Tarantino film, not only because there thousand references to the western, the producers of the golden decades of American cinema because the film shown at the end of silent films have more than anything else, rather it is because it is the film that best takes into account the peculiar language of cinema, where there is a theorizing about what means to tell a story in film. There is something strange, however, inglorious bastards. The side characters have no depth dramatic ally, Lieutenant Raine and his band seek, in some sense, be a kind of Wild Bunch but none of them the reason to go to a Nazi killing so brutal it makes history. Characters can die and the film will continue because there is not necessary, it is essential. The original layout plan does not matter: it fails, the band is captured or killed, but the film continues. And it can continue, again, because no matter. The only signs of the presence of the band are Raine Nazi insignia on fronts, hair tossed by the wayside, but nothing else. The strange thing is that Tarantino recreate the same atmosphere of all his films, the long scenes in which stress is placed on exactly what is not said and we all know. In this sense, it is clear that the term "psychological tension" is applicable, but in all these situations, which always seem more interesting are the Nazis. Strange but much of the film, with dramatic depth, the doubters, those with multiple facets, it's not just one thing, they have to accept negotiations are the Nazis. Thus, better known to the parent who just had a child than any of the characters in the band, artist, movie buff become a soldier and national hero, the detective cold, calculating, murderer but for inexplicable reasons (why let out Shoshana in the beginning?) to act in a sleek relet. the Nazi regime was cruel and unjust and that no one in their right mind can defend, it seems so obvious that the motives of those who must fight not matter. No need to show what they have done to his family and how they have tortured (except the single band of Raine who is German), or how the Nazis imposed a regime of terror and persecution, all that is known from the outset, we know that Nazis are bad lso. No need to tell us anything, no need to have conflicts. few years ago I saw a movie with Humphrey Bogart infinitely boring in which a U.S. submarine was chasing a German submarine for an hour and a half, the Germans speak German and no one tried to translate, and ultimately, the Nazis were so radically different that nobody could understand what they said or did. It was quite the other. Here, Tarantino seems to want to do something else, and that is generating a kind of empathy in the viewer uncomfortable. Wilhelm negotiating to leave with her newborn son and eventually end up killing, there is something inherently unfair about breaking promises. Of course, Willhelm is a Nazi soldier and we all thought that the Nazis, at least, were bad. "One must empathize with Wilhelm? "One should feel bad if you empathize with Wilhelm? Perhaps, in the same movie opening, The pride of a nation - it's hard not to think of the birth of a nation of great Griffith - is a little key. The film is a typical propaganda movie where one man fight against thousands of enemies and overcome them. Obviously, who "should" is to empathize protagonist and not with the enemy dead. Perhaps what you are talking about Tarantino is the ease with which film to create certain things in people, independiententemente of what they are.
(*) pic from here
(*) pic from here