War is Swell: Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker

Two movies about war have recently debuted in theaters. One is set in the 21st century and takes place in Iraq. The other is set during World War II and takes place in Nazi-occupied France. One is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, probably best known for the Keanu Reeves cop movie Point Break, and the other is directed by Quentin Tarantino, probably best known for that scene in Kill Bill where Uma Thurman kills, like, a hundred ninjas. One is about the exhilarating, addictive nature of deadly situations and one soldier’s attempt to find meaning in life beyond the thrill of war. The other is about “killin’ knat-sies.” These films both approach war in their own way, but when one looks under the surface, are they really that different?

Yes. Yes they are. A lot.

The unhidden secret of Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s gleefully irreverent World War II film, is that it’s not about war at all. Like all of Tarantino’s work, it is about movies; the way they look, the way they move, and what they represent. This time Tarantino makes a movie about movies that are about war, but he makes little comment on the subject itself. His principle inspiration this go-around seems to be The Dirty Dozen and other “men with a mission” movies. The men are a group Jewish of soldiers named the Basterds, and their mission is to kill as many Nazis as possible as gruesomely as possible. Their commander is Aldo Raine, a Tennessee native played by Brad Pitt as a cross between John Wayne, George Patton and Ted Bundy. Other major players include Shosanna, a young Jewish cinema-owner with revenge on her mind, and Colonel Hans Landa, a ruthless and sardonic “Jew Hunter” who tries to stop them both. Eventually, even Hitler himself makes an appearance, and something happens to him that he surely did not see coming.

These characters spend most of their time talking, as Tarantino’s characters so often do. They talk about nicknames. They talk about Max Linder. They talk about King Kong and they talk about strudel. And then, usually, once they’ve talked a scene to the breaking point, they whip out guns and start to kill each other. This is Tarantino’s technique, to construct long, lovingly crafted conversations that finally explode in violence before the talking continues. Tarantino is interested in tension. Tarantino is interested in archetype. Tarantino is interested in violence but he is not particularly interested in war.

Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, the writer and director of The Hurt Locker respectively, are very interested in war. Boal, who served on a bomb squad in Iraq, writes from experience. The movie is about a man named William James, a staff sergeant who defuses bombs. James is very, very good at his job, but does it with a lust and recklessness that alarm the other members of his squad. The theme of The Hurt Locker is not, like so many war films before it, that “war is Hell,” but rather that “war is a drug,” and James is addicted. Boal shows other sides of James’ life. James is married, perhaps unhappily, to a woman back home. He has a young son in whom he is not very interested. The only time he seems to come alive is when he straps on a many-layered blast suit and gets to work.

These characters do not spend most of their time talking. Bigelow builds incredible tension in scenes where James, faced with a bomb on the road, approaches it slowly, watched by hovering bystanders who may or may not have put it there, and tries to disassemble it as quickly as he can, knowing that at any moment it could splatter him all over the street. Bigelow does not shy away from showing us the bloody consequences of a bomb, and every second one doesn’t go off is another second the audience will be watching the screen through shuttered fingers. When the violence finally explodes, it hits us in the gut.

Tarantino aims a little higher, hitting us in the funny bone. Inglorious Basterds features scenes of monstrous violence, but it has always been the talent of its director to turn a gruesome spectacle into a gruesomely comic one. Many recall the ear-slicing scene from Reservoir Dogs: there is a scene in this film, involving someone’s forehead, that tops it. There is something about the larger-than-life characters, the walls of too-clever dialogue, and the elegant sweeping of the camera that renders the violence in this film something other than violent. Around the time that Tarantino rewrites a monumental moment in world history, the audience begins to understand why that is, if they didn’t already. This film does not take place in Nazi-occupied France but rather in a place called Movieland, where the men are heroic, the women are beautiful, and every Nazi past and future deserves whatever horrendous punishment the most sadistic of screenwriters can come up with. In Movieland, violence can be funny or even beautiful, but it cannot draw real blood.

Inglorious Basterds is completely apolitical, which should stop absolutely no one from seeing and enjoying it. It is provocative and hypnotic in the tradition of Tarantino’s best work. Just don’t expect any sharp insights into history or politics. Odd, that this is where Tarantino and Bigelow’s films finally find common ground. For all of its gritty, grounds-eye view pyrotechnics, The Hurt Locker is a very personal story of one man and his bomb suit. Boal and Bigelow judiciously avoid commenting on why James is in Iraq and whether he should be there, instead focusing on what he does and what it feels like. In the end, this approach may say more about the situation than any amount of sermonizing could.

The films likewise feature impeccable technical credits and top-shelf acting, though the filmmakers employ them in drastically different styles and to markedly different ends. It would be remiss not to mention Christoph Waltz’s performance as Hans Landa, surely one of the most smugly entertaining Nazi bastards (sic… oh wait) of all time. The important thing to remember is that there is a pair of very satisfying war movies in theaters, and whether you see them apart or as part of one very surreal double feature, you need to go storm your local cinema as soon as possible.