How Tarantino Plays the Audience

Christmas Day 2009: Inglorious Basterds was my family’s ‘Christmas Day film’. I didn’t know who Quentin Tarantino was, but I remembered Basterds advertised as a standard Brad Pitt WW2 shoot-em-up (like Fury would be a few years later). Hyperactive teenage me found himself watching a near three hour long movie, made up mostly of dialogue, heavily subtitled, slow-burn pacing with minimal action scenes: I was agitatedly bored and…