Tarantino's "Basterds" uses violence to send it's complicated message.

Tarantino's new war movie "Inglourious Basterds"(sic) starring Brad Pitt is a rip roaring thrill ride of Nazis, violence, and scalping. The movie itself is classic Tarantino, from the nail biting tension he builds in the first scene, to the gratuitous violence shamelessly shown at every moment, to the oddly fitting spaghetti western-style musical stings and riffs for each character. But what really intrigues about the superficially meaningless violence is the message Tarantino is putting through. (See below for a link to the synopsis)

Basterd's is a complex movie. On the surface, we have a campy, Tarantino-style action movie, initially comparable to Tarantino's early Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, drowning in action and viol

ent spectacle. But, move a layer down, and Tarantino's movie is a simultaneously a tribute to the old style Western action films of yesteryear, such as "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" and "The Searchers", and the macaroni war movies such as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Where Eagles Dare". The music and timing are reminiscent of the classic Western, with an initially sprawling exposition that gradually speeds up as the movie unfolds, all the while punctuated by thematic music and well timed stings. The setting is pure war movie, a standard "good guys vs. bad guys" with most of the movie set in France. In an ironic nod to the classic war movies of old, the last half of the movie is set in a local movie theatre where a war movie is being shown, and the movie being played serves as both a plot device and a message in itself. Needless to say, Basterds pays an excellent homage to the movies that inspired it.

But if we delve even deeper, Tarantino is saying something more. The way he frames the main

characters the Basterds is almost villainous, and the majority of the Wehrmacht and SS characters we meet in the film are presented in way that is almost sympathetic. Tarantino

sets us up for a conflict. By contrasting displays of "righteous" American violence to "evil" Nazis with demonstrations of Nazi characters humanity, he flips the expectations of the audience. We know the Nazi's are evil. But we also come to view the Basterd's as evil too, their acts of violence start to approach the brutality of the Nazi's themselves. Tarantino wants us to contrast the two types of violence, and his message is multifaceted. I think he wants us to understand

that violence is still violence, no matter how righteous, and at the same time he wants to send a good over evil moral message (which he does with the climax of the love interest at the end). Basterd's is more complex than it might seem to say the least.