No director
in recent history deserves his name to become an adjective as much as Quentin
Tarantino. One of the most controversial figures of modern American film emerged from video store
geek to Sundance sensation with his both unique and familiar take on the crime
film, and immediately ‘Tarantino-esque’ was coined as an exciting way to
describe a slew of (often less than exciting) imitators influenced by the new
director. Now Tarantino is back with what promises to
be a bit of a return to his roots with The Hateful Eight looking a bit like a Western version of Reservoir Dogs.
Dabbling in
genres from samurai and kung-fu flicks to historical war films, Tarantino has a
definite style, numerous trademarks and a love of cult cinema that shines
through in every screenplay. A writer and director often criticised for the
levels of violence in his films, he is an auteur unafraid to court controversy.
From sadistic bank robbers to sadistic Nazis, Tarantino’s movie worlds are
littered with low-life scumbags that make life miserable for other characters.
Tarantino
has been known to divide critics, filmmakers and audiences with his vicious
violence, repeated racial epithets and the odd accusation of style over substance.
Spike Lee called him ‘infatuated’ with the ‘N’ word after its regular use in
Jackie Brown (1997) and notable uses in his previous two films. The BBFC
decided to pass Reservoir Dogs (1992) uncut but only after much debate over an
infamous torture scene. His later films like Death Proof (2007) and Inglourious
Basterds (2009) have received somewhat less critical adulation than his
earlier, more startling and fiercely independent works.
Reservoir
Dogs, released in 1992 is the genre defying debut of an ambitious young video
store geek burning to show his skills as both writer and director. It features
a cool cast including Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi, buckets of
blood and in the middle of it all; joker Michael Madsen dancing, ear slicing
and ensuring the film a place in cinematic history. Inspired by the likes of
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and its colour coded criminal names,
Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) and its fractured narrative structure and from
further afield Ringo Lam’s City of Fire (1987), whose final act it virtually
steals wholesale; it breaks the fundamental convention of a heist film. By
barely showing the actual robbery and only the fallout, it focuses on
characters including Tim Roth’s undercover cop and Madsen’s cold blooded
psychopath and fizzes with energy, wit and bloody sadistic violence.
Only two
years later, Tarantino returned with Pulp Fiction (1994), his undisputed masterpiece.
Borrowing liberally from French New Wave influences such as the films of Godard
and Truffaut and telling three stories linked only by gangster Marcellus
Wallace, it is a tour de force of film making; stylish, sexy, swear-y and sickening.
Samuel L. Jackson makes his first appearance in a Tarantino film beginning a
long collaboration that continues today. Never has Tarantino’s dialogue flowed
as richly as between the similarly clad gangsters to Reservoir Dogs' characters,
Jules and Vincent. And never have Tarantino’s monologues been so juicily delivered
as Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic delivery of Ezekiel 25:17. The non-linear
narrative, brutal violence and chapter titles crystallised, confirming
Tarantino as a unique director, borrowing continually from his cinematic heroes
and creating memorable and original works of crime fiction.
He then
adapted Elmore Leonard’s novel Jackie Brown into an infinitely more mature, but
less stylish and snappily scripted homage to Blaxploitation films of the 70s.
It bears all the marks of a director comfortable in his new shoes as the king
of independent cinema, constantly imitated but never bettered. There is less
showing off here; no memorable monologues, a mostly linear structure and a move
away from the regular appearances of Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, and Steve Buscemi
that had featured in Tarantino’s films so far. Pam Grier, Robert Forster and
Robert De Niro all appear with Samuel L. Jackson returning as another ruthless
criminal. It may bear less of the Tarantino-esque trademarks but it still
stands as a classic crime caper, clever and assured filmmaking, and a wonderful
homage to films that influenced Tarantino.
Kill Bill
Volumes 1&2 (2003 and 2004) are the first of Tarantino's foolishly split
double bills. Originally meant to be one film, a decision was made by Tarantino
with most likely a great deal of input from Harvey Weinstein to cut the film
down the middle and unfortunately turned one roaring rampage of revenge into
two volumes that decreased in quality as a result. Kill Bill Vol. 3 might be alive and possible according to the most recent reports, no doubt due to the original films having a lot of
fans with their samurai-flavoured, Shaw brothers inspired bloodletting. Owing a
considerable debt to Lady Snowblood (1973) which provides a template for The
Bride’s story of vengeance, it is filled with references to little known kung-fu films and proved that Tarantino was a director as comfortable with fight
scenes as with dialogue. The pair of films also marked his second collaboration
with his muse Uma Thurman after her iconic part as Marcellus Wallace’s moll in
Pulp Fiction.
If Tarantino’s
career could be divided up into chapters like one of his films, there would
certainly be a chapter called “The Rodriguez Situation”. Best buddies Tarantino
and Robert Rodriguez joined forces on iffy anthology Four Rooms (1995),
directing separate episodes in the odd collection of stories centring on Tim
Roth’s hotel bellhop. Tarantino later guest directed a scene in Rodriguez’s Sin
City (2005) before the pair officially collaborated on their Grindhouse (2007) double
feature, directing one film each to be marketed and screened as one cinematic
experience.
Tarantino’s
Death Proof suffered in comparison next to the gloriously gory thrills of Rodriguez’s
Planet Terror but still has Kurt Russell as a stunt driving psycho and a fierce
car chase that puts stunt woman Zoe Bell (Uma’s stunt double in Kill Bill) right
where she belongs; wriggling around on the bonnet of a speeding car being
slammed by Kurt Russell's death machine. Death Proof deserves the style over
substance accusation of many of Tarantino’s films but the physically scratched image
is wonderfully grimy and though it is completely chronological, it still
features plenty of typically Tarantino-esque dialogue. Americans got to see the
double bill as intended complete with fake trailers in the middle. However Britain
got shafted again by the money men with another terrible decision to release
both films separately.
Inglourious
Basterds was a serious return to form for Tarantino. It is another blood thirsty
tale of revenge and the first of what could potentially become his historical
trilogy. Mixing biggest-star-in-the-world Brad Pitt with up-and-coming actors
like Michael Fassbender and introducing English speaking audiences to the
majesty of Christoph Waltz, it is possibly Tarantino’s most brutal and bonkers
creation. Waltz’s Colonel Landa is another of Tarantino’s ingenious creations,
a smooth-talking sadist who is as comic as he is hideous, almost as over the
top as the astonishingly violent cinema-set climax. Nazi’s hunt Jews, Jews hunt
Nazi’s and Hitler appears only long enough for Tarantino to completely rewrite
the history books.
Django Unchained is a typically brutal and sadistic look at slavery in the
South. Samuel L. Jackson reappears, Tarantino takes another small role as in many of his previous films, and Leonardo DiCaprio joins Tarantino’s memorable list of
sick and twisted nasty bastards. It's a tough watch; both funny, cathartic and occasionally unbearable.
Untouchable
Tarantino can work with anybody he chooses. From the moment he caught Keitel
for Reservoir Dogs to snatching John Travolta and Bruce Willis (at career low
points) in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has a knack for canny casting. His
collaborations with Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and most recently Christoph
Waltz have proved that he is a dream director to work for, despite apparently strangling
Diane Kruger on the set of Inglourious Basterds. Ticking off two of the biggest and
best males stars in Pitt and DiCaprio, he has confirmed that he and Johnny Depp
wish to work together one day in the future. Promising to retire at 60 after a couple more films, we must savour every drop of Tarantino that he has to offer,
with or without Depp.
So what is Tarantino-esque and why has it become such
a commonly used word for cool characters, cooler dialogue and quality
filmmaking; both cult-inspired and mainstream-influencing? His soundtracks are
slick hand-picked play lists; his casts revive the careers of has-beens and
introduce bright new stars and his ripping off of obscure cult cinema creates
fitting homage to little seen movies. His worlds are filled with furious
revenge fantasies, sadistic violence and shot through with distinctive style. From
out-of-the-trunk-of-car shots, non-linear narratives, occasional uses of black
and white to his foot fetish and corpse eye view shots, Tarantino is
recognizable from his films' stylistic flourishes as much as his monologues and often
dazzling dialogue. His influences are many; he is a cinematic magpie, taking
from what he pleases, unchained by genre conventions and creating something new
from the old. His impending retirement is just another reason to revisit his
cinematic oeuvre ahead of The Hateful Eight’s UK release on 8th
January 2016.
