It's not enough to say that "Inglourious Basterds" is Quentin Tarantino's best movie. It's the first movie of his artistic maturity, the film his talent has been promising for more than 15 years. The picture contains all the things his fans like about Tarantino - the wit, the audacity, the sudden violence - but this movie's emotional core and bigness of spirit are new.

"Inglourious Basterds" is an amalgam, an expansion and a fantasy riff on every World War II movie Tarantino has ever seen, but this time his referencing of earlier cultural markers doesn't seem arbitrary or in-jokey. Tarantino gets inside our collective movie dream of World War II for the sake of liberating the audience from convention. He'll throw a funny sight gag into a tense scene and somehow only increase the audience's anxiety. He allows himself a range of expression from the brutal to the poignant, from playfulness to "Tristan and Isolde"-like tragedy.

The nimbleness of tone is striking, but what holds it all together - the David Bowie song on the soundtrack, Samuel Jackson's voiceover narration, the pathos and the horror - is Tarantino's singleness of vision. It would be an epic misperception to see "Inglourious Basterds" as some irreverent pastiche. It's not. Every liberty Tarantino takes, in both tone and history, is part of the filmmaker's overarching determination to remind audiences - remind them so they feel it - that World War II was, to put it mildly, the worst thing that has ever happened. Nearly seven decades of cinematic cliche may have dulled our response. Tarantino explodes those cliches to shake us awake.

If you've seen any of the commercials or advertisements, you know that "Inglourious Basterds" stars Brad Pitt as a redneck lieutenant who leads of band of Jewish soldiers into Nazi-occupied France. That's a smart way to market a film - Pitt is a movie star - but the Pitt plotline is not the most important element, and Pitt himself is only adequate in the role. He finds the humor in the character, but unlike every other actor in the cast, he doesn't dig deep enough to find the seriousness of it. He glides on the surface.

Americans are hillbillies. The Brits are blithe and effete and yet, somehow, tough as nails. And SS butchers are always polite, in a menacing kind of way. Tarantino gives us the stereotypes, but pumps them up so that we notice them, then finds the truth inside of them. His greatest creation in "Inglourious Basterds" is the Nazi colonel known as "the Jew Hunter," who shows up in the film's first scene - an extended scene, like so many in "Inglourious Basterds."

The Nazi colonel, as played by Christoph Waltz, is the ultimate polite Nazi - engaging, loquacious, playful, fun-loving, well-mannered, anecdotal . . . and terrifying. Waltz, who has worked in German television, is everything Pitt isn't as an actor, one who can do an exaggerated portrayal and yet keep it authentic every second he's onscreen. His colonel is both a lightweight and a demon, probably a nonentity in civilian life, and yet too shrewd to dismiss. Waltz's face can turn from friendly to deadly with the subtlest shift of expression.

Most of "Inglourious Basterds" tells the story of Shosanna, a young French Jewish woman who witnesses the slaughter of her family by the SS and escapes to Paris, where she gets a job in a local cinema. Because Shosanna is hiding her identity, the role is largely internal, yet through French actress Mélanie Laurent's remarkable performance, we can always see the emotion beneath the composed surface - the terror and the sadness, as well as an annihilating rage almost bordering on madness.

Waltz and Laurent have been unknown in America until now. The same could almost be said of German actress Diane Kruger ("Troy"), who plays Bridget von Hammersmark, an Allied spy. Kruger brings an élan, a passion and a bitter humor to this role that she's previously showed only in her European films. This casting trifecta - Waltz, Laurent, Kruger in roles that Hollywood stars would have killed for - makes the movie and speaks to Tarantino's pursuit of excellence over box office.

With its story of how a movie theater becomes central in the war against Nazism, "Inglourious Basterds" celebrates cinema - its power and dangerous allure. At the same time, Tarantino never forgets what cinema can't do and what war does do. In real life, the people who get killed don't know they're going to be killed, so they don't act like the guest star wearing the red uniform on "Star Trek." When bad things happen, it's a surprise.

"Inglourious Basterds" provides exhilarating release, but it's also a deeply sad film. It leaves the audience suspended in a tangle of strong and conflicting thoughts and feelings, the hallmark of great art.

-- Advisory: This film contains extreme violence and strong language.

To hear Mick LaSalle talk about movies, listen to his weekly podcast at sfgate.com.podcasts.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle