“I think this might just be my masterpiece.”

Lt. Aldo Raine and his branding iron.

Anyone who’s seen Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds knows where this post’s title comes from. I don’t think this is giving anything away, but SPOILER ALERT or whatever the hell you’re supposed to say. Those eight words up there are the last bad-ass words in the whole bad-ass movie, spoken by Brad Pitt’s bad-ass character, Lieutenant Aldo Raines, after doing something that could probably only be adequately described as really bad-ass.

But here’s the kicker: when I heard those eight words, I knew instantly they were Tarantino’s message to both his fans and his detractors. I knew it as clearly as if he’d swapped out the reel to a shot of just his face, cackling as the entire film industry burned down around him. ”Like it or not,” he seems to say, “if you love movies–I mean if you really love movies–you have no choice but to come begging to me. Because, when it comes to sheer movie magic, I’ve got a motherf–king corner on the motherf–king market.”

I know. I’m probably overstating my case here. It’s not really fair to put those kinds of words in Tarantino’s mouth. Even by his standards, that’s pretty arrogant stuff, especially when it’s derived from one line from one character at the end of one movie.  But you see, that’s exactly it! It’s not just that one line–it’s every blessed second. Basterds absolutely bleeds superiority, and I don’t mean a sense of superiority–I mean the real thing. In terms of ambition, scope, and pure, pound-for-pound cajones, it’s just heads and tails above almost everything else being made today.

It starts in the opening chapter, which could have been, and as Tarantino admits, pretty much was, ripped straight out of the best of Sergio Leone–a metaphysical gunfight between a fast-drawing, corrupt sheriff and an overmatched farmhand. The scene just drips tension. Christoph Waltz, playing the SS “Jew-Hunter” sent to France to eradicate the remnant Jews, is blistering, and Denis Menochet doesn’t miss a beat as the heartbreakingly human object of Waltz’s interrogation. Menochet isn’t on screen for more than fifteen minutes or so, but his brief performance, like Viola Davis’s in Doubt and Michael Shannon’s in Revolutionary Road, will haunt you.

Basterds doesn’t let up. We meet Lt. Aldo Raines and his crew of Nazi-brutalizing, American jews, and we’re simultaneously delighted and disgusted by the way they mow down “Natzis.” Although Tarantino avoids even glancing at the sweeping battlefront vistas we’ve grown to expect from movies about the second World War, he certainly isn’t a wallflower. He plunges straight into the tension of the occupation and the psycho-political heart of the conflict, seemingly not even hesitating to blast through barriers of history–what Pi Patel might have called, “dry, yeastless factuality.” It’s obvious Tarantino’s saying something about the strength of story and film, and he does so in a way that doesn’t let you ignore it, even if it means you hate it.

And it’s certainly conceivable that one could hate it. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination.  The “basterds” at times, seem almost an afterthought, as Tarantino delves deeper into other stories. I can easuly imagine someone taking umbrage at Tarantino’s revisionism. Hitler is a figure that commands powerful emotions, and to play around with the truth of who he was and how he died is a dangerous plan. Really, I don’t blame anyone for completely dismissing this movie. The only inappropriate reaction to it is ambivalence. Tarantino doesn’t leave us the option. It’s either treasure, or it’s trash.

In Inglorious Basterds, Lt. Aldo Raines goes about his mission without the slightest twinge of misgiving or remorse. Similarly, Tarantino is a filmmaker on a mission, a mission to take us places we’ve never been but, at least in his view, we desperately need to go. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that QT views himself as a sort of Aldo Raines–a plodding, but focused outsider, with both the delicacy and the punch of a prizefighter, storming the barricades of our occupied imaginations and carving his initials in all of us. Perhaps the genius of IB is actually that, whether or not Tarantino actually succeeds in any of this is moot. In the end, it doesn’t matter if it works. because deep down, we all desperately wish it would.