Inglourious Basterds

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Quentin Tarantino is made of celluloid. He is so deeply immersed in film that his creations are all about film. Remarkably, he is also the film-maker today who most closely fulfills Ezra Pound’s mandate to the artist: “Make it New,” at least in the two movies of his that I know and like best – “Pulp Fiction” and now, “Inglourious Basterds.”

Quite literally, Tarantino burns up the screen this time.

There will be thousands of reviews of this film before the week is out. The kinder reviewers will do you the favor of not ruining the suspense by telling you the plot.

“Pulp Fiction” broke new ground and so does “Basterds.”

The storyline of “Basterds” carries you through time with such movie efficiency that you barely know you are watching a film, yet you are reminded of it every minute. How is this possible? Since it’s Tarantino, you will have to endure an inordinate amount of violence (but certainly not more than the real-life violence of the period); yet you may very well agree that this is a comedy and that the violence more closely resembles what we are used to from cartoons; but at the same time, it’s very real, especially when it is visited upon the characters we find sympathetic.

When films have arresting moments, they are usually visual. The beauty of a landscape… how often have we seen the land itself take on the force of a character? There is none of that here, unless it is how the camera falls in love with the faces of the two female leads.

The arresting moments are all in the words, reminding us that even for Tarantino, celluloid man, it all begins with words. So, it’s possible to think back upon exchanges between the characters as we would upon the visual tableaux of other films. The words of this confirmed writer/director have astounding energy; we’re impressed by the intelligence of the actors, how they see what we did not, and draw conclusions that we thought were hidden. It’s not quite the dialogue of “Pulp Fiction,” but it’s close.

This film has been many years in the making, usually a sign that the director believes it to be his or her masterpiece. I don’t think masterpieces can be planned. “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Gangs of New York” were supposed to be masterpieces, but both directors made accidental true masterpieces well before these much lesser films. “Inglourious Basterds” is much closer to “Pulp Fiction” than the planned masterpieces of Kubrick and Scorsese are to their greater works, but I think “Pulp Fiction” is still Tarantino’s masterpiece.

Tarantino does something here that you have not seen before. Aware and fully immersed in the film influences that brought him here, he burns them up.