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Opening scene: "Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France"

A tranquil, pastoral scene, until a group of Nazi Officers pull up to a small rural farmhouse. Enter Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz), wearing a designer Nazi outfit, complete with polished boots and over sized pipe. Under the floors of the farmhouse, a Jewish family is in hiding, their eyes glaring upward through the tiny cracks in the floor as if helpless mice (I was reminded of MAUS, the greatest comic book every written about the Holocaust)
The audience knows something horrible is going to happen. But before it does, they are given a lecture. Landa tells the father (as well as the audience) that Jews are rats, rodents which need to be exterminated. Like rats, Jews have a instinct for preservation and survival second to none. The machine guns aim for the floor, rats exterminated.

Next Scene: Also somewhere in Nazi Occupied France.

Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt) is speaking to a group of Jews chosen specifically for their hatred of Jews..all twelve of them. His accent is that of a good old boy southern sergeant shouting orders. The groups mission is to kill Nazis. He demands that each bring back one hundred Nazi scalps. The Nazis are to be disemboweled, disfigured, dismembered, tortured.

Tarantino has set up a movie which is part spaghetti western, part grand opera. The opening is the spaghetti western, the conclusion is grand opera. While watching Bastards, I kept remembering the comic books I used to read back in the fifties. The books were filled with GI's carrying knives in their mouths, waiting in the darkness to slash open Nazi throats. The comic books were entertainment.

So what does one make of all this? It was clear to me that Tarantino's work is meticulous. But I don't think anyone left the theater with any new insights. The movie was written to stimulate the center part of the brain (fear, anxiety, hate, revenge).
For me, it was cathartic watching Nazis being slaughtered by GI Jews. It's about time Hollywood stopped stereotyping male Jews as pussies who need to visit their Park Avenue shrinks every week (I call it the Woody Allen effect). As Kinky Friedman once wrote, "They don't make Jews like Jesus anymore."
Say what you might about Israel, but it is not a country occupied by self deprecating wimps.
But remember, the entire movie takes place in an alternative universe. In our own universe, the universe we live in, the reality was Auschwitz and Dresden.

My advice. Watch the Movie. Stimulate the center of your brain. Take pleasure in revenge on a grand scale. But don't, don't for one second allow your thoughts to wander to the frontal lobe.