Is Tarantino's Cinema Death Proof?

Quentin Tarantino in Death Proof

Quentin Tarantino was once an innovative director. But now, with his new release, Death Proof, is he too clever for his own good ? asks Vera Brozzoni.

He has been one of the most innovative directors of the past decade, and the youngest to win a Palme d’Or (in 1994 for Pulp Fiction, aged 31).
He has given new meaning to gruesome scenes and a new dignity to squalid characters; he has helped almost forgotten actors reinvent themselves and created a new way of building up  dialogue.
But now Quentin Tarantino seems to have reached the bottom of the barrel and started scratching.

Kill Bill was a summa of all his previous cinema and a new, fresh, original way to look at the past history of film, but this winning formula has now turned to stale mannerism.
Maybe because of the planetary success of Kill Bill, the director got stuck in the same position and what was an experiment has now become a trend – it is no accident that martial arts films and b-movies have now been rediscovered and praised by a young, worldwide audience as they never were before.

Just like vintage clothes, sometimes embarrassingly ridiculous, b-movies have now become coveted, their bad quality being more valuable than modern good quality.

Death Proof is the best proof (no pun intended) of this: a revisiting of old brat movies, it is imbued with good intentions but sinks under its own weight: formally perfect in terms of film stock, photography, editing and pseudo-script (meaning a very well accomplished script that perfectly imitates the bad scripts of the 1960s’ b-movies), the film is nevertheless redundant and too long.

On the one side, it is good to be inspired by the past and not  be snobbish about whatever source of inspiration you find;  but on the other hand, it is silly to turn your back to the future, which comes is also snobby and mentally narrow.

Now, accusing the most innovative director of the 90s of narrowness sounds like a blasphemy.

But Tarantino is not alone in what appears to be a gold rush to fake bad quality: he has dragged with him old pal Robert Rodriguez, not a surprise, but also Japanese ex-genius Takashi Miike.
His last work, Sukiyaki Western Django (where Django is the eponymous hero of a spaghetti-Western by Sergio Corbucci), loses itself in a panoply of quotes leaving little space for originality.

 Tarantino himself plays the part of a cowboy in the prologue as if he wanted to boast, “You see? Takashi and I are best friends!”.   
Tarantino once lead an army of American enfants terribles of film (think David Fincher, Bryan Singer), but he now gives the impression of being sold out – or better, exhausted.

The reason his style now has nothing more to say probably has little to do with the rules imposed by longtime producing company Miramax and its flair for new remunerative trends.

Rather, he seems to have become self-indulgent and nonchalant, in a way that claims to be punkish but is merely annoying.
Can he still do anything good?

Yes, provided that revives his trademark fantasy and uses his extensive knowledge of culture in film for a truly creative purpose.
Or maybe he is now in the number of those who say “when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun” (this quote is usually referred to Jean-Luc Godard; it was Joseph Goebbels).

Or perhaps he is just going through a legitimate period of creative paralysis and in a few years will shock the world with an incredible masterwork, just as Kill Bill came after the unimpressive Jackie Brown.

Yes, a masterwork every two or three films is acceptable.
But we want to see the proof.

 

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