I watched these two films within a week of each other. Probably not a good idea. Both are about World War II. Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s take on revenge against the Nazis by a U.S. troop and Valkyrie is a murder plot against Hitler by German Officers.
We all know how the war turned out, and the grizzly steps it took to get there.
Inglourious Basterds is my favorite Tarantino film to date. He reached beyond graphic violence to drive this film. There is some violence but held against any other Tarantino film, the violence isn’t worth mentioning. The two main characters, and the female lead that joins their two stories together are interesting characters. There isn’t a boring person on screen. The dialog is very witty, as always with Tarintino’s films. The only draw back to the entire film is that the ending literally would change history. But if you can swallow that, the film is great. Stylized film noir.
Valkyrie bothered me. Its hard to watch a movie about a murder plot that failed. I don’t generally like movies with sad endings. So I didn’t watch all of it. The entire time I was watching it, only one thing that went through my head: most of the major characters in the cast are English: getting up there in years English, maybe alive during WWII English. I was more interested in the thoughts and feelings of the English cast then watching the movie. How did they feel about playing Germans? Historically honorable Germans, mostly, but still Germans. How did they reconcile their own histories with the ones they were playing?
According to Internet Sources
Terence Stamp was born before the war in 1939 and lived in Canal Road, Bow, until German bombers forced his family to move to Plaistow. Kenneth Cranham was born during the war on December 12, 1944 in Scotland. Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy were born shortly after the war ended. Did they talk on set about their experiences? Listening in on a conversation those those four would be very interesting.