If Quentin Tarantino’s fondness—nay, passion—for excesses, bloodshed, and controversy generally turns you off, you’re hereby advised to steer clear of his latest roller-coaster ride, Inglourious Basterds. Like Kill Bill (Volumes 1 & 2) and Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds is packed to the brim with homages, violence, and tips of the hat to cinema’s glory and wonder. It has the same obsession with revenge as the aforementioned works (Jackie Brown and Reservoir Dogs also fit into this category). Unlike his earlier films, however, the stylistic flourishes here are accompanied by an extremely controversial subject that’s bound to infuriate some as inexcusable propaganda that does the Jews a disservice by portraying them committing heinous acts, acts that mirror vile Nazi actions. Seeing Hitler’s top henchmen get peppered with gunshots—or scalped, Apache style—can be viewed through many different prisms, however, with poetic and emotional redemption at the forefront. Inglourious Basterds constantly challenges its viewer’s mindset, making us question whether or not we should be feeling the compassion, hatred, or empathy that we do.

Like Kill Bill: Volume 1, Inglourious Basterds (the reason for the misspelling is never made clear) explodes out of the gate with a powerhouse opening sequence, one that combines nail-biting tension with exceptional, controlled direction. Watching Col. Hans Landa (a fantastic Christopher Waltz)—known as the Jew Hunter throughout Nazi-occupied France for his cold and merciless elimination techniques—psychologically destroy a hillside farmer, coercing him into giving up the Jewish family he’s hiding beneath his floorboards, is something to see, and Tarantino uses uncomfortable close-ups to emphasize the once-proud man’s swift-but-agonizingly-gradual breakdown. Inglourious Basterds never really lets up from there, though it doesn’t go in the direction one might expect. The title refers to a group of renegade soldiers—led by Brad Pitt’s Tennessee-twangin’ Lieutenant Aldo Raine—whose goal is to relieve as many Nazis of their scalps as possible. His crew consists of a hodge-podge of fighters with various skillsets, much like Bill’s quintet of assassins in Kill Bill: for instance, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) enjoys pounding German heads with a baseball bat. The posse is tailor-made for Tarantino, but they’re really only in about 25% of the film; much of Inglourious Basterds is spent on an alternate storyline involving Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish cinema owner who was the lone survivor of the opening sequence’s extermination (and goes by the name Emmanuelle Mimieux), and her German war-hero admirer Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brüll). The brutality is at times savage, but it’s nowhere near as prominent as one would have predicted based on the subject and the Basterds’ presence.

What makes Inglourious Basterds so fascinating is the controversial political subtext and sensitivity beneath the double-crossing and tension, and how deftly Tarantino manipulates it all. The finale, which I won’t spoil here, is alternately poignant and overwhelming, with claustrophobic compositions bringing out a horror that’s bound to prod, poke, and provoke the mind. Does the adrenaline rush one feels watching Laurent get her revenge (albeit in a self-flagellating manner), for instance, inspire guilt? Anger? Pity? A sense of justice? Tarantino’s re-imagination of horrific Nazi tactics (e.g., the gas chamber) is something to behold. The emotional response said tactics evoke is bound to differ for every viewer, and for that, Inglourious Basterds can claim a unique mantle amongst war movies (not that it’s so easily pigeonholed). It mixes pop culture and history in a way I’ve never seen, using every tool at its disposal. Surrealism, imagination, loathing, and whimsy, among others, are all given a part to play.

Like his filmic idol Jean-Luc Godard, Tarantino sings the praises of  cinema itself throughout his work, and Inglourious Basterds is full of passion for movies of all shapes and sizes. Shoshanna owns and operates a cinema, in which a banner for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau [The Raven] is prominently displayed; Zoll’s war film, Nation’s Pride, is clearly a reference to D.W. Griffith’s controversial racist epic Birth of a Nation (not coincidentally, Shoshanna’s projectionist, a black Frenchman named Marcel [Jacky Ido], also happens to be her lover in a direct ‘fuck you’ to intolerance). And like Godard, Tarantino isn’t afraid to toot his own horn—Inglourious Basterds‘ final line, which involves Raine’s penchant for engraving the Nazi insignia on his victims’ foreheads, hints that Tarantino thinks this may be his most important and complete work yet. And for all its controversy (and as much as I love some of his other films), I’m inclined to agree.

92/100

[NOTE: I upped my rating 11 points after a second look and edited it here accordingly, though my review was originally published after my first viewing. I may or may not publish some further notes on the film at some point, but suffice to say, it's going to be tough to top for #1 of 2009.]