Tarantino continues downward turn

By Kylie Jane Wakefield
Collegian Editor
April 18, 2007

Fifteen years ago, critically-acclaimed and award-winning director Quentin Tarantino made his bloody splash onto the American filmmaking scene. A little film called Reservoir Dogs about a bank robbery gone awry shoved him into the limelight. But it wasn’t until two years later in 1994 that Tarantino successfully proved himself. It was Pulp Fiction that put Tarantino on the map as one of America’s best and brightest filmmakers. It was a refreshing film – it managed to be violent, clever, dramatic, funny and pop-culturally aware while keeping its cool throughout. It was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, and Tarantino won Best Original Screenplay with co-writer Roger Avary. It established Tarantino as a promising young filmmaker with an incredible niche for dialogue and stylishly retro filmmaking techniques.

After Pulp Fiction, Tarantino stayed on the down-low; he wrote the original story for the ultra violent Natural Born Killers, and wrote/directed a segment for the film Four Rooms. Natural Born Killers was criticized for being too brutal, and Four Rooms received little attention. It was on the set of that movie where Tarantino worked with director and writer Robert Rodriguez. The two would go on to collaborate with each other frequently in films.

In 1996, the pair made the vampire horror-action film From Dusk Till Dawn, which Tarantino wrote and Rodriguez directed. It was not to be taken very seriously, and the mostly negative reviews reflected this. One year later, Tarantino returned to his roots, writing and directing a tribute to 1970s blaxploitation films, Jackie Brown. Although the film wasn’t nearly as sharp or intense as Pulp Fiction, it was still well-received by critics and audiences alike.

Tarantino stayed out of the spotlight until 2003, when he made his big comeback with Kill Bill: Volume One. The film starred his self-proclaimed muse Uma Thurman, and borrowed techniques from old Kung Fu movies. The violently funny film broken into two parts garnered both box office and critical success.

Lately, Tarantino has worked with Rodriguez on Sin City and their just-released film Grindhouse. Each director has written and directed his own segment for the film, which has become highly popular among viewers and reviewers. But while Rodriguez has his shining moment with Planet Terror, Tarantino’s talent falls short in Death Proof.

All of Tarantino’s dialogue is characteristically similar – most or all of his characters always have snappy comebacks and while it isn’t realistic, it still manages to captivate. In Death Proof, Tarantino goes a bit overboard with his dialogue, placing scenes that seem to never end in the film with characters discussing unimportant subjects which aren’t even crucial to the plot.

Tarantino used this technique in Kill Bill: Volume Two, which made the film much longer than it should have been. Perhaps he is becoming a little too conceited, expecting that his viewers actually care about these over-extended dialogues. In Pulp Fiction, at least the scenes were kept interesting with every second that passed, where as in Death Proof, the novelty of the dialogue quickly wears off.

Rodriguez, on the other hand, who I only knew from his Spy Kids films and Sin City, hit the target right on the nose (or very deformed, zombie-like nose) in Planet Terror. The film looks like it had a huge budget to work with, and the special effects are way too high-quality for what they’re supposed to be, but Planet Terror is amusing, violent and enchanting from the beginning down to the very last scene. It doesn’t lag like Death Proof.

It’s obvious that Tarantino is a “fanboy,” with his recurrent references to his favorite classic films in most of his works, but in Death Proof it’s painfully clear the whole time. Instead of actually ending up like a grindhouse picture, it ends up as simply a tribute to grindhouse pictures.

Be that as it may, Death Proof has many fabulous moments, from stuntwoman Zoë Bell effortlessly riding on the front of a car going 80mph to a beautiful girl’s face being cut in half by a mid-air tire. I have been infatuated with Tarantino’s films ever since I saw Pulp Fiction, and I know that he can do better.

If Tarantino returns to his origins and sticks to what he knows best, witty dialogue, funny and ironic situations and beyond believably cool characters, he will come out on top once more. Instead of relying on over-the-top situations and attractive women to draw attention to his films, he can put his talent to a more meaningful use. He is bound to be remembered as one of the best American filmmakers, but only if he can continue to prove himself.

wakefieldk1@lasalle.edu