There is always a lot going on Tarantino's movies, and that is putting it mildly. Not only are they riddled and rife with movie connections and intertextuality, references to more or less obscure movie stars and directors, but in this case there is also the whole of World War II's history to take into account.
Inglourious Basterds itself is divided into five chapters: "1 - Once Upon a Time In Nazi Occupied France", "2 - Inglourious Basterds", "3 - German Nights in Paris", "4 - Operation Kino", "5 - Revenge of the Giant Face". Just looking at the titles of the chapters you know what universe you are in. Without searching too deeply you can see the references to spaghetti Westerns and sundry other cinematic allusions.
The story follows a few key characters, most importantly Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). In true Tarantino-tradition each of the separate storylines overlap and tie into each other in complex and intricate ways.
Shosanna survives the massacre of her family by the hand of Col. Landa in the first chapter. Aldo Raine is the leader of a group of Jewish soldiers dropped behind enemy lines in France with the sole express purpose of killing Nazi officials and military as messily as possible. Their cruelty quickly becomes legendary and they are referred to as the “inglorious bastards” giving the movie its title.
Through a series of circumstance the German war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) takes a shine to Shosanna who is active in Paris as the owner of a movie theatre. Zoller wants the premiere of the movie glorifying his efforts as a sniper portrayed in a movie-within-the-movie called "Stolz der Nation" ("A Nation's Pride") to be at her theatre. Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) sees this as an excellent opportunity to boost morale and bring all the higher officials of Nazi military together in one place.
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