1. By Phil Guie, August 17, 2009 in Features
The week before last, we looked at Quentin Tarantino's 90’s output: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and
Jackie Brown. Each film had its own distinct visual style, to be sure, and each was concerned with crime
and the underworld.
But as the decade gave way and Tarantino temporarily disappeared, other hip filmmakers like Guy Ritchie
rushed in to fill the void. On the plus side, one might argue that the glut of product similar to his own freed
Tarantino to look elsewhere for his muse; or who knows, maybe he would have moved on to Kill Bill and
Death Proof, anyway. Either way, his most memorable contribution during the 00s so far, Kill Bill, showed
Tarantino evolving greatly as a writer and director. Not only did it have the largest scope of any of his
movies to-date, but it featured his biggest and most elaborate-set (The House of Blue Leaves, constructed
at China’s Beijing Film Studios).
As for Death Proof, it might seem like a step backward to some—it was, after all, purposely made to look
like a throwback to a grimier era of cinema. But the anti-restoration process is artfully done, and Tarantino
doesn‘t phone it in; there’s genuine thrills to be had in the two car sequences. You could call Death Proof
Tarantino’s least essential film at this point, but that’s not at all like saying it’s a bad film.
Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2
Could even Tarantino die-hards have anticipated the
amount of Asian cinematic influence that would find its
way into Kill Bill? One easily loses track of the number
of references to old samurai and kung fu movies in the
first installment (there’s also an homage to Dressed to
Kill and blaxploitation tossed in, but they nearly get lost
in the shuffle), while an appearance by actress Chiaki
Kuriyama shows a tip of the hat to modern Asian
suspense. All this, plus a lengthy sequence done in the
style of anime, have led to Kill Bill, Vol. 1 being called a
pastiche of the region’s genres more than an actual
movie.
It’s true that near-everything in Kill Bill seems to come from some kind of mediated vision of Asian culture: in
the animated sequence, a Yakuza thug wears prominent finger jewelry and a diabolical smile; and the
musical entertainment at the House of Blue Leaves is, of course, an all-girl rock band. Meanwhile, although
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 has taken less flack as an Asian pastiche (possibly because the action gets transplanted back
to the west), its most prominent Asian character, the brutal martial arts teacher Pai Mei, is like many
stereotypes of a Chinese sifu—harsh, strict, and elderly.
Yet to his credit, Tarantino does not appear to be tossing in all these references to prove how much he
knows about them, or as a way of poking fun. Rather, he seems to be channeling the spirit of those old
chop-socky and samurai flicks. When the Bride goes looking for a weapon, she visits the sushi bar run by a
man named Hattori Hanzo—which happens to be the same name as a famous swordsman played in
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2. movies by Sonny Chiba. What she finds is a great sword maker named Hattori Hanzo, who is once again
played by Chiba. It’s never stated explicitly whether this Hanzo is supposed to be a descendant of the
movie character, or maybe even the original himself, but he has wisdom to dispense about the path to
vengeance which sounds exactly like the kind of thing a retired samurai would say.
Later, the Bride’s attack on the yakuza culminates with a showdown in a snowy garden, supposedly
borrowing from the Japanese exploitation film Sex and Fury. Those unfamiliar with Tarantino’s inspirations
may take pleasure out of the visually-stunning contrasts of blood against snow, but for those who have seen
Sex and Fury, where violent revenge was carried out in a similar setting, this will seem like the perfect
location. After all, the kind of vengeance the Bride seeks to enact is both bloody and violent.
If Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is nearly non-stop action and viscera, Vol. 2 is more like the Tarantino we know from
Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown: fueled by dialogue and the internal geometry of criminals trying to outfox
each other. True, the Bride is still looking to make some heads roll, but the plot gets complicated by
supporting characters lying to and double-crossing over a suitcase of money, a priceless Hattori Hanzo
sword, and the protagonist’s dead body. Along with a slackening pace, the cinematography of Vol. 2 looks
earthier than its predecessor‘s; in place of Tokyo’s neon lights, we get wide open spaces that recall the
western (and not surprisingly, some critics charged Kill Bill, Vol. 2 as being Tarantino’s tribute to Sergio
Leone and the spaghetti western.)
Vol. 2 often gets credit for having stronger characterization than Vol. 1, and certainly contains the most
heart-warming scene in both movies (shortly after Bill gets the heart massage to end all heart massages),
but the series actually starts tugging at our emotions toward the end of Vol. 1, when the Bride sheds a tear
for one of her targets. It’s one of the reasons that, despite the dramatic change in locale and sense of
urgency, Kill Bill might work best as a single four-hour epic. There are also running jokes that cannot
conceivably function as well when both films are screened months apart: for example, characters telling the
Bride they’re going to be dueling at a certain time and place, only to whip out a gun and try to shoot her.
The first time it happens, it’s a surprise. The second time, however, we laugh because like the protagonist,
we should have seen it coming.
Death Proof
After the success of Kill Bill, Tarantino re-teamed with
Robert Rodriguez on Grindhouse, an homage to the
low-budget, B-grade action/horror pictures of Tarantino
and Rodriguez’ youth. Each director went off and filmed
a complete movie for what amounted to a "double
feature" bill: Tarantino’s was Death Proof, about a
sadistic stunt man with a yen for murdering
unsuspecting women using a souped-up auto, which is
"100-percent death-proof" for the driver.
In interviews, Tarantino has said that Death Proof was
his attempt to make a slasher film, while the idea of the
antagonist came from his personal interest in how stunt
drivers used specially-made vehicles to escape harm
when filming car crashes and collisions. The end result follows a slasher movie structure up to a point: a
group of nubile young women are made to pay for their illicit activities (scoring drugs, giving lap dances,
hitchhiking) by the facially-scarred Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who, prior to revealing his true qualities, is
often viewed with derision or pity by the younger people he crosses paths with.
Other genre trappings include "stalking" shots told from the killer’s point of view and a choice of weapons
that emphasizes graphic
violence. In this case, Stuntman Mike dispatches using a black 1970 Chevy Nova with a white skull painted
across the hood, which may seem impersonal compared to a machete or an axe, but trust us: when a body
gets tossed around the bare metal interior of the passenger seat or there’s a head-on collision, the Nova
packs the same flesh-tearing abilities as a hundred serrated knives or blunt objects.
Like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, long considered the "mother of all slasher movies," Death Proof offs the first
act’s main protagonists, which comes as no small surprise. Stuntman Mike, of course, lives to stalk another
day. As the action moves from Austin, Texas to Tennessee, he spots another group of unsuspecting young
women, most of whom are workers from a movie set. One of the girls, a stunt player and self-professed
gear-head, expresses an interest in test-driving a classic white 1970 Dodge Challenger which is listed for
sale in a local newspaper. This leads to a re-enactment of a scene from the 1970 film Vanishing Point
(Death Proof is written by Tarantino, after all) in which someone plays "Ship’s Mast," or surfs on the hood of
a moving Challenger. After waiting long enough, Stuntman Mike barrels in, leading to a tense, terrific
high-speed car chase in which one character is literally clinging on for dear life.
With regards to the concept behind Death Proof, Tarantino said a major obstacle was the rigidness of the
slasher genre. "It's inorganic, so I realized—let me take the structure of a slasher film and just do what I do,"
he told Rolling Stone. "My version is going to be fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the
structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you." Death Proof especially starts to go against expectations in
the last act, when Stuntman Mike’s supposed victims turn the tables on him, run him off the road, and
deliver a vicious beating that ends with a boot-stomp to the face.
The conventions of the genre — reflected by some of its more famous antagonists — call for a killer who
says little and seemingly cannot be killed. But Stuntman Mike, who starts the movie off as a strange balance
of emotional intensity and laconic delivery, turns into a quivering mound of jelly the moment he meets his
match. Whether this is by design or not, it’s a twist that elevates Death Proof above the ragged genre
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pictures that its cigarette-burned-looking stock and hacked scenes otherwise resemble perfectly.
The Future
With Kill Bill, Tarantino made his biggest movie to-date
with regards to length and scale, and followed that up
with Grindhouse, which taken as a whole (both features
and all the fake trailers put together) is quite the
ambitious project. For his next film, Inglourious
Basterds, Tarantino is making the war movie for which
he has spent over a decade writing the screenplay; a
project he has called his Dirty Dozen, his "bunch-
of-guys-on-a-mission film."
The movie is expected to be an homage to a relatively-
obscure genre — in this case, Italian "macaroni-combat"
movies — known for de-mythologizing the war epic the
same way spaghetti westerns ugly-ed up their Hollywood counterparts. It’s also a highly-minimalist genre,
which might explain the trailers that are full of talk and lack the visual richness of Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, Vol.
1. But let’s face it, this is a Tarantino picture, so he’s bound to give it some sort of spin to make it his own;
the question is whether it’ll be something we’ve seen before (non-linear narrative?) or something totally out
of left field? (Our hope is the Basterds kill Adolf Hitler. That’s a twist no one will see coming!)
Either way, audiences will find out when the film opens this Friday.
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