With Inglourious Basterds coming to theaters in a little over a month from now, our cinematic glances doesn't shift to Brad Pitt or Eli Roth, but instead the conversation turns to the director. Quentin Tarantino is a lightning rod within cinema circles, and nowadays, he's a bit more divisive than in previous years. With his latest output of Kill Bill and Death Proof, the question of where Tarantino fits in the landscape of contemporary American cinema. His upcoming film has already created a firestorm online, with some calling it an instant masterpiece and others saying its abysmal. In order to comprehend his relevance and importance in cinema, we first have to dissect how he has gotten to this point.
Quentin Tarantino is always reviled as the greatest 90’s independent cinema innovator, though most of his film rely heavily on influence. It is true that nothing is truly original in art, but when it comes to Tarantino, he is often cited for bringing a fresh new perspective to the 90’s film aesthetic despite bringing only storyline to the table when making his films. When one looks at his first commercial work, Reservoir Dogs, a seasoned film scholar can recognize the off-the-cuff violent surrealism of Sam Peckinpah. In his “masterpiece” Pulp Fiction, the non-sensationalized violence evokes the spirit of early Martin Scorsese while his accusatory camera heralds to Goodfellas. It can be argued that his epic Kill Bill films are almost completely homage, as they are practically just a 1970 ultra-violent samurai flicks, all the while Tarantino photographs the film like a spaghetti western in the vein of Sergio Leone. Even in his writing and producing credits, Tarantino is always looking to recreate the past, as he tried his shot at the action-horror style of Sam Raimi films in From Dusk Til’ Dawn, as well as Eli Roth’s pseudo-exploitation flick Hostel, which has its roots in the films of Ruggero Deodato and the Japanese Guinea Pig series.
Everyone knows and loves Pulp Fiction, but it is an illusion of a film. A good one, but it still is a flurry of expert scripting and breakthrough style. As a movie, it is scattered brained and definitely not anchored by any of the acting. Despite my issues with the film, it was a worldwide success both commercially and critically. Though with his 1997 follow-up to Pulp, audiences and critics were under whelmed by his jab at the blaxploitation genre in Jackie Brown. While the critical and box office response wasn’t as pure as Pulp’s, Tarantino’s third film is arguably his most personal and successful. Jackie Brown is a perfect representation of what Tarantino can accomplish with just the spirit of influence, as opposed to using it as a crutch. While the pop culture references are present in Brown, they do not overwhelm the picture to the point that you are recognizing and getting involved in the homage. This change of pace on Tarantino’s behalf makes this film a far-better viewing experience, as it strives to not just recreate favorite moments from the director’s most coveted pictures of his past, but to inject a 90’s sensibility into a genre that has since gone the way of the Dodo.
Where Jackie Brown differs from another Tarantino film like Kill Bill, is that Tarantino doesn’t inflate the genre he is emulating. In Kill Bill the over-influence is evident from the first bloody fight in the suburban household, but in Jackie Brown, we see the film’s obvious influence in the title sequence, and from then on there is rarely a moment that seems to overtly reference the blaxploitation genre. By incorporating very little within the film that screams 1970’s, the film becomes reflective of Tarantino’s own work. But alas, Brown's reception was less than enthusiastic, with many wanting another Pulp Fiction instead of actual growth. Brown inadvertently shows that even with a better story and a more polished set of characters, those in our culture only want Tarantino for his fast-talking dialogue and extreme violence. In essence, the film’s critical reception helps support the theory of the culture built by films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction: that if films of the 90’s and later are going to participate in pastiche, it must be of film’s of a violent nature.
Unfortunately, Tarantino was either shaken by the good-but-not-so-good reaction to Jackie Brown or was too lazy to compile another worthy script, as his work since then has been simple re-imaginings of his favorite films. Kill Bill: Volumes One and Two lacked a sense of purpose or necessity, yet the film community embraced both, mainly due to the kinetic style of the filmmaking, which really was just piecing together action sequences from Shogun Assassin and The Wild Bunch. His last project Grindhouse, which is was completed with his more adventurous friend Robert Rodriguez, is a throwback in essence to the exploitation films of the 1970’s, even interspersed with faux trailers for fictional exploitation films to flesh out the "grindhouse" experience. Tarantino has side-stepped pastiche and in the process has created a culture of not rediscovery, but of mockery. There no longer needs to be a purpose for a homage, it just needs to simply exist. Like Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the film community needs to ask itself if all of this work is truly necessary.
Quentin Tarantino’s work during the 1990’s is not meant to be dismissed – that would be irresponsible, but the film community needs recognize his first two films as empty commercials for the films by other directors. Jackie Brown is the prime example of Tarantino as a master of the post-modern, not Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. Tarantino uses the genre of blaxploitation to setup the cultural background for the audience before they experience the film, and then reels them into a story that actually strives to say something about a then present culture. The late-90’s in America was a frightening time in retrospect because it was, on some levels, all success and no repercussions.
Relevance is becoming a worrisome topic for one of America's most beloved filmmakers. The industry is going through a sort of renaissance thanks to smaller movies getting better traction among general audiences (see: The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire), and bigger movies moving towards more coherent, rewarding stories (see: The Dark Knight and WALL-E), so one must ask if another Tarantino film like Death Proof would be enough to turn him from the golden child into yesterday's news. I personally have faith in Inglourious Basterds from the script and what I've seen so far, but clips and paper are never a great indicator of intention or quality.
So where will Inglourious Basterds fit in? Will it be another exercise in how many directors Tarantino can crib from in a two-hour runtime, or will he get back to personal cinematic growth? This can only be answered by viewing his newest work, but he leaves us hints in his last three pictures. There hasn't been a move towards legitimacy within those films, but instead, he has proved three times that he is a student of all cinema. We get that you love all the dregs of cinema, Quentin, but either get busy making worthy movies or push out some terrible schlock that someone can call their gold in thirty years.
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