So what’s Inglourious Basterds really about, anyway?

Quentin Tarantino’s WWII flick Inglourious Basterds asserted that it’s still an Oscar contender with its Screen Actors Guild Award win for Best Ensemble, that SAG’s closest equivalent to “Best Picture.” (Slumdog Millionaire won last year.) Nearly half a year after its release, fans and detractors alike can still argue about what the film’s post-modern flourishes, multi-narrative strands and liberties taken with the historical record amount to. For a canny, entertaining guide to the Inglourious screenplay, check out What Does the Protagonist Want? the blog from screenwriter Todd Alcott. Alcott just started an act-by-act analysis of Basterds, and his readings can be as fun and insightful as the films themselves. (Often more so, in the case of his breakdowns of the James Bond and Batman film series.) Consider this take on the pep talk that introduces Brad Pitt’s role, Aldo Raine:

He compares the Basterds to “Bushwhackers.”  To you and me today, “bushwhacker” may be any kind of surprise attacker, but to Raine, coming from rural Tennessee in 1944, the term would have had a very specific meaning.  Bushwhackers were, in the Civil War, small civilian bands who would skulk through the night, kill people, steal property and burn towns, all outside of any military jurisdiction, for the purpose of demoralizing the enemy.  They were, in fact, terrorists.  And Raine, here, describes his plan in purely terrorist terms: he plans to kill German soldiers in the most barbaric and freakish ways possible, so as to frighten them, demoralize them, terrorize them.

“Sound good?” he swaggers to his men, who all respond in the affirmative.  It does sound good!  We just watched what that no-good slime-ball Landa did to LaPadite and that poor Dreyfuss family, we want to see those no-good lousy Nazis get what they deserve.  Tarantino is, again, setting us up for what will be an extremely uncomfortable climax.

The discussions each entries Comments field can be thought-provoking, too. But is Inglourious Basterds an implicit repudiation of terrorist tactics, a “24”-style endorsement of them, or something else entirely? Stay tuned.