The Musicgoer: Inglourious Basterds (Soundtrack)

SOUNDTRACK
Inglourious Basterds
(A Band Apart/Warner Bros)
*** 1/2 (out of 5)

When I heard that Quentin Tarantino was making a World War II movie called Inglourious Basterds, I was delighted by the title but curious to see how he would handle being deprived of one of his greatest directorial tools: scoring each scene to his favourite rock, soul, and funk songs. As it turns out, Tarantino doesn’t see any reason why a movie set in Nazi-occupied France can’t drop a scorching Billy Preston song onto the soundtrack. If David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)” suits the emotional temperature of a scene set in 1944, who cares if Bowie wouldn’t even be born for three more years?

There are a couple of vintage German pop songs on this CD, but Tarantino isn’t really interested in music from the 1940s. Instead, it’s as if he asked himself what his film’s score would sound like if it were a European co-production from 1973. That means a whole lot of Ennio Morricone tracks, even the most obscure of which have a majesty and wit that puts most contemporary scores to shame. “Un Amico” especially is simply, well, glourious.