I know what you’re thinking… another Tarantino scene analysis! But we all remember the scene. Here we are, more than a decade removed from the film’s release, and I suspect that, if asked, most people who’ve seen the film only once would cite this as the one scene they remember. It’s the one that appears dead centre of the film, temporally speaking, which I suppose adds some ironic commentary to Tarantino’s choice of song at the moment (“Stuck in the Middle With You”). But when a straight-blade wielding Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) begins to soft shoe across the warehouse floor and sings along to the sounds of “K-Billy Radio” with a twisted smirk on his face, the knot that’s been in your stomach from the moment the opening credits end and a writhing, howling and blood-splattered Tim Roth jumps out at you from the screen, that terrible dead weight in your belly that’s been festering and bubbling takes on new dimensions and gravity as it seizes hold of all your vital organs, taking hostage of your senses and daring you to keep your attention focused on the images before you… figuratively speaking!
At a technical level, the scene is beautifully shot, edited and paced. For example, the way Tarantino’s camera cuts away just as Mr. Blonde cuts off the cop’s ear, like Scorcese in Taxi Driver when he pans the camera away from Travis on the telephone as he gets dumped by Cybil Shephard, and, in one of the examples of humour in all of Tarantino’s films, focuses on a hand-scrawled note over a low-hanging doorway that reads “Watch Your Head,” is pretty clever stuff, since absolutely everyone I ever talk to about this movie swears they saw a man’s ear get severed at this moment. But trust me; it doesn’t happen (on screen, anyways.) If the scene is watched carefully, you realise that Tarantino does not show the ear after being “sliced” on screen after quite sometime, perhaps that was a way to keep the audience anticipated and on their feet!
Watching the scene again, though, I instantly understood (consciously) what makes it work: Mr. Blonde leaves the warehouse in the middle of the song, with the camera following him to his car. If you don’t know a lot about cinema lighting in the pre-digital age, you may not be aware of how insanely difficult that must have been to shoot—to this day, I’m not sure how cinematographer Andrzej Sekula managed to keep the image from blowing out when Madsen first steps outside. But it was necessary effort, because it’s the momentary interruption of the “festivities,” reminding us that there’s a beautiful suburban day taking place just a few yards away from this meaningless act of cruelty.
By the way, I always assumed Tarantino must have cheated the length of the song, so it would still be playing when Mr. Blonde walks back inside. But I just synced the actual track to the movie, and it turns out it’s correct to the second. That’s exactly where the song would be when the door opens again.
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