Tarantino Brilliance – The Initiative Post
This week I wanted to explore a director that has fostered my love of film for as long as I can remember. When people ask me what films I love, I find myself listing many films directed by Quentin Tarantino. On Wednesday morning this week I woke up to news on my Facebook feed with the release of the trailer for what may potentially be his final film – “The Hateful Eight”. “The Hateful Eight,” is set up to twelve years after the Civil War, in a snowy Wyoming landscape, and without spoiling the details – is set to be yet another example of his excellence from the original narrative, to the extravagant . For me, Tarantino’s camerawork is so purposefully used, moving between the scenes and landscape with such ease that it is in some ways, seamless. While he creates films that don’t reach out to everyone – he has created films that I worship. Tarantino’s 1997 Pulp Fiction blends a black comedy with crime and has one of the most quotable scripts of all Tarantino’s films. The film won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the movie and is one of modern cinema’s most respected films. Tarantino is known for his big budget films, however his next notable film – Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2– was done on a budget of just $30million, which is considerably small for a director of Tarantino’s calibre. Uma Thurman’s performance in the film reflects his style of a serious style merged with parody. For example, The Bride (Thurman) has just murdered a room full of people, and audience members are left laughing at what they’ve just seen – partially out of disbelief, and partially at what they’re looking at. I love the way that his films make audience members uncomfortable.
Tarantino is known for his “Eye of god” shots – whereby we are shown something looking at it from above, or from wide-angle shots, to put things into perspective. This reminded me of something we learnt in my Australian Cinema class this week that is a simple thought, but something I really never considered; a typically small budget film will use many close up shots with the intention of avoiding the construction of background landscape, sets, etc, whilst a big budget film has the funds to produce this.
A third film of Tarantino’s that is one of my favourite films is Django Unchained. In one of my previous blog posts, I referenced the sheer madness that was some of the script for Django Unchained. It is considered to be a “spaghetti western”. To briefly summarise, Django teams with Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German bounty hunter, who poses as a dentist, and then promises freedom in exchange for his help in collecting a large bounty. Django Unchained confirmed for me the Tarantino style where you are quite literally left with your mouth hanging open in disbelief at the sheer madness of what you are looking at. More often than not, this madness is teamed with violence and brutality. You can’t quite grasp how many people just got killed, you can’t quite understand why that person had to be killed etc.
It’s incredibly hard to justify the brilliance of Quentin Tarantino. You really need to watch his films for yourself, to understand whether you love them or not. However, for those who love him – some of this may make sense to you.