Every Christmastime, I make a habit of forcing myself to watch a depressing Holocaust movie. Last year, there were so many to choose from, with the release of The Reader, Defiance, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the soon to be reviewed Valkyrie. Strangely, this year, it seems that I had a rather difficult time finding a new release. So, I found a close substitute: a new DVD release.
Now, I'm not exactly a connoisseur of Quentin Tarantino films, but I have to say, this film was my favorite. The story is told in Chapters, but instead of the disjoint style he's used many times before, this story flows, and easily so. Sure, we have the multiple pieces of the puzzle that somehow fit together, but these pieces fit together easily. Although the film moves a bit slowly at times, and the story is one of revisionist history, the acting in this absurdist movie was superb.
It was a role like Lieutenant Aldo Raine, an American armyman in charge of a troupe of Jewish soldiers dedicated to killing and scalping Nazis, that Brad Pitt seems to have been made for. Christoph Waltz is almost believable as the deranged "Jew-hunter" who seeks to pad his own nest in preparation for retirement.
Either way, a bloody mess of a movie, but what do you expect from Tarantino?
