Cinema is in many ways like chemistry, with directors analogous to chemists, and their films the products of complex, unpredictable chemical reactions. And in a market flooded with pure substances, straightforward films with accustomed properties, director/writer/chemist Quentin Tarantino excels at making mixtures: amalgams of often anomalous ideas, themes and genres. In his most recent effort “Inglourious Basterds” the elements are so well intertwined that the mixture is indeed homogeneous, a prime example of a cinematic solution.

A deeply revisionist pseudo-historical piece, a fairy tale divided into chapters, a war movie, a revenge saga, and a “spaghetti western with World War II iconography” as professed by Tarantino himself, sum up only some of the elements lending to the amalgamation. Explained by the director’s famous love for and knowledge of cinema, this deviation from convention makes the movie hard to digest in one sitting, similar to 1994′s “Pulp Fiction.”

Beyond a borrowed title from Italian B-movie director Enzo Castellari’s 1978 flick “The Inglorious Bastards,” and the World War II setting, nothing else is shared between the outings. The intentional misspelling in both words is unexplained, but my theory is that the title is made to sound like a transcript of a Southern American accent, in the manner that may be said by one of this film’s main characters.

Divided into five largely imbalanced chapters as if from a foreign medium, a technique Tarantino has apparently adopted to make his films more like storybooks, “Basterds” is one of those buildup and payoff movies. The buildup is understandably much longer and more verbose, but it sets up the finale well, and the picture overindulges in neither. To be sure, a few minutes could be easily truncated off the 150 minute film without lasting narrative or dramatic impact, but abbreviation is not necessary considering that most scenes feature interesting mise-en-scène and do not overstay their welcome.

In the first chapter, set in France in 1941, dairy farmer Perrier LaPedite (Denis Menochet) is interrogated by the movie’s main antagonist, Nazi “Jew Hunter” Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) about a missing Jewish family he may be sheltering. The dialogue-driven scene ends as all but one of the family is murdered by Landa’s soldiers, the survivor a teenage girl named Shoshanna (a very pretty Mélanie Laurent) whom Landa, for an unexplained reason, allows to escape.

This and other unsparing massacres, skull-bashing and scalp-ripping, constitute the most violent and gory sequences of the film. Some may squirm and complain at the visual excess, but it is nonetheless nowhere near the tsunami-esque levels of other concurrent films, and even Tarantino’s earlier efforts.

In the subsequent chapters, we are introduced to a group of Jewish-American soldiers called the Basterds, led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), among them psychopath Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) and Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz (Eli Roth), whose goal is to kill and scalp one hundred Nazis each. Eventually, come 1944, they cross paths with an older Shoshanna, now an owner of a Parisian cinema and under the alias Emmanuelle Mimieux. As she smites Frederick Zoller (a well-played Daniel Brühl), the star of Nazi propaganda film “Nation’s Pride,” her venue is chosen for the high-ranking premiere of the film and becomes an important target in a certain Operation Kino.

A reminder: the film is indeed a revisionary fairy tale (even commencing with “Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France…”) and it would be unwise to assume the ending or any key plot points have already been spoiled by history.

Characters are a bit more naturalistic than in other Tarantino outings, which contributes to the movie’s emotional core, but in his vein, most of them speak in the trademark quixotic (albeit very well-written) wisecracks as opposed to mundane, normal conversation. Among other personages are German actress and double agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), the Führer himself (Martin Wuttke), and somewhere mid-way Mike Myers makes a trivial cameo appearance as the deviser of the central Operation Kino.

The quality of the performances varies. Brad Pitt, with his Tennessee accent and apparent Marlon Brando impression, can be aptly described by the hyphenated expressions over-the-top and out-of-place, while Christoph Waltz demonstrates bravura thespian skill and will likely be a favourite this awards season. His villainous, multilingual Hans Landa warrants comparisons with Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter not only because they share initials; both are frightening because their menace is hidden behind intellect and suavity. It can be said that in demeanor, Landa is the polar opposite to the ultimate villain Hitler.

Suffused with awkward, anachronistic musical choices, “Basterds” often opts for silence, and mostly a void as opposed to the suspenseful Hitchcockian variety. Otherwise the film is in a nice wrapping, well-shot and edited and with an allegretto pace.

The reason I refer to the director so frequently in this review is because of his indissoluble attachment to his work, an undeniable presence in his films and love for his characters, his dialogue and any product of his hands and brain. Occasionally the love can turn narcissistic, but an utter refresher in “Inglourious Basterds” is the absence of an elongated cameo by Tarantino, whose appearances in former films proved overlong and irksome. Behind the camera he makes much more of an impact.

Some may argue that the austere setting of the war should not be treated so irreverently. But, in reality, that is not a fault of the film; a little humour and playfulness is what saves us. Although this isn’t one entirely, the concept of the war comedy isn’t new: “The Great Dictator”, “Dr. Strangelove”, “To Be or Not to Be”, and Spielberg’s infamous flop “1941,” to name a few. Even Spielberg’s latter masterpiece “Schindler’s List” was diffused with a bit of humour.

Fundamentally, the film is much more about film than it is about war, and therein lie both its – and Tarantinos – problems and successes. Entertainment value (and there’s absolutely tons of it here) is oftentimes at the expense of a consistent moral basis that can only be dissected from rationalization within some of the dialogue. Nevertheless, from his recent heterogeneous mixtures “Death Proof” and the two “Kill Bills” to this is still a significant, productive, conscious leap, morally and otherwise.

Comment on this article by clicking here