Commvault Bryan and I have been involved in an ongoing discussion of Inglourious Basterds during our breaks and lunch hour at work. I thought I’d throw this open to the masses and see what you guys have to say. Big, huge, giving away the entire movie spoilers after the break…
Bryan’s basic point is that he’s not sure he buys Hans Landa’s transformation into a turncoat at the end of the movie. He questions whether the man who expressed such pleasure at hunting Jews would be likely to make that quick a turnaround. Bryan also asks, sensibly, “If he is the type of person who would make that transformation, why does he kill Bridget von Hammersmark, and why does he do it in such a personal manner?”
I buy into Landa’s transformation. Yes, Landa does express his pleasure in hunting Jews at the beginning of the movie. But I think there’s more to that speech. I believe that Tarantino wants us to think that Landa thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. His speech isn’t just “Look at how good a manhunter I am”, but “Look at me. I’m smarter than everyone else, so I’m better at catching Jews.” Accordingly, when Landa catches Raine and his men, I believe his thought process is “This guy is a dumb American hick from the South. Here’s my chance to prove to the Americans how smart I am by helping to kill the Nazi High Command, and setting myself up for a post-war life of leisure.” Landa thinks everyone will be looking at him with admiration as one of the men who won the war, because gosh darn it, he’s just so smart.
(Parenthetically, I think Tarantino may have also been trying to set up (and didn’t do a very good job of it) the idea that Landa resented his superiors for not acknowledging what he felt was his obvious intelligence. The bit with Dieter’s body in the basement sort of implies this, but Tarantino let that drop.)
(It is also tempting to suggest that Landa saw which way the war was going, and decided to get on the side of the winners while the getting was good. I have a problem with that theory; it isn’t clear to me that the war had reached that point yet, at least in terms of the movie’s timetable.)
If you buy into that theory, the ending of the movie is even more satisfactory; Landa thinks that he’s the smartest guy in the room, and that he’s put one over on the dumb Southern hick, only to discover that he’s not that smart; as a matter of fact, he’s been outsmarted by Raine.
So why does Landa kill Hammersmark? I don’t have a good answer for that. Sudden loss of temper? Sexual gratification? Didn’t want to share the glory with Hammersmark? She was one of the few people who could (and would) have been able to make it known what a creep he really was? It doesn’t seem like killing her gets him anywhere he wasn’t already going.
Thoughts?