Inglourious Basterds

The first sign of Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds-barring the subtitles-was a nervous giggle from the audience during an otherwise reverent Holocaust scene. After I heard it, I knew I was in for a ride.

The Basterds, a group of eight Jewish-Americans led by walking caricature Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), go to France to exact gruesome revenge on the Nazis. They find out that all of the Nazi central command will (naturally) be at a film premiere of the latest propaganda war film from Joseph Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist. If their plan to blow up the theater succeeds, they could bring the war to an end.

In perhaps his most daring film yet, Tarantino deconstructs the classic cinematic representations of the Second World War. Much as Death Proof did to horror films, Inglourious Basterds takes on both the somber Holocaust movie and the war epic in one swing, compositing two genres that, although they depict the same conflict, rarely share screen time. The result is a remarkably holistic, albeit over-the-top, look at cinema's characterization of war.

The fusion allows Tarantino to make audiences react the "wrong" way. The Nazi torture scenes are the most disturbing, even though the Nazis are the enemies. Through SS Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), Tarantino is able to both terrify and amuse, juxtaposing the character's keen Jew-hunting sensibilities with his caricatured quirks.

In the film's final scene, Tarantino symbolically and physically burns down both the concept of the nationalistic war film and the cartoon-like characterizations of Adolf Hitler and Goebbels.

He torches the cinema's notion of war, leaving only the gruesome and the ugly. As we watch the theater burn, we get to look into our own eyes and see if we too are trapped inside.