One among many terrible, awful films you should really, really see.

Rating: 4/10 (28 January 2010)

Inglourious Basterds is just one of those really terrible, just G-dawful films that, frankly, you will probably really enjoy a heck of a lot and you should probably see just because it will actually make you feel good. If you like a terrible movie like "Shadowboxer" that just has to be seen, then see this one, too.
The acting is terrible, but the parts aren't meant for great actors. Amateurs could perform as intended.
The cinematography is surprising. Several scenes will seem familiar or cliché, and yet you'll notice an unconventional angle was chosen and appreciate that it was the best angle for that scene, or some unconventional pan that conveys perfectly the scene's direction and momentum. The camera and choreography were refreshing. It's a knee-jerk reaction these days that "the unconventional camera work was overdone, false ambition". That doesn't apply, here. Tarantino seems to use the camera to carve beautiful, curling lines through the cinema space.
The color scheme is based on the Nazi flag. It's cheaply and effortlessly presented, out front, that no shame was felt in being so obvious. That's a sense you get through the whole movie, a shrugging "so what" from the director, "I know, how cheap, just watch this next part". It's shameless and efficient, and the director's attitude justifies the title.
The movie is about the megalomania of war entertainment. How else to phrase that: "war-based entertainment" is superlative; "war movies" doesn't quite capture all of it; "glorification of war" is the impetus, not the form. The movie does actually present a message that "war is anything but glorious", but it is so quick and unapparent that it barely counts as the point of the movie. The rest of the movie is purely about glorifying war, on purpose. The movie's entire plot is about the use of the recording and recounting of war as a glorious pursuit for the sake of manipulating public consensus, or for the sake of turning a dollar, or for the sake of continuing a tradition, upbringing, or pastime. The ironies involve what you could say is a "film-maker's guilt": that inevitably, like all of modern technology, much of the advances in film we rely on today were made under the auspices of war propaganda, and that ultimately war propaganda is about instant gratification and megalomaniacal pursuits. The reason such propaganda and films in general are useful is because they are effective, effective because the film maker knows how to engage the audience, who are engaged because they relate so well they become immersed in the film to some extent. It becomes "realistic" to them as they watch it. This was not quite understood before World War Two; it is well understood, today, and perhaps was the entire expression of the "New Wave" in cinema. Today we have immersive, interactive environments where a person can fulfill their megalomaniacal desires and destroy hundreds of simulated human targets in a short period of time; this is called "realistic", "battle simulator", and so on, and not just by way of marketing. "Inglourious Basterds" symbolises the advent of the wholesale destruction of human lives as a pair of characters, one representing the half that is the real mechanism of war, and the other representing the portrayal of that for whatever purpose -- entertainment, propaganda and disinformation, training and briefing, conditioning, pre-conditioning, conditioned response sublimation, post-hypnotic immersive deprogramming, career choice, and so on.
All of that aside, the movie addresses the issue of racial stereotyping being bolstered by cinema. Obviously, people form stereotypes primarily based on direct experience and to a lesser extent information from others. In a state such as that, a person can be expected to have their stereotypes removed by further experience, or to have them reinforced by the same. Granted, you can use film as that form of "information from others" to lend suggestions of stereotypes to someone, but they may be just as easily rejected by the audience. Now, consider a film industry that is notoriously typecasting, where you only see people of certain "racial" heritage in certain roles. Russians, Slavs, and African descendants all complain of this occurring overmuch in Hollywood. The movie doesn't appear to address the issue of how Russians and Slavs are typecast as mobsters, vampires, bad guys, and so on, but it at least addresses the problems that African-Americans have faced historically in the film industry, in as quickly, directly, and obviously as it addresses "war isn't glorious". A person who is being informed by film is going to have a source of information that not only tries to present stereotypes, it tries to ensure that those stereotypes appear to be true in the world as far as film allows the world to be presented. "Slavs are all Dracula? Thanks, Hollywood! Blacks all have to die right away or they're going to escape and tear up the Empire? Thanks, Hollywood! Russians are all American-hating mobsters? Thanks, Hollywood!" Obviously such stereotypes are not true in the real world, but try and admonish Hollywood about it and get them to stop making that impression. Tarantino gives just that a shot.
Tarantino also expresses what I would say is probably a profound dislike for Nazis in general, and I would guess probably by way of the fundamentals they tried to stand for. If anything, you can say the movie is Tarantino's self-validation of his morals. "I'm a good person -- look what my fantasies are." Besides all of the artsy "message" content, or "what this means about the director" and so on, it's just a terrible comedy. I can't even say it's "action" -- there are all of two action scenes, and one is barely "action". The rest is just a bunch of violence. It's a bloody, gory, horrifying comedy.