melanie laurent – Podcasting Them Softly

Having rewatched Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds the other night for the first time in years, I’d since forgotten what a fuckin rip snorting good time at the movies it is. It used to rank fairly low on my Quentin-metre, but not only has it aged quite nicely since 09′, it’s even better than I remember it being in theatres. I think that one of the reasons I didn’t hold it in such high esteem right off the bat is that I wasn’t prepared for the blunt revisionist history approach, which at the time I think felt very silly and fake. I get now what he was going for and appreciate it tenfold more than I did then. From the opening chords of a Morricone piece that signals the portentous arrival of Christoph Waltz’s terrifyingly affable Jew hunting SS nutbar Hans Landa, this film is a near perfect ballet of extended dialogue, shocking musical cues and sporadic bursts of satisfying and graphic violence. It’s an episodic roundtable outing that spins around to focus intently on specific scenarios for quite a bit of time before jarringly shunting off to the next. Young Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) runs a quaint cinema in rural France that garners the attention of a pesky German war hero (Daniel Brühl). Evil Landa and his corps doggedly hunt enemies of the state whilst preparing to act as a security force for a bigwig film premiere attended by the Fuhrur himself, et al. Elsewhere in Germany, a plucky band of double agents led by Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger await instructions on a small tavern, commissioned by Winston Churchill and Austin Powers to carry out their mission. This sequence is a textbook example on how to whip up vice grip suspense until one can barely breathe, then cut the cord loose all of a sudden, brilliantly structured, written and acted scene all round. Brad Pitt also leads his merry band of Nazi killers all over Europe creating havoc and delivering some of the best dialogue that the Q-Man has ever penned. The sequence where Aldo Raine (Pitt) and his crew must be ‘fake Italian’ to blend in at the film premiere is the single funniest thing in a Tarantino film to date. The cast is layered with all kinds of wonderful work, standouts from August Diehl, Richard Sammel, Eli Roth, a priceless Til Schweiger, as well as quick snippets from Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel. Waltz made a name for himself with the Landa character, and is a simultaneously freaky and funny villain who steals the film each time he shows up to smarm and charm the pants off of everyone else. Funny beyond words, brutally exploitive in the best possible ways, whip smart in writing and characterization and just a hell of a good time, Basterds has held up and even improved excellently since it’s release, and will likely stand as one of Tarantino’s key films in years to come. Gorlami.

-Nate Hill

Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy is one of the most unsettling film experiences you will ever sit through, and the damn thing is only 90 minutes. It’s disconcerting, ambiguous and seems to exist simply to spin the viewer’s anxiety reflex into a storm and make our stomach turn loops. It’s a trim entry into the psychological upset sub genre, and puts a frazzled looking Jake Gyllenhaal through a wringer as he pursues a mysterious doppelgänger through the streets of Toronto, a bustling city that feels oddly desolate as glanced upon by Villeneuve’s camera, adding to the themes of paranoia and mental unrest. Gyllenhaal plays a twitchy college professor who is stuck in a closed loop routine: he gives lectures at the local university, drives home to his emotionally inaccessible girlfriend (Melanie Laurant), rinse and repeat. A chink appears in the chain when he becomes aware of another man in the city who appears to be his identical twin. The other man is a small time actor with a pregnant wife (Sarah Gadon) and a decidedly more nasty approach to the situation than the professor. The two of the, circle each other in a disturbing game of not so much cat and mouse, but Jake and Jake, both of them having not a clue as to what is going on, the edges of madness inching closer to both of their perception. Are they twins? Are there even two? Is it just one of them, losing their mind? There’s very freaky dream sequences with the constant imagery of spiders, both large and small, and what do they mean? Who’s to tell? Denis has stated in interviews that there is both rhyme and reason to his creation here, but whether he will ever divulge them remains to be seen. Perhaps it’s better left illusory, a formula for entrancing audiences that has already proved to work well for David Lynch. The moment that the man behind the curtain reveals the conscious meaning of his very subconscious efforts, the spell is no doubt broken. In any case, it’s a very hard film to process or focus on, our nerves jittering constantly and sabotaging any modicum of rational though that we might employ in deciphering the piece. This may be called style and atmosphere over substance by some, but even in not comprehending what’s going on, we feel deeply that there is some sort of cryptic cohesion if we are able to feel between the lines, maybe coming up empty handed ultimately, but knowing within us that we’ve attained wealth to our soul simply by bearing witness. I can’t say it’s a film that I love, or that I would watch again, but it’s certainly one that won’t leave my memories any time soon, and that is an achievement no matter how you look at it. It’s also got one of the scariest and most unexpected endings to any film I’ve ever seen, taking you so off guard that you feel like you’re going to have a coronary. It’s filmed in sickening piss yellow saturation which adds to the overall disconcerting nature, and quite the striking colour choice as well. I can see why this one was released with little fanfare or marketing, despite the presence of heavyweights Villeneuve and Gylenhaal. It’s difficult stuff, a movie that frustratingly soars above your head, onward towards its intensely personal and psychological destination. It’s up to us to jump, grasp and attempt to reach as high as the piece in order to get what we will out of it. Good luck.