At the risk of my readers getting sick of hearing me squawk about how much I loved Inglourious Basterds, I thought I’d better post something a little more substantive explaining why I think it’s such a great film. Then – I promise! – I’ll shut up about it.
First, this film is a first, and of no small proportion, in my view, when it comes to pushing the limits of narrative convention. I don’t know of any other film that has had the “chutzpah” to so dramatically re-imagine such an indisputably documented historical event. (Okay, there’s Gladiator claiming that the Emperor Commodus was killed by a betrayed-general-turned-slave in a gladiator contest circa 180 A.D. when, in fact, he ruled for 12 more years and then was ignominiously assassinated by poison and strangling. But that was two millennia ago, so there is no shock value in the liberty taken because no one much cares anymore what really happened. Whereas, at only half a century’s distance, Hitler is still pretty hot-button.)
I need to spend a few more paragraphs here impressing upon the reader how big this is. All of drama history has been one long process of testing audiences to see what they will and will not accept. What they will and will not believe. What they will and will not comprehend. What they will and will not pay money to go see. And it has been a progressive process. Today, we will accept, comprehend and plunk down a ten spot for all kinds of narrative conventions that were unimaginable when drama was in its infancy, some of which were still considered off limits even a short time ago.
Let me give you a sense of the progress we’ve made. You know that dramatic convention we often see in stage plays where all the action happens in the same location and in a limited span of time, say, a single day? That didn’t come about simply as a way to save money on sets and costumes. It dates back to ancient Greece when playwrights thought it best to contain their drama in one location and limit it to one day (or slightly exceeding that) out of the belief that, otherwise, the audience wouldn’t be able to understand what the hell is going on. It was believed that the viewer literally didn’t have the mental capacity to follow too many jumps in location or time. Therefore, it was also believed the audience wouldn’t accept the drama any other way.
See, the art of storytelling was in the process of transitioning from the recited epic poem (The Iliad and The Odyssey) to performed drama (The Oresteia, Oedipus Rex, Medea) and no one was too sure yet how far they could take it. So, for a few more centuries, they kept having the “chorus” step in at various points as the drama unfolds to explain a few things and fill in some details. They still thought the story had to be explained, as it was in epic poem recitation. They didn’t know yet the degree to which their viewer would understand what they were trying to say simply by watching action unfold. And it’s entirely possible that viewers back then would not have understood because their brains had not yet evolved into that capacity.
Now, at the dawn of the third millennium, we have no doubt that viewers can comprehend a story simply by witnessing action. And if we didn’t yet fully know this a hundred years ago, the short history of the movies has demonstrated it to spectacular effect. Maybe the movies have helped us discover mental capacities that we always had, or maybe our brains have evolved to meet the challenges of a new technology. I don’t know. I’m just grateful to the dramatists and movie makers over the ages who have gradually pushed us forward into previously unknown perceptual abilities.
But the movies got caught up in its own trap. We were so enthralled at the beginning with our newly found ability to go out with a camera and capture “reality” on film, that we became over invested in using the technology to faithfully imitate reality. For decades, the golden standard of narrative filmmaking has been the ability to maintain the “suspension of disbelief,” the illusion that, as the viewer, you are getting a fly-on-the-wall perspective to something that is really, truly, actually happening. As the filmmaker, you just have to make sure that, whatever you do, you don’t break that illusion. Because your audience won’t accept it. Think of how often you have heard someone respond to a film, as if it’s the ultimate in damning criticism, by exclaiming, “That would never happen!”
It’s an odd paradox that, at the same time, we also love those movies in which a big hairy monster takes over the city, or a super hero saves the world from annihilation or a love smitten crooner belts his heart out while twirling on a lamp post. So we want fantasy, too. And movies can dish up the multi-sensory fantastic like no other art form yet invented.
How do we reconcile the need to imitate a plausible reality with the wish for wild fantasy? We set some prudent boundaries: Don’t put a song and dance number in an otherwise straight drama. Don’t mix abstract techniques with naturalistic drama. Don’t mix animation and live action. Don’t mix documentary and dramatic footage. Don’t mess around with linear time. Don’t do flashbacks. Don’t break the “fourth wall.” Not so long ago, these were all very strict rules. The belief was that viewers wouldn’t be able to maintain their suspension of disbelief while switching back and forth between one form and the other. So they wouldn’t accept it. By now, of course, each of these rules have been broken. And audiences have accepted it just fine.
However, just when we thought all the rules had been broken – by the likes of Paul Thomas Andersen, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, Ang Lee, Todd Haynes, Christopher Nolan and certainly not least among them Tarantino himself – we discover that there was one more rule that was so deeply ingrained that we were not even aware we were living by it. And that rule was – Don’t mess with history!!
(I suppose at this point I should insert – Spoiler alert! – even though it’s hard for me to imagine that any serious student of screenwriting has not yet seen this film.)
When David Franzoni wrote Gladiator he knew he was safe with his “dramatic license” because no one would know the difference unless they went home and looked it up on Wikipedia. Taratino, on the other hand, put his dramatic license right up in your face. And, in so doing, he knocked down the last remaining boundary in film (that I know of). He made it allowable to rewrite actual history with the pen of filmed fantasy for the benefit of collective emotional release. Get that son-of-a-bitch Hitler! Get him! Get him!!! GET HIM!!!!
Indeed, why shouldn’t we imagine that a random assortment of courageous and committed individuals could have planned and awkwardly executed a plan that nonetheless succeeded, against all odds, in bringing down a real live monster! Don’t we wish that’s what had happened? Why shouldn’t we envision what we wish had happened and get at least some feeling of satisfaction as if it really had? Think of the possibilities for rewriting the history of the past ten years!
To emphasize how radical this is in that larger context of drama history, I’m going to invoke the Greeks again. Aristotle is widely regarded in the story structure business as the ultimate authority, to such a degree that I sometimes feel The Poetics is a bit overrated. Drama theory may begin with Aristotle, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Nonetheless, as an early treatise cataloguing the various elements that successful dramas tend to have in common, it is an important text and there is one passage that I have found particularly useful as a description of drama’s possible purposes.
According to Aristotle, drama should achieve one of three objects (Chapter 25, Butcher translation): To portray things as they were or are (gritty realism), things as they are said or thought to be (for the Greeks, this meant speculations on what the gods are doing and thinking), or things as they ought to be (this includes both wishful fantasy and the morally instructive). Think about your favorite films and you will discover that they all fall into one of those three categories, except one. Now, Quentin Tarantino is here to tell us that drama can be utilized for a fourth objective: to portray things as they ought to have been (a sort of combo category of the gritty realistic and the wishful fantastic, in content as well as style). Not only did he rewrite history with this film, but he also improved on Aristotle.
I don’t know about you, but I was fortunate enough to see the film right when it came out, so I had little advanced knowledge of what was in it. I remember sitting in the movie theater and first thinking, “I don’t think that really happened.” Then, “Oh, look, he’s departing even further.” Then, “Wow, he’s taking this to some outlandish extremes.” Then, “Oh my God! Is he really gonna kill Hitler?! Whoa!!” And, finally, “Great! Yeah! Let’s do it! Why the hell not!!!”
There was a point at which I had to let go of my internalized narrative expectations in order to keep going with Tarantino on the ride he had planned for me. And it is a testament to his skill as a screenwriter (and director) that I was able to make that break and stay with him all the way through to his ending. So I wonder, What was it in the way the film was constructed that enabled me to do that? After some cursory study of the film’s structure, I have developed a couple of passable theories.
It turns out that Tarantino has, once again, despite appearances to the contrary, heavily drawn upon the old-reliable, time-tested narrative conventions while he is also energetically pushing beyond them. First among those is that he has made sure we have, in Shoshanna, a sympathetic character to attach to emotionally at the outset. Shoshanna’s circumstance is unequivocally tragic and unjust. This not only positions her as the sympathetic character but it also grounds the film in actual history and provides the emotional motivation for what happens in the end. However, her story, by itself, it is not quite enough.
There is a risk that portraying Shoshanna’s homespun plan for revenge as successful could come across as trivializing the problem of the Nazis. We all know how ruthless and powerful they were. Considering the tremendous amount of damage they did to millions of lives, it is a bit offensive to suggest that getting rid of them might have been as easy as burning down a movie theater. This is the kind of reality vs. fantasy gap that could cause you to lose your audience, unless you’re okay with only appealing to the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider crowd. But I have a feeling Tarantino, much as I’m sure he respects Lara Croft, had something greater than that in mind.
To be a meaningful rewrite of history that brings authentic emotional release, the story’s dramatic weight must match the historical circumstance. In actual fact, no one did succeed at assassinating Hitler, despite numerous attempts, because he was such a formidable foe. So the element we need, to give authenticity to our imagined alternative reality, is an equally formidable foe positioned in direct opposition to Hitler. Thus, we have Aldo the Apache.
Let’s now look, just for a moment, at the contrary possibility. Say we had Aldo’s story without Shoshanna’s. Well, we would have the necessary brute force to convincingly do the job but we wouldn’t have the human pathos to motivate it. Sure, Aldo has no lack of disdain for the Nazis for their “murder, torture, intimidation and terror” and for being the foot soldiers of a “Jew-hatin’, mass murderin’ maniac.” But, if not for our having seen Shoshanna suffering the consequences of such Nazi aggression, Aldo’s words would have remained, at least somewhat, abstract, making his triumph in the end more about conquering brute force with brute force and less about righting a terrible injustice. In fact, such a film could appear to be exploiting WWII and the Holocaust for an excuse to blow up a movie theater with a big hairy monster inside.
So here’s my two-fold theory: Not only do we, the audience, need an emotional grounding in reality at the beginning to make the revenge fantasy meaningful (as opposed to trivializing) but we also need, as the story progresses, a steady build up of narrative energy sufficient to break us through that dense boundary of acceptable narrative convention (the one that says you can’t recognizably alter history because the audience won’t accept it). We need a narrative energy so compelling that, as the story takes more and more left turns away from actual history, we are less and less inclined to nitpick about mere facts at the expense of staying with the story’s action-packed, fun-filled trajectory. In turn, this letting go of intellectual attachment to historical accuracy then enables us to discover how emotionally satisfying it is to watch Hitler getting mowed down with a machine gun and the rest of the Nazi party leaders being blown to smithereens. Thus, we have our revenge fantasy.
So how is that build up of narrative energy achieved?
As already pointed out, the shear brute force of Aldo and the Basterds is one source of energy in the story. Another, in a nice Taratino-esque touch, is that, while Shoshanna’s first function is to provide human pathos, she is by no means pathetic. No passive victim, damsel-in-distress here. She is acting as her own agent of empowerment and revenge, which also adds some energy.
But the third, and most important, source of energy is in the story’s structure itself. It took me a bit of time, studying my scribbled outlines and charts, to figure this one out. But, while searching for some sort of underlying system to all these disparate characters coming in at different times and from different places, eventually converging in one big culminating escapade, what finally jumped out at me is that, structurally, this film is simply a caper.
Takes me back to Screenwriting 1 in film school when one of our first assignments was to create an outline for a caper story. We were given these parameters: Something happens (the inciting incident) that motivates a small band of mischief makers to pull off a caper. So they come up with a plan (the end of the first act). They then make preparations and launch the plan (the beginning of the second act). But their first attempt either fails or is only partially successful (first culmination of the second act, also called the mid-point). So they regroup and modify their plan, and adapt their preparations. Then they launch the second phase of the plan when they come very near to success (the second culmination, or end, of the second act). But there’s still a piece missing or something left to be done. This takes a final effort (the climax) that then brings them success. They divvy up the goods and go on their merry way (the resolution).
We’ve all seen the caper story a hundred times. Part of why we love it so much is because, along with its action and adventure, it also provides a high dose of audaciousness, cleverness and humor. No doubt Tarantino loves it for this, too. Hence, as usual, we see him drawing upon an old reliable form but doing it one better. Let’s go through the film chapter by chapter and see how it adheres to and departs from the form.
Chapter One (in which Colonel Hans Landa gets Farmer LaPadite to betray the Dreyfus family hiding in his basement, who are then executed by Landa’s men except for the teenage Shoshanna who escapes and runs away):
Here the emotional weight of the problem is established, that the Nazis are relentless and merciless in their persecution of the Jews. But there’s more. Landa’s viciousness goes beyond simply killing the Dreyfus family as we see the skill with which he manipulates LaPadite into abandoning his values and betraying his friends. Our initial sympathy for LaPadite is then transferred over to Shoshanna, whose circumstance is even more tragic. So the crushing power of the adversary is established and we are left with a mix of outrage and powerlessness at what we have just witnessed.
Chapter Two (in which Lt. Aldo Raine, having recruited “The Basterds” to kill Nazis, has managed to terrorize the German army and infuriate Hitler by sparing one soldier from each raid to go back into the ranks and report on the Basterds’ mercilessness):
Aldo is introduced as an Avenging Angel to answer Shoshanna’s plight. Once we see him state his intentions, we go directly to the results: Hitler is not pleased to learn there is someone out there beating him at his own game. As Hitler hears the details of Aldo’s extreme practices, we see them in action.
The only structural function of these first two chapters is simply to set things up. The story we have been brought in to see hasn’t even begun yet. But we have been given the backstory, we have met the main characters and are fully engaged with them and we know the magnitude of the problem and have a good idea of what’s at stake. We also see that there is a pecking order among the characters with Hitler in the highest power position and Shoshanna in the lowest and Landa and Aldo mid-spectrum in parallel positions (Landa is hunting Jews, Aldo is hunting Nazis), each displaying their unique methods for getting what they want.
Chapter Three (in which Shoshanna, well established four years later as a movie theater proprietress in Paris, is wooed by the German war hero/movie star Frederich Zoller, who then convinces Joseph Goebbels to move the premiere of his film to her theater, prompting her to decide that she and her projectionist Marcel will burn down the theater with all the Nazi leaders inside):
Here we have the inciting incident (the event that begins the story we’ve been brought in to see). The Nazis are premiering a war hero movie in Paris and Shoshanna has no choice but to let them do it in her theater. This is the “something happens” that then prompts a decision to pull off a caper. Indeed, Shoshanna wastes no time deciding to utilize the opportunity to rid the world of some of the most powerful Nazis.
Chapter Four (in which a British army operative/film critic, Archie Hicox, is briefed on Operation Kino in London, meets up with Aldo and The Basterds in Nadine, France, rendezvous with German film star Bridget von Hammersmark at the tavern La Louisiane, is killed, along with Basterds Wicki and Stieglitz, by partying German soldiers, leaving Aldo and Bridget to come up with an alternative plan for carrying out the operation):
This is where things start to get interesting, not just story-wise, but structurally as well. We learn that, as Shoshanna was hatching her plan, another plan was also being hatched. Operation Kino is Bridget von Hammersmark’s caper. Hicox has been drafted into it, as has Aldo and his Basterds. This caper has the same inciting incident as Shoshanna’s and a similarly motivated decision (both are women with unique access who plan to blow up the movie theater out of their hatred of the Nazis).
Critical to the caper structure is seeing the moment of decision to launch it and learning of the plan. This is what creates the tension as we then watch how well that stated plan is carried out in actuality. Note that, in this caper, we saw Shoshanna’s decision but skipped Bridget’s. That’s because there’s no need to fulfill that structural function twice. One decision will do. And since the decision is the direct result of the “something happens” that motivated it (a Nazi film premiere in Paris), which in this case we saw through Shoshanna’s perspective, it is Shoshanna’s decision that we are shown.
But there’s still the plan, which we only get brief mention of from Shoshanna (she’s going to burn down the cinema using 350 nitrate prints and make a special film just for the Nazis). So we jump to Bridget’s caper and are given a long extrapolation of her plan (with maps and pointers and the like). Again, as we only need one decision, we also only need one plan.
Then we have to follow Bridget’s plan to see how it plays out. Hicox meets up with the Basterds and we have a brief preparation looking out a second floor window at the entrance to a tavern, mostly in a tension-building lament about it being in a basement. The long, tension-filled set piece inside the tavern then fulfills the first phase of the caper (the first attempt). But the macho-posturing, egghead film critic botches the job and gets everyone killed (failure) except for Bridget who hooks up with Aldo (partial success).
Bridget and Aldo get a few things straightened out between them (regrouping). But she is doubtful that the mission can be accomplished. Aldo almost agrees, until he hears that Hitler will be in attendance (raising the stakes). “Getting a whack at planting ole Uncle Adolph makes this a horse of a different color,” he says. So they come up with a new plan.
Meanwhile, Landa inspects the site of the massacre and finds Bridget’s shoe and celebrity signature (more tension).
Chapter Five (in which Bridget, Aldo, Donowitz and Hirschberg attend the premiere, along with Landa, Zoller, Goebbels, Goerring, Boorman, Emil Jannings and Adolph Hitler. Shoshanna and Marcel review their plan. Landa greets Bridget and friends. Donowitz and Hirschberg take their seats and plant bombs. Landa takes Bridget aside and strangles her. Aldo is taken hostage and carted away with Utevitch. Landa tells Aldo he wants to make a deal. Zoller intrudes on Shoshanna and they shoot each other. Shoshanna appears on screen. Marcel ignites the nitrate. Donowitz and Hirschberg shoot Hitler and Goebbels. The theater explodes. Landa drives Aldo and Utevitch to the front and uncuffs them. Aldo cuffs Landa and carves a swastika in his forehead.):
In the caper structure, we not only need to be told the plan, we also need to be shown at least some of the preparation. This creates plot elongation for building tension, but it also lends plausibility and can show some potential cracks in the plan, which brings in even more tension. In this case, since we just heard the new plan from Bridget, we’re going to jump over to Shoshanna for preparation, continuing their trade off of structural functions. We are given a parallel action montage, alternating shots of Shoshanna dressing for the premiere with flashbacks of how she and Marcel made their special film for the Nazis, strong-arming a lab technician to develop it under threat of death. Once again, we don’t need two preparations, so we skip over how Bridget and Aldo managed to get all cleaned up in less than 24 hours, including how Bridget learned to walk wearing that high-heeled plaster cast. Tarantino could have chosen to show that preparation instead of the filmmaking bit. But to do both would have bogged things down and been unnecessary. And we need to bring Shoshanna back into the story.
With Shoshanna’s entrance to the party, we have completely broken through the boundary of narrative convention that demands adherence to historical accuracy. We have gotten a rag tag group of Allied conspirators and an impressive display of Nazi leaders in the same room together, with Hitler due at any moment. Thus, the energy and tension of the caper structure has done its job, so we no longer have to hold close to its parameters. All we have to do is unleash the characters on each other and let them fight it out. And that’s what Tarantino does.
Was Tarantino consciously creating a caper structure as he was writing this script? My guess is he was not. But neither would I say his decisions leading to this structure were not deliberate. Great film does not happen by accident. His decisions were simply instinctive rather than calculated. I’m sure he has been exposed to enough caper stories amongst the hundreds and thousands of films he’s seen to have absorbed the form into his unconscious. It is that unconscious knowledge that then guides him in his creative process, no doubt with some conscious tweaking on the details as he goes along.
Sadly, we can’t all be Quentin Tarantino, with his finely tuned instincts for creating stories that both draw from conventional structures while also breaking through them. But we can definitely learn a few things about the future of storytelling from some close study of the results he has managed to achieve.