Inglourious Basterds - Thoughts on a Second Viewing

The other movie we saw last night was Quentin Tarentino's Inglourious Basterds for the second time.  One of the things about a Tarentino film is that you inevitably miss something the first time around.  Either that, or the structure of the film is such that something at the beginning really makes sense once you've seen the rest of the movie, but you've forgotten about it.  So, we decided to see it again.  What's 2.5 hours between friends?  Thankfully, it didn't drag even the second time around.


One thing you can do when you've already seen a movie once is glory in watching some of the acting and character work, when you're not actively trying to follow the story as much (or at least not as much as you are when you don't know the story ahead of time).  In a second viewing, Christoph Waltz's performance as SS Colonel Hans Landa is even better.  You catch a lot of the little character nuances that you miss the first time around.  The opening scene, where Landa is talking to the French farmer about the Jews hidden in his crawlspace is even more chilling when you know exactly what is going on.  The scene lasts about 20 minutes and it's all dialogue around a table, but yet it's fascinating watching Landa slowly draw the farmer in to his web.

Brad Pitt is even funnier the second time around too.  His exaggerated Tennessee accent is hilarious; when he first speaks Italian at the movie premiere, we all about died.  The first time you see the film, it's startling and you burst out laughing because of that.  The second time, you know it's coming, and you appreciate exactly how Pitt plays it.  This also applies to the interrogation scene earlier in the movie, where he's trying to get the German soldier to tell him what's facing them up the road.

Of course, there are just general things you don't pick up on the first time around too.  After seeing the movie the first time, we saw some complaints about how Tarantino actually used some of the foreign words in the subtitles (like "Merci" and stuff like that).  People were complaining "what's the point of doing that??"  We noticed that this time, but it's clearly just Tarantino having fun with the whole thing.

Much like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, Inglourious Basterds rewards a second viewing, and possibly even a third and a fourth.  You'll always find something new in there.

I know that we enjoyed it.

You can read my initial review of the movie here.

Posted via email from Dave's Random Thoughts