My reply posted to a question on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/s/UHMTjWqhFv
Q: Why do people love Inglorious Basterds so much?
A:
There are many levels and intricacies to this film. The opening scene is certainly one, where you can clearly see multiple levels happening at once.
Many other examples exist. Consider but one, the fact that the film premiered at Cannes, which Tarantino basically mirrors through the plot of the film by including a premiere to be attended by the illuminati. The giant face he shows to the nazi audience is simply the one that speaks to the one at Cannes. He speaks to the audience also through Aldo when Aldo looks at the camera and says it is his masterpiece.
The scene in the tavern is so richly complex with multiple levels of knowledge, going back and forth with jokes while teetering on very high stakes. The knowledge it required to write that ‘the german three’ was different than the english three, that basements are dangerous as military rendezvous points, that nitrate films burns as an explosive and to reference people like Dietrich in drafting Von Hammersmark. Even the Basterds were apparently a real group albeit fictionalized here, all show a very deep knowledge and sophistication of the material.
As a tool to push the plot forward he references Goebbel’s propaganda films… by creating a funny caricature of one with Federick Zoller, and referencing real films like ‘the white hell of Piz Palu’ through different chapters (eg the Paris scenes and also the tavern scene).
The tension that occurs to something as simple as the apple struedel scene and references to milk is a masterstroke. For any other writer it would be absurd and yet he adds great meaning to something so simple.
Let me speak about the milk for a few lines more, in the opening scene, the father tries to dull Landa’s senses by offering him wine at first (not water), Landa sees this and of course goes to the milk. Most people do not pick up on that but it is a subtlety in the script. One among many that occurs and of course the milk comes back as a symbol later on. Everything is somehow connected.
The places where he breaks from the tone, such as when Hans Landa pulls out a calabash (a hint at Sherlock Holmes perhaps?) or when Stieglitz is introduced are done purposefully to break with the flow and to make you laugh. It works.
He did that all while pushing a compelling plot and film forward, so all this is under the hood. It’s punchy and entertaining.
In many movies everyone dies, but not often with the fineness and sophistication that QT showed here.