Nathaniel

Shockey

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September 9, 2009

Inglourious Basterds: Best.Scene.Ever

There have been not one, but two scenes in movies this year that rank among my favorite scenes ever. Now accompanying the final dialogue between Beatrix Kiddo and Bill in Kill Bill, Anton Ego’s column in Ratatouille (voiced by Peter O’Toole), Melvin Udall’s (Jack Nicholson) rebuke of Simon Bishop at the beginning of As Good As It Gets, and the scene from The Godfather when Michael Corleone shoots Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey in the Italian restaurant, are the opening montage of Carl Fredricksen’s life in Up and the opening scene in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Inglourious Basterds.

If the academy had an award for “best scene” and/or “best actor in a scene,” it would not be too much of a risk to award it to Tarantino and Christoph Waltz before the year even ends. I’m telling you, it was that good.

It opens with a man chopping wood outside a wooden cottage. He is a man’s man, not appearing to have a zest for life, nor a disdain for it. His name is Pierre LaPadite, he has three daughters, and as we later learn, he is under suspicion of harboring a family of Jews from the Nazis. Even after Colonel Hans Landa arrives to investigate him, the audience can only assume that Pierre will play a leading role in this movie. But by the end of the scene we realize that this was not about Pierre LaPadite. It was about Landa.

The magnitude of Landa’s presence in this scene, in my experience as a movie fan, could only be rivaled by a handful of other characters ever. As soon as he arrives and requests entry into the humble cottage, it’s clear by the look on Pierre’s face that he is a man to be both respected and feared. Dreadfully articulate and aware of every detail and emotion being felt in a room, one would be loathe to attempt to hide anything from him. Landa is both loquacious and direct, relishes in displaying his intellect, and owns a much larger pipe than you do.

For the first part of the scene, I had no idea if the humble cow farmer was harboring Jews. Actually, I assumed he wasn’t. I just figured he was scared to death of Landa, as anyone in their right mind would be of a brilliant man-hunter appointed by Hitler.

But before too long we realize Landa is a much more interesting character than Pierre. And quite frankly, it would be a disservice of tragic proportions to the film if this evildoer weren’t around until the very end.

The primary point of this scene was to explain how ruthless and formidable an adversary Landa was, and although the courage and magnanimity of Pierre were to be appreciated, they were simply no match.

When Landa originally arrives, he meets Pierre and his three daughters, and although he gives no indication that he’d ever do anything to harm them, the audience feels assured that all four of these humble folk are in danger of every unimaginable horror. Landa explains that he’s relatively new to this job, and although he realizes that Pierre has already been questioned for harboring a lost local family of Jews, he has to question him again. After all, whenever there is new manager, in order to be thorough there will inevitably be some “overlap”.

LaPadite offers a drink and the Colonel requests milk, as this is a dairy farm and the milk must be delicious. There aren’t many instances when one is anxious over watching another drink a glass of milk, but this is certainly among them. For some reason, the audience fears that, at any point, Landa might unleash the full magnitude of his power and rage.

Toward the end of this 20-minute-or-so scene, the camera pans down, below the table at which the two men are sitting, below the wooden floor, to reveal the people hiding directly underneath. And suddenly we fully understand and appreciate the enormous anxiety Pierre has been feeling as soon as the Colonel and his henchmen arrived at his house. This is not a man with whom one plays poker, especially if life is on the line.

Before the scene ended, it occurred to me that this was movie magic I was witnessing. And although I was as petrified of this man as I’ve ever been of any movie character, I really didn’t want this scene to end. It did, unfortunately, and quite unhappily. But at least I knew I was in for one hell of a great movie.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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