The Most Powerful Weapon of All.

I finally saw Quentin Tarantino’s Nazi fairytale opus Inglourious Basterds this weekend.  It gave me that same giddy satisfaction I felt in 1994, when my fellow study-abroad students and I walked out of small art house in Bath, England, after seeing Pulp Fiction.  Times ten.

First of all, I’m tickled that Tarantino has applied his ninja-like movie skills to perhaps the loftiest of revenge goals: straight up killing Nazis.  Second, like every Tarantino movie, this chock full of genre references is a love letter to film itself, which gets me every time.   Then you’ve got the dead-on acting and casting, from the good-enough-to-eat Basterds to my nouveau-fave femme fatale Mélanie Laurent to . . . I must pause . . . the impeccable Christoph Waltz.  Straight to the top of my villain list.

But I’ve only just scratched the surface.  Here’s why Inglourious Basterds can and will catapult to instant iconic status in film history: It’s a movie that captures the power of film itself.  [Spoilers below].

What medium did Goebbels use to recruit countless blind supporters for the Third Reich?  Film.  What’s the only way to watch a Jewish American soldier in a James Bond tux pump round after round of lead into a helpless Führer?  Make a movie.  What spectacle could conceivably lure all the Nazi top brass into one room for a night of self-aggrandizing?  Surely, nothing short of a red carpet movie premiere would do the trick.  And what common item, in 1944, came coated with enough nitrate to potentially blow up a building?  Yep.  Film’s one bad-ass motherf*cker.