- Pulp Fiction
- Reservoir Dogs
- Kill Bill
- Inglorious Basterds
- Django Unchained
- The Hateful Eight
Past posts:
- 2/12/22 Kill Bill Vol. 2
- 2/11/22 Kill Bill Vol. 1
- 9/21/20 Django Unchained
- 11/4/17 The Hateful Eight
- 12/31/15 Reservoir Dogs
- 8/28/15 Inglorious Basterds
I think he's struggled with ending otherwise great movies a few times, including Kill Bill, Django, and Hateful Eight. With stronger endings, I might love these movies, but I don't: that's how much it matters. I liked Kill Bill a lot, Django was largely great to me, and The Hateful Eight had a lot of potential, but ultimately I thought these endings were weak or aimless, which really taints the impression. I'm not sure if they ran out of steam, couldn't be reigned, shouldn't be reigned, or what. The latter two felt aimless, as I recall. Kill Bill didn't feel aimless, but anticlimactic. That one was more admirable to me, with the motherly resolution. But I thought the other two were just kind of baffled. Those I haven't named (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Inglorious Basterds) I don't recall having weak endings, but those are also the ones I haven't seen in a while. But I don't recall those being weak.
I like his movies: they're supercharged by his passion for movies. Their stylistic and entertainment values are high. My only trouble is they're really just movies. They're movies for people who like movies. They're extremely movie-like. If someone had never heard of movies and asked for an example, Tarantino would be a great example. He just loves movies, and makes great ones, but they're heavy on the escapist entertainment side.
Yes, I do think movies can stray a ways into the Art and Life areas. See my relationships with Lord of the Rings, Synecdoche, Tarkovsky,... Life is the most subjective. Tarantino is pretty distinct from all this. I can't take much away, outside my intrinsic interest in movies. If I wasn't so interested in movies, it would just be escape, even further toward the Entertainment corner. This is tough for me, since I have a habit of rigorously justifying how I spend my time, and movies are not the easiest art to justify. Art itself requires justification for me, and movies even more than most -- and Tarantino even more than most movies I watch. I like and enjoy his movies, but they're outside my typical domain where I'm trying to get more art and life out. But I love movies in general, and maintain interest in them, and Tarantino is far from the furthest from my interest.
It's an interesting question to ask, which of Tarantino's work is art. It seems like there must be moments of some artistic inspiration, but as you mention the pop sensibility of his movies feels so overwhelming most of the time. In particular the instances of cartoonish violence really seem to limit any characterization as Art. I'd be interested in your thoughts on Jackie Brown and Once Upon a Time, since those seem to lie closer to the Art corner than his other works.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to separate Life and Art--certainly an interesting pursuit though!
If forced to develop a similar scale I'd probably opt for a single dimension with opposing poles of Pleasure and Art. I think then the former pole would mostly be encompassed by the categories of Romance, Sexual desire, Violence, and Comedy. I guess Art is just whatever's left over. Though really, diligent categorization and genre specification end up being frustrating and fruitless activities most of the time--including in this instance (for me)!
I might feel invigorated after the best Tarantino movie, but not so enriched, and intellectual/emotional takeaways fade quickly. I think these things alert me it's not the most artistic movie. One difficulty in developing such a scale is something satisfying every pole ends up in the middle, next to something satisfying no poles. So in your pleasure/art dimension, watching Tarantino and eating raisins end up side-by-side, though Tarantino is far more pleasurable and artistic. But that's a problem with my diagram too. I agree, a satisfying model is painful to produce, except maybe for specific cases, like comparing Tarantino's relative satisfaction of different values.
DeleteTarantino is interesting to me, despite being pretty far from my general taste in movies, art, etc. But I like Kill Bill in particular, instinctively because of the undeniable badassery of The Bride, but also for the self awareness around the production/writing of the movie. Tarantino unapolagetically turns trope into cliche (or purposely defies this in a predictable way), generates artificial suspense (because he has already told you everything turns out in favor of the protagonist), and takes cliches to the absolute extreme, but the movie remains entertaining despite its predicatablity. This seems rare to me; I'm not totally sure how he achieves this, so it makes me wonder if there is more sophistication than I can currently perceive.
ReplyDeleteIt's refreshing to me that his movies are aware of how gratuitious they are, making no attempt to hide that these are really just fairy tales for adults. In Kill Bill even, the Bride talks to the audience specifically... reminding the audience in some ego trip that Tarantino knows that you know you're just watching a movie (rather than escaping into some reality), and that you enjoyed this campy, fantastical, predictable production that by other critics should be unenjoyable because of these traits.
Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is that maybe Tarantino deserves a closer analysis than the most obvious around entertainment value. Or maybe not. The mechanism he uses that turns the least subtle, least artistic, least sophisticated characters and production style into something entertaining and enjoyable seems at least worthy of investigation, in not to come to the conclusion that there is really nothing below the surface.
You say predictable, but I think the delicate dance of Tarantino that keeps us on edge is we know he's so intimate with his cliches that he could subvert them at any moment. So I think it's actually the interplay between predictable cliches and chaotic subversion that makes it exciting. His sophistication then seems paradoxical: he knows his cliches so well he can intelligently reverse them, and loves both ways enough to put in equal passion. This makes for a succulent and edgy viewing experience: your expectations are alternately satisfied and defied, and both are indulgent. It all seems to stem from his love and knowledge of movies, which begets intimacy with how people experience movies: the cliches and the innovation. Maybe he's just making movies he would watch, that would keep him interested as a cinephile. I shouldn't talk too much about the man himself, since I know very little about him, but his movies scream cinephile like none other.
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