Inglourious Basterds--WWII through a lens darkly.

Now, of course, I have posted that I really don't approve of torture and so on, but what the hell--this movie has the odd person tortured or disfigured. But then again--

These are Nazis. And this movie? Well, this movie kills fascists. And in this movie, there is also another movie that kills fascists. This is a movie about WWII movies which are about killing fascists. And it is also about revenge, and how stories, such as in cinema, act as a catharsis to explore and safely experience what we historically, and in real life--don't, really.

Got it?

Meh. Inglourious Basterds is, I think, still enjoyable even if you don't try to peel back all the layers of real vs. fictional, from the beginning when the movie opens with "once upon a time..." to the kind of marquis-logo that introduces "The Bear Jew" or the recurring images where scenes seem to be recapitulating scenes from old movies--there's a scene in a cafe where the rather awesome Melanie Laurent is sitting at a table and her face is juxtaposed with the face of Garbo on a cinema poster just outside the cafe window. There is another scene where she is posed just gazing out of a circular window, which recalls another movie--even if you can't recall the scene or the name.

This movie is, in a way, a palimpsest of WWII references in cinema. The character, Aldo Raine--why, that name is similar to war-picture actor Aldo Ray. Brad Pitt, in acting out this character of "Aldo the Apache", plays his "Yank" southern accent broadly. There are the slap-dash recruits for a dangerous mission--the Basterds. There is a German "Sgt York" in the form of Fred Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) who is not merely a war hero in the sense of a good soldier, but also a celebrity in that Josef Goebbels has made him the star of a propaganda film of his own exploits--

And his not-exactly love interest is Laurent's Shoshanna Dreyfus--a Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis once, in the form of the wonderfully evil Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz--who waltzed away with the movie, he was so good) who plans her revenge via celluloid against the Nazis--

This movie has layers of motivations, and some violence, and there are lots of subtitles because I think better than half of it is in French or German. But it is damn entertaining, because let's face it--we hate Nazis. We're supposed to. And serious though the scenes may be, humor is injected and appreciated.

It's hard to describe, ultimately, but good. I recommend it.