Ever since I saw Quentin Tarantino on TV about the time Pulp Fiction was released, I have been reluctant to watch his films. He struck me as arrogant, juvenile and just plain rude. Not a guy I’d like to meet or with whom I’d like to spend time. A few years later, I read a review of his performance in Wait Until Dark on Broadway and thought he had taken the role just to grandstand in his new found fame.
Reviewer Ben Brantley said he had basically just phoned in his part:
Playing a sadistic, murderous thug to Ms. Tomei’s beleaguered young blind woman, Mr. Tarantino seems menacing to nothing except possibly Mr. Knott’s script. Whether raising his voice in deranged fury or softly promising to commit unspeakable tortures, he registers at best as merely petulant, like a suburban teen-ager who has been denied the use of his father’s Lexus for the night.
He seemed the worst type of person, rude and arrogant, convinced he was the greatest there was in any endeavor he attempted. When I moved to LA and started watching and discussing movies with a circle of Hollywood wannabes, one of my closest friends insisted I watch Pulp Fiction, certain that I would enjoy it. He even offered to pay for the video rental if I didn’t like the flick. So, I relented. And had to agree it was a darn good movie. Tarantino made brilliant use of his, shall we say, skewed chronology, chopping sequences up and moving them around to keep us engaged.
Now, I certainly wouldn’t call it one of my favorite films. I don’t think I’ll watch it again. I do acknowledge that it keep me entertained and was brilliantly made.
I should have remembered that inexperience when Inglourious Basterds was still in theaters. I didn’t go to see it, not because I had heard it was bad, but because Tarantino kept behaving badly. Well, a friend loaned me her DVD; I finally got around to watching it Saturday night. I reluctantly popped it in, feeling I “needed” to see it so I could talk about it. I was just going to watch a few minutes while I ate my late-night snack. I wanted to hate it because it didn’t seemed right that someone so rude could make a movie so good.
Well, I didn’t get my wish. I watched it until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
And there were some masterful performances. Brad Pitt was entertaining with near perfect comic timing. It took me a while to realize how good Christoph Waltz was because I hated his character so much, then I realized that the reason I hated him because he was doing his job. It did not surprise me when I read that he received an Oscar nomination for this performance. I do think that two of the women in the movie were shortchanged. Mélanie Laurent was good as Shosanna and I particularly liked Diane Kruger‘s interpretation of a 1940s German film star.
Entertaining as I found this flick, it was, like Pulp Fiction quite disjointed. Story-teller Tarantino ain’t. It seemed more like a series of vignettes around a common theme than a story with any kind of narrative structure. I mean, the story didn’t emerge until well over half-way through the movie; the movie was more set-up than story. All that said, it engaged me. I didn’t have the urge to pick up my laptop and surf the web as I do when watching a dull DVD.
And a lot of it seemed like insider’s baseball, with frequent references to actors and directors of the period and on filmmaking. And many scenes seemed familiar — as if I’d seen them before. A friend once compared Tarantino’s films to a mix tape, scenes from other movies strung together in a manner the compiler, er, director finds works to fit his mood.
All the said, I realize I haven’t even touched upon the film’s theme — it’s about a group of Jews led by a Southern redneck (Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine) parachuted behind enemy lines to kill Nazis during World War II. It’s a little bit too bloody for my taste, but, well, I gotta be honest here, itt held my interest. (And don’t we all want to see dead Nazis being scalped? Admit it, we do.) It may not have been a story in the traditional sense, but it was entertaining. And I guess maybe that was it’s purpose.
Col. Hans Landa, best multi-lingual villian ever! That scene in the cinema, just after Pitt’s character was told Germans “don’t do Italian well”………..Too funny!
I always thought Tarantino’s bit in _Reservoir Dogs_ was the weakest bit in the movie.
You didn’t criticize Brad Pitt’s accent. May I take it, then, that Pitt finally did a good job with an accent? 🙂
ILC, I never really thought of Brad Pitt’s accent; I was just so entertained by his character!
Has anyone else seen the movie Cache? It is one the best movies I’ve seen with hands-down the best closing shot ever.
Tarantino sounds like a cheap adulterated Italian wine that the natives won’t touch.
Inglorious Basterds appears to be a cheap adulterated Hollywood drug trip that features the revenge of the Jews as a fanasty plot in place of the magnificent bastards (Patton) of all origins who took real bullets and died in real missions.
Dan – That’s good news. Watching _Seven Years in Tibet_, I could think of nothing but his “accent”. But that film was 1997; some actors may get better.
I had the exact same feelings about Mr. Tarantino until I saw Kill Bill Part 1 on TV (I’m too squeamish to watch a movie that bloody in the theater). Again, very much a series of vignettes, but the final vingette at The House of Blue Leaves culminating in the hand-to-hand battle between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu was nothing short of astonishing. That and his incredible ear for music made me a fan.
“The Devil’s Own” would have been a fantastic film if it hadn’t been for Pitt’s complete inability to accurately mimic an Irish accent. His facial expressions and body language were great but his accent was such a horrid put-on that I couldn’t enjoy his performance in that movie. In Inglorious Basterds, though, he was a riot.
I have to agree, Tarantino isn’t much of a storyteller. And he behaves like a 13-year-old on crack when in public. I continue to be very surprised at how much I end up liking his movies, though.