Muriel Award: Best Ensemble
Inglourious Basterds [123/18]
“If we look to Merriam Webster for a definition of “ensemble,” we discover that the primary meaning is that of “a group producing a single effect” and that the term is also defined as “a group of supporting players, singers, or dancers.” When one thinks of the ensemble cast that has won so much acclaim, including a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Ensemble Cast, for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, one could hardly be faulted for conjuring images of Brad Pitt as the leathery Lt. Aldo “the Apache” Raine, or Christoph Waltz as the intellectually cunning and fatally charming Col. Hans Landa, “the Jew Hunter,” or Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus a.k.a. Emmanuelle Mimeux, driven by a lust for revenge on the biggest screen of all, or Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark, convinced that her luscious persona as a famous German actress can get her in and out of the most dangerous scenarios, or even Eli Roth as Donny “the Bear Jew” Donowitz, going yard on Nazi craniums all across the European theater of war.
For as much ink as has been spilled about Tarantino’s expansively outrageous vision of World War II and Jewish revenge and the director’s increasingly expressive grasp of his medium, try to imagine the cumulative effect of the movie had it not begun by being so expertly cast. The five actors mentioned above, in that they have effectively become the face of Inglourious Basterds (when their director steps out of the spotlight himself, of course), are generally what is thought of when words of praise regarding that great ensemble cast come flowing out of the pens and off of the keyboards of writers during this award season. And I would never contest the accuracy or the effusiveness of that praise; it is well deserved (yes, even by Eli Roth).
But I don’t think that praise often goes far enough. That is, as important as Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz and Melanie Laurent are to the emotional landscape of Basterds, the movie is rightly teeming with actors in smaller parts who, were their impression not just as precisely pitch-perfect and of a piece with the overriding inspiration drawn from Tarantino’s writing, the movie could have fatally faltered in any number of individual moments right up through its literally inflammatory ending. A major part of the glory of Inglourious Basterds is found in the absolute rightness of everyone in the cast, down to the slightest and most incremental of roles.
And so, with that in mind, as we salute the ensemble cast of Inglorious Basterds, I’d like to just take a moment to remember that the real ensemble extends far beyond those five or so well-known faces so richly caricatured in the painting that makes up the movie’s evocative one-sheet art. When we think of this movie’s honored and honorable cast, we shouldn’t forget Denis Menochet as LaPadite, his weary, piercing eyes brimming with rage and defeat as he sits across the table from Landa, matching Waltz’s brilliant linguistic onslaught with the most pregnant of pauses and muted responses, knowing that it is only a matter of time before he’ll be able to protect the family under his feet no longer; Samm Levine as the trigger-happy Pfc. Herschberg, Omar Doom as Pfc. Ulmer, none too convincing in Italian, and B.J. Novak as Pfc. Utivich, taking in Raine’s climactic chess moves against Landa with wide-eyed bemusement; Gedeon Burkhard’s implacable cool as Wilhelm Wicki, the Basterd’s German translator; the stoic squint that means death coming from Til Schweiger’s Hugo Stiglitz; the way that Richard Sammel’s Sgt. Rachtmann turns his pronunciation of “HOOgo SchTIGleetz” into a reptilian vocal sneer, and the mixture of humanity and the steely reserve of arrogant military righteousness in his eyes as he faces the Bear Jew for the first and last time.
There’s also Daniel Bruhl as Pvt. Frederick Zoller, at once caught up in his newfound celebrity and eventually slightly disgusted at the slaughter that has become his memoriam, even as his twisted entitlement leads him to an unexpected fate in the projection booth of Le Gamaar, the sounds of his own death masked by the sniper fire on the soundtrack of Nation’s Pride; the seedy, sentimental hubris of Sebastian Groth’s Josef Goebbels, comingling David O. Selznick and Don Knotts with unexpected subtlety, and brought to tears by Hitler’s rave review; Julie Dreyfus, sublimely beautiful and funny as Goebbels’ imperious multi-lingual interpreter, her air of mysterious, haughty elegance ruptured by a shock cut to a hilariously undignified rear attack by the entirely unworthy Minister of Propaganda; August Diehl, ice in his veins as Major Hellstrom, whose deadened eyes mask his intentions brilliantly in every scene, and whose observation of a gesture inconsistent with German behavior in the brilliantly elongated pub sequence assures the deaths of his opponents, and his own; an almost unrecognizable Rod Taylor, wheezing life into Winston Churchill in a single brief scene; Mike Myers wryly channeling Alan Napier and every other suave British military strategist in the movies, and never quite tipping with delight into sheer caricature in the process, as Colonel Ed Fenech.
Perhaps finest of all is Michael Fassbender as Colonel Archie Hicox, former film critic and current British military infiltrator whose specific knowledge of the German film industry has put him in a unique position to carry out one of two unknowingly intersecting plots against the Nazi high command. Fassbender looks, feels and sounds as if he might have leapt straight out of a Powell-Pressburger creation like The Small Back Room or The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, so absolutely spot-on is his entire dashing, slightly arrogant presence and repose as Hicox. One hopes that somewhere in that fertile field of Basterds back stories fermenting in Tarantino’s file cabinet is one devoted entirely to the adventures of this sly, ultimately doomed master of film history and the occasional bit of military espionage. Any director would kill for such a cast as this; and with this ensemble, it is Inglourious Basterds that most certainly kills.” - Dennis Cozzalio
Runners-up:
Fantastic Mr. Fox [97/16]
In the Loop [91/13]
A Serious Man [67/11]
Summer Hours [58/10]
