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Mastering the Art of Tarantino

Who’s Afraid of the King of Cool?

Opinion by Paul Maslak
Posted:  September 9, 2009

Like fine wine, fine filmmakers get better with age.  The more they practice their craft, the steadier and more effective their creative choices. That old practice-makes-perfect bromide is not so hard to understand.  Surprisingly, though, sometimes the same holds true for their audiences.  The more we watch an evolving filmmaker’s work, the more we appreciate his acquired mastery.  I count myself among the latter for the art of Quentin Tarantino.

I admit I’ve come last to the party.  But my journey has been difficult.

When Tarantino first appeared on the festival circuit with Reservoir Dogs, I thought he was absurdly overrated:  A storyline lifted from Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (Lung fu fong wan), starring Chow Yun-Fat, provided the dramatic chassis upon which to string unending profanity, unwatchable violence, and a denouement with a magic gunshot that could only have hit its target in a bad B movie.  Okay, Tarantino had a tiny budget.  No reshoots.  And didn’t that same magic bullet conclude George Steven’s classic big budget Western Shane in the shootout between Alan Ladd and Jack Palance?  To my mind, however, the critics who raved about Reservoir Dogs did so only because it won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize - owing in part to home court insider festival favoritism - and because that trophy intimidated critics into biting their tongues rather than report what they really thought.  If Reservoir Dogs had a redeeming moral meaning, I would not have known because I was too incensed by the contrived ugliness of the cinematic experience.

Tony Scott’s Tarantino-penned True Romance only reinforced my impression.  Capricious graphic violence within a reality context has always troubled me, at least for high profile films with major stars and full-throated theatrical releases.  I know, many quality filmmakers argue that film violence can reinforce peaceful societal values by portraying instances of violence as unglamorous, disgusting, repulsive, emotionally repugnant and, therefore, not something to be admired or indulged.  And for the overwhelming majority of psychologically normal adults, their argument is valid. The problem lies with the impressionable, with the abnormal, and with those already psychologically prone to violent behavior.  Instances of screen violence can reinforce their warped sense of its acceptability, further desensitize them and discourage empathy.  The most extreme of these rageaholic nutcases usually identify with the perpetrators of violence — whether motivated by good or by ill - and feel empowered by such scenes.  Consequently, while media violence may not cause violent behavior, it may provide a provocation to violence for those already predisposed.  These findings were first made public in 1969 by LBJ’s National Advisory Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence following the assassinations of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., and have been reaffirmed by similar studies and Presidential commissions since. So early-on, Tarantino’s film violence struck me as socially insensitive.  A tawdry rip-off of the tawdriest Hong Kong action films.  Also, Tarantino left his personal manager.  Not anyone’s fault, really.  Something that often happens when a new talent advances to the next level.  But I knew his ex-manager as a periodic professional phone friend, and I knew the manager felt like a jilted bride at the altar.  That did not help my feelings toward Tarantino the artist. Then came Pulp Fiction and, yes, the kid was King of Cool.  Great knack for dialogue, great eye for actors, great ear for music, and a great sense for unusual storytelling.  AND he resurrected John Travolta as well as orchestrated showy performances for Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Rosanna Arquette, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Ving Rhames, Amanda Plummer and Christopher Walken.  No insignificant feat for a single film.  But still, I was not overjoyed by the tour of America’s pop cultural sewers. And could he do it again without writing partner Roger Avary? With Jackie Brown, he did.  Well, nearly.  Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch certainly helped.  Still, Tarantino demonstrated clear command of his distinctive approach to material.  Plus, I began to see him about town.  Not that he would know me from the random tourist on the Hollywood walk of fame. Just that we shared the same air space at American Cinematheque screenings of classic French film noir and at art house showings of Hong Kong New Wave gangster films. Obviously, we also shared a similar taste for sophisticated action, suspense and noir.  I eased up on my snobbery.  Marginally. Next Kill Bill, Vols. 1 and 2 revealed a new maturity.  Tarantino unleashed a joyous flair for Hong Kong-style martial arts action set pieces and Japanese anime.  The violence was more controlled, more stylized.  Delinquent teenagers would not be picking up sadistic tips from watching the blinding blur of fists, of rapid-fire feet or the whiz of swords.  And, oh, the storytelling was just superb.  Of course, I studied a little karate as a kid.  Okay, I studied a lot of karate, kung-fu, taekwondo, judo, boxing, you-name-it.  I never bought Uma Thurman as the female Bruce Lee no matter how well Tarantino concealed her stunt double.  Also, he misfired a few cultural cues.  For example, our virtuous heroine acquiring her fighting skills from an albino master would be like the valiant Luke Skywalker learning the ways of the Force from the evil emperor.  Still, he turned the martial arts genre on its ear and made something fresh.

At last, we come to the world’s current favorite film, Inglorious Basterds, where Tarantino defies gravity.  People who make movies for a living, who go into the editing rooms to make sense of scenes, generally loathe big table sequences.  They are not fun to shoot.  They are not fun to edit.  I mean, really, talking heads sitting around talking.  Dull, dull, dull. And the more people at the table, the more dialogue and roundtable reactions you must bring to life.  Rule of thumb is to get the players off the table as quickly as possible.  Have them pick things up, stand up, walk around.  Better yet, have them stand on the table.

None of that matters for Tarantino.  In Basterds, he spins his multi-player table scenes into riveting masterpieces of suspense.  Not just once, but again and again and again.  He does it in English.  He does it in French.  He does it in German.  He does it with subtitles.  He does it with big movie stars.  He does it with relative unknowns.  He does it with two tables simultaneously.  Hichcock would applaud.  Also, this time he uses misfired cultural cues (what’s the German way to raise three fingers?) as well as character idiosyncrasies (when are they going to lose it?) as part of the suspense.

And, yes, it all hangs on his judicious, controlled, and quick-cut use of graphic violence - without which no ticking bomb … no tension.

A few stalwart critics have withheld recognition of Tarantino’s present achievement because, they complain, he disrupted the suspension of disbelief in the final act by involving historical figures in ways that did not factually occur.  I would point out that the stalwarts were also slow to recognize the merit of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and North by Northwest because they missed the point.  Inglorious Basterds is a piece of cake, not a slice of life.  The project began as an imaginative tongue-in-cheek parody of Robert Aldrich’s WW2 thriller The Dirty Dozen and took its name from Enzo Castellari’s The Inglourious Bastards, a spaghetti retread of the same film.  The so-called sins of disbelief could have been snipped out of the script in five minutes with Final Draft.  From a technical perspective, they reflect tone and remain insignificant to structure.  They certainly did not inhibit stellar performances from Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Daniel Bruhl, Denis Menocher, Til Schweiger, Michael Fassbender, or from possible Academy Award contender Christoph Waltz. Like Alfred Hitchcock, Tarantino is the exception that redefines the rule. And it’s way past time for the coronation of this once and future King of Cool.  Quentin Tarantino has not just grown up as an artist, he has transcended to the rarified ranks of the unquestioned past masters of cinema.