Glourious Guignol

 With “Inglourious Basterds,â€� Quentin Tarantino has reclaimed the mantle of postmodernist genius that he hasn’t really worn since “Pulp Fiction,â€� 15 years ago.  “Inglourious Basterdsâ€� may repel, shock, or seduce audiences, but it is the best piece of pure entertainment to appear on the silver screen in a long time.

   In a sense, the “silver screenâ€� is where “Inglourious Basterdsâ€� takes place, because on one level it pays homage to — and occasionally sends up — Hollywood.  The name of the lead character, Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who heads an elite squad of avenging WWII warriors, most of whom are Jewish, is an obvious pun on Aldo Ray, dashing star of many a war flick.

   These “Inglourious Basterdsâ€� of the title work behind enemy lines as a kind of terrorist group to intimidate German soldiers, whose scalps they take as a prize. And yes, this being Tarantino, you have to sit through the scalping.

   Before we meet the Basterds, however, we get a prologue: Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a Nazi “Jew hunter,â€� visits a dairy farm in German-occupied France to search for hideaways. This 20-minute-long set piece is terrifying and classic Tarantino, a mixture of talk, macabre humor, agonizing suspense, and sudden, pitiless violence.

   Topping it off is a jaw-dropping, Oscar-worthy performance by Waltz, a German actor previously unknown in this country.  His is the last word in the lexicon of sadistic Nazi officers, without any of the squinting, overdone malevolence of even his closest rivals (such as Ralph Fiennes in “Schindler’s Listâ€�).

   Later, the Basterds will take on a new assignment, to blow up a Paris theater where all the top Nazis, including Hitler himself (played by Martin Wuttke), are attending a premiere. Complicating matters, the theater is owned by Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jew who had escaped from the farmhouse of the first scene, and who is pursued not only by Landa but also, amorously, by Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a German sniper and star of the film.

   One way to understand Tarantino is to see his movies as an oversized comic strip or graphic novel, a fact made clear by occasional voiceover narrations and devices such as handwritten labels pointing out the names of Nazi leaders.

   Another is to see them as cinematic choreography: each scene in “Basterds,â€� like the first, is a slow dance of torture, suspense and violence, in which even the blood and gore are rendered in balletic terms.  In that respect Tarantino displays the sensibility of auteurs such as Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Penn, and Roman Polanski.

   On one hand, I wish I could say “Inglourious Bastardsâ€� was perfect.  It’s not.  Pitt, a generally underrated actor, is a real liability here. Even given the movie’s comic-book aspirations, Pitt’s performance is too much of a caricature. Michael Myers is also ridiculously miscast in a cameo role that seems intended as an “Austin Powersâ€� spoof.  Wrong movie, wrong era.

   On the other hand, the performances of the rest of the all-European cast — the movie is mostly in French and German — are nearly as amazing as Waltz’s. Those of Laurent, Diane Kruger as a Dietrich-like movie star, and August Diehl as yet another diabolical Nazi officer stand out.

   Glamorous, ghoulish, gorgeous, gory, droll and delirious grand guignol, “Basterdsâ€� has it all. It will be my choice for best picture when Oscar season rolls around.

   “Inglourious Basterdsâ€� is rated R for strong graphic violence, language, and brief sexuality.  It is playing at the The Moviehouse in Millerton and the Cineroms in Winsted and Torrington.