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I wasn't expecting much from this film, especially after seeing its threater-relesed companion, "Planet Terror," a mish-mash of rehashed zombie movie cliches and campish humor that lurches aimlessly around like a zombie itself."Death Proof" was another affair altogether. This is quintessential Tarantino, with quirky and memorable scenes of exsquisite tension and forboding, trenchant social commentary masquerading as trailer-park lingo, and a host of misbegotten but unmistakably American characters on a pathetic quest for meaning amidst the barren landscape of the back country.
You will find Tarantino cinematically paraphrasing himself from "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" here and there. But if some scenes are not totally original, they seem to pass muster as new meditations on familiar themes, or fresh takes on earlier dramatic ideas, and are amplified comparison to their earlier iterations, rather than diminished by them.
This is a film that will reward the viewer on repeated screenings -- there are so many thoughful details and nuances, so many stunning shots and sequences, so many points of inflection.
And, just when you thought that everthing that could ever be said or shown about the great American chase scene had been said or shown, Tarantino finds unexplored territory in it and turns it into magic.
Now there are some garish moments as well, some almost riotously silly scenes, too. But this film will have you thinking more of Hitchcock and teh Coen brothers, and, dare I say, Kubrick, than the grindhouse flicks it purports to emulate.
Tarantino has his quirks and flaws. But you have to admire his audacity, his exuberance, and a clear cinematic vision that seems to be growing clearer and deeper with each new release.
His ability to recognize and highlight acting talent is uncanny. David Carradine, John Travolta, Michael Parks, and Michael Masden owe him a great debt of gratitude. In a few cases, he has personally resurrected entire careers. He has done the same here with Kurt Russell. And Rosario Dawson has never looked better or more alluring on film. (There is a very peculiar redunancy in this film which I believe is intentional: there is a female character in the earlier part of the film who looks like a kind of shabby, slightly overweight version of Dawson herself, and foreshadows and serves as a kind of commentary on the Dawson character which appears only in the second half of the film -- one of its many interesting contrasts and reference points).
One cue in Death Proof to pay particular attention to: the fascination with signage. It emerges in this film as a major expressive force. Another major idea to hone in on, the film's idea of feminism.
Edits: 11/25/07Follow Ups:
Well I understood it and I'm in your camp on this film. Of course it plays to the B-Movie camp while rising way above it - unlike the rodriguez film which is a schlock Zombie film. (Though I have a soft spot for schlock zombie films and liked it a fair bit more than you).
Still DeathProof was the much better film for many of the reasons you list but also on the exploitation film level. I think it's a rung down from Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill films.
I think it is possible to very much understand a film or novel and simply not "like it" and ultimately that is going to be the case with anything. I get Citizen Kane, the themes, the messages etc but it's not a film I particularly like in the sense that it moves me on an emotional level in any way whatsoever - except to boredom. But this is the "all time greatest film" in many camps.
Tarrantino has a style that you either like in your gut or you don't. Pulp Fiction is viewed by many as a brilliant achievement and as such he has a tough time getting out from under that film. People who loved that film compare his follow-ups probably too harshly and people who hated Pulp Fiction probably won't like anything else he does.
I like PF quite a lot, and, as I've said before, KB2 had the real juice, with KB1 being a kind of maniacal, at times almost monotonous warm-up.
"True Love," for which QT provided the screenplay, is also quite dazzling, though like Death Proof, it seems to descend into self-mockery at times. I think Gary Oldman puts in one of the most memorable cameos in film history in that film, as Drexel the Pimp -- astonishing! (By the way, his work in Coppola's Dracula is also a tour-de-force.)
I'm guessing (forgive me for being presumptuous) you're a younger fella. It's not that I'm, particularly old and wise, now. But I think this movie has a lot more resonance to guys with a bit less tread on their tires, so to speak. I think it's an extremely poignant and ironic portrait of failure through success -- a kind of American Greek Tragedy, in a way, with his mother and "adoptors" seeling his fate like the gods on Olympus. But I respect your personal judgement on it. Whenever I feel like getting up on my high horse about film aesthetics and criticism, I remember that T.S. Eliot was quoted as saying that Hamlet "was a stupid play."
Sorry you were talking about Kane - I understand - the film is before my time - I'm soon to be 34. but my dad was born in 1937 and he wasn't a big fan.
Like I say I get the themes but I'm also not an American and perhaps not being an American means that I do not associate success as much with financial success and power.
But hey I feel the same way with the Shakespeare tragedies. I preferred his comedies. I find more tragedy in a work like Miller's Death of a Salesman than people of high born stature falling. The presumption is that it is more of a tragedy when royalty or the rich fall from wealth and power than a guy like Willy Loman who bought into the American Dream while never realizing or even attempting to realize his own dreams and passions. To me that is a far greater tragedy.
Of course the tragedy of Kane was that all the money and power of buying into the dream and that in the end was not what really makes him happy. I get it but I guess it just doesn't translate for me on a gut level. I actually find the great cinematography to detach me from the film.
Back to Death of a Salesman - I wrote a paper way back when first to convince that Death of a Salesman could be considered a tragedy and then to convince that it was a greater tragedy than the Shakespearean accepted notion of a tragedy. The professor said - "Don't write a paper about Death of a Salesman being a tragedy because it isn't." So how could I resist? "Death of a Salesman: The Tragedy of the American Dream" or some such title.
Don't get me wrong I recommend the film Citizen Kane with a pretty high score but for me the resonance just isn't there. From around the same era I much prefer The Third Man.
Incidentally if you have not seen it - the made for TV Death of a Saleman with Hoffman and Malkovich is worth watching.
Don't worry. The European masters, like Fellini and Bergman, weren't very impressed by Orson Wells, either. They saw him as a showman.American critics, in general, like surface. No wonder they love the shallow and artless Citizen Kane.
Charlie Chaplin fell out of favor with American critics after being accused of being a communist and they now prefer the all-American Buster Keaton. But the likes of Fellini and Bergman idolized Chaplin. And why shouldn't they? Even the simplest of Chaplin shorts has more art and artistry, more heart, more soul, more depth, more energy and more humanism than Wells' entire oeuvre.
Chaplin is the standard all other Hollywood directors are measured against. So far nobody has measured up.
do not understand Tarantino's magic movie making..He is a unique writer and a great director and not a bad actor too!. The same goes for
Rodriguez, though Tarantino is a much better actor..:-)
AP
# The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men # Jules Winnfield(Ezekiel 25:17)> Pulp Fiction <
C'mon. There are a lot more people who "understand" Tarantino than "understand" Tarkovsky, Bergman and Fellini put together. Or Johnnie To, to take a current director. (I'm not that much of a Johnnie To fan. I mention him because he's one of just a handful of commercial directors working today who have earned my respect. His partner, Wai Ka-fai is another.) If anything, Tarantino is the most overexposed director in the history of the world.
Even Tarantino fanboys tend to agree that he is a complete embarrassment as an actor. Even the hammy Orson Wells looks restraint in comparison. Chaplin they are not.
By saying "do not understand" you imply that everybody else is not intelligent enough to see what you see. It has nothing to do with "understanding" or "getting it." It has to do with being interesting or not. I do not understand why I should waste time on a movie if I do not find it interesting.
Did not intend to imply anything offensive. I just meant to say that Tarantino's works will seem weird to 'some' and some may not understand what he wants to say as a result. Personally, I was one of those in the beginning but I gradually began to appreciate his mind-set. I don't think all his works are great but I do still enjoy watching what he does..:)
AP
# The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men # Jules Winnfield(Ezekiel 25:17)> Pulp Fiction <
"Did not intend to imply anything offensive. I just meant to say that Tarantino's works will seem weird to 'some' and some may not understand what he wants to say as a result."
Well, I found The Lord of the Ring a piece of semi-literate junk. I found it mighty weird alright. Weirdest of all was the music, or the use thereof.
But you can only speak for yourself. You know nothing about why somebody else likes or dislikes a movie. And it is not a nice thing to do. If you do not like something, you do not want to hear somebody else say that it is because you do not "get" it.
I have to take issue with you here.The more people who seem to "get" something, the more likely it is to be of undistinguished quality. Lots of people "get" films like "Pretty Woman" and "The French Connection." Does this make them more meritorious as films? "The French Connection," you may know, won an Oscar for best picture the same year that "Clockwork Orange" was nominited. More people "got" the former film, I guess.
I think if I had to name one recent film maker whom people have consistently failed to get, it would be Kubrick. But then, lots of people don't "get" Shakepeare, or Kafka, or Faulkner, or Picasso, either.
Now, Tarantino presents another problem altogether. Here is a film maker that people THINK they get, primarly because of the colors on his palette, so to speak -- violence, crime, sexual intrigue, drugs ... all the elements of mass market melodrama. His forays into these popular, visceral themes give his movies broad appeal. At the same time, I don't think his movies are well understood, anymore than the works of Andy Worhol were understood in their day.
But, like Worhol, Tarantino displays a new-fangled sensibility, an ability to find the human soul in the cliches of mass marketed films and pop culture. His films, unlike those of anyone else I can think of, are about US, and what makes up our cinematic collective unconsious.
As he parades one more utterly conventional scene before us, as he presents yet another character of shallow or obvious motivation, we find ourselves oddly persuaded somehow that this is, in fact, the way things really are.
And yet, I'm not sure I really "get" Tarantino either.
I do not agree.I do not like opera. But I do "get" it. I can appreciate the art and the work that goes into setting up a production like Carmen. I can appreciate nothing in a post Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
There's nothing deep about Tarantino. Having a floozy wear Bruce Lee's yellow jumpsuit was at most about intertextuality. Bruce Lee wearing the jumpsuit had meaning and depth.
If kitsch and vulgarity tell us something about our time, then every movie is a social commentary. And cannibalizing other people's works is not a reflection on or criticism of a cannibalizing society, but a product or symptom of a cannibalizing society. The only thing a Tarantino movie says is, "Ain't it cool?" (Which also is the name of the most worthless website in the history of the Internet.)
By cannibalizing a work you devalue the original. Tarantino claims that he rips off (called "homage" if you are French) movies because he loves the original. Which, of course, is a lie. If you admire an artist, you safeguard him. The postmodernism is the age of re-production. It is the age of zero value.
Tarantino is a representative of junk or eclectic postmodernism. "Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a Western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and 'retro' clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games" (Richard Appignanesi). Tarantino is nothing but masturbation for fanboys.
There's a lot more depth in the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Knock Off than in Tarantino's entire oeuvre. Granted, it's a commentary on the unique variation of postmodernism found in Southeast Asia and Korea, which should make it uninteresting to an Anglo-centric audience. So it would be to ask too much of any American critic to "get" it.
Jeff Lau uses mass-market kitsch to tell profound stories of deceptive depth. His best movies are A Chinese Odyssey (a freewheeling take on the Journey To the West) and the different, though similar titled Chinese Odyssey 2002. The cinema of Jeff Lau is closely related to postmodern dramatist Dennis Potter.
It's hard to say how much depth there was in Warhol since he appears to have been brain dead. Whatever the case, he loved the great icons of American culture--the $, Mickey Mouse, Hollywood and, especially, fame. He made mass-market kitsch into high art, not by questioning the kitsch, but by showing them for what they were--modern icons. Much has changed since Duchamp's urinal shocked the establishment in 1917. Today industrial design, like that urinal, are put up on display in museums around the world and appreciated as fine art.
Thanks for your thoughtful and spirited response. I'm sure there are many here who will agree with your assessment. However, ironically, even in your degradation of Tarantino's work, you offer a clue to why his works matter, however unappealing they may be to you:
"Tarantino is a representative of junk [or] ecclectic postmodernism."
I wonder if Richard Appignanesi [a writer I must confess, I am unfamiliar with], whose words you so fittingly cite, would feel the same way about Tarantino as you do. Or would he perhaps see in him a raucous compatriot?
I don't feel one way or the other about Tarantino. As you say, he is a product of his time.
It's his navel-gazing followers I do not like. Brats who compete in who can throw around the most pop culture trivia. "Ain't that Gordon Lau guy cool?" You are even cooler if you refer to him as Lau Ka-fai. The leader of the Tarantino pack will add that his Mandarin name is Liu Chia-hui and that it's how he is credited in his Shaw Bros pictures.
It's Jean-François Lyotard who identified this eclectic or junk postmodernism. The Appignanesi quote comes from his book, Introducing Postmodernism. A book I recommend to everybody.
..
# The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men # Jules Winnfield(Ezekiel 25:17)> Pulp Fiction <
As one of my favorite movies is Pulp Fiction and I've seen all the rest of his work, and I would put this at the bottom of the list. First, if you want to show how cool a character is because she loves an obscure 60s rock band, get the name of the band right. Tarantino gets it wrong. That's just lazy. And the Tarantino dialogue in general felt flat and formulaic. Although not a long movie, it got dull, a first for me. Kurt Russell was fine and the chase scene was good, but I'm not as excited about a well-done car chase as some. Of the two, I liked the Zombie movie better, but that wasn't so great either.
that was extended waaaaaaaay too long.
The chase scene? Definitely needed a large dose of editing: who can sustain adrenaline for what seemed like twenty minutes? How many of the stunts endlessly were repeated?
This would have made a good few minutes in a film...
Wow! A surprising reaction from a "Pulp Fiction" admirer. I think, with all due respect, that a second look might reveal subtleties in the dialogue that are quite eaily overlooked. I'm still sorting through a few of them, and I wouldn't comment futher with great specificity until I had a chance to see the film again. And I'm sure you could argue that, as film viewers sometimes do, my perceptions might be highly subjective, and not really extensions of the film itself.
But there is on line (paraphrasing) that stands out: "Never in America."
Another fabulous shot: Rosario Dawson standing in front of the quickie mart, with the background filled with those hawking windows signs, each one of them a ironic comment on the movie itself, or so it seemed to me.
Now I agree, that certain scenes seem almost completely slap-dash and dis-tonal. But I will have to have another look before I come to the conclusion that this was not intentional on his part.
Kubrick was famous for incomprehensibly incongrous and discordant scenes -- the limed bodies scene in Full Metal Jacket comes to mind, where a virtual cartoon character of a Commanding Officer tells Joker "to come in for the big win." This scene bothered me for a few viewings of the film -- but ultimately knitted its way into the fabric of the film for me. There was that weird, detached, dispassionate viewpoint that materialized here and there in "Death Proof" that reminded me of Kubrick, too.
let me tell you this...my friend and I went to Kill Bill 1. When Kill Bill 2 came out, we saw it the first weekend. Both of these were classic Tarantino, filled with imaginative homages to various film genres, and in the 2nd with plenty of classic Tarantino dialog. OK, so of course we went to Grindhouse on its first weekend out. Planet Terror was OK, but the real draw was the 2nd half. And we both felt let down. It felt flat and minor. Maybe I'll try it again on DVD eventually, maybe I'll like it more.
It's funny. But I remember being totally disappointed in KB1, and thought Tarantino had descended into utter kineticism and mockery ... and then I saw KB2, which not only restored my faith in his abilities as a film maker, but forced me to go back to KBI and take another hard look.
It will say that KB2 redeemed KB1 for me, but the second still seems to have gotten most of "the father's favor," and I still consider 2 far superior to 1, taking each on its own.
"Now I agree, that certain scenes seem almost completely slap-dash and dis-tonal. But I will have to have another look before I come to the conclusion that this was not intentional on his part."
The auteur theory in a nutshell. Ineptitude becomes personal style. Repetitive and unimaginative direction becomes theme.
"Ineptitude becomes personal style. Repetitive and unimaginative direction becomes theme."
That is a bit harsh. And I don't think it comports with any theory of the "film auteur" which I know, or is even relevant to it.
Now there is bad film-making. It it is certainly possible for a director to be inept, repetitive and unimaginative. But I don't think that's the case here. I see a thematic consistency in this film, a very deliberate and almost cagey dramatic development.
I had the distinct feeling that the director was toying with the audience all the way through -- was this a mere grindhouse exploitation movie, or was there something more serious afoot? I thought it was important that the audience was being asked to pick out the realism from the mere cliche, the possible from the implausible, the serious from the absurd.
It seemed to me to be Tarantino's clear intention to put the audience in this position. It all seemed part and parcel of choosing to do a grindhouse flick in the first place -- to force us to draw a line between what we were entitled to react to emotionally, and what we weren't. In this fashion, I think Tarantino set about to say something about the nature of cinema itself, why we bother with it, and how it relates to actual experience.
I wasn't talking about Tarantino, but the postmodern film theory of "auteurism." It is an apologetic "theory." It wasn't a theory based on merit, but an attempt by some French fanboys with a fascination for everything American to justify their fascination. "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail," Mark Twain wrote. And once the French fanboys started to look for authorial marks, they found them everywhere.
Haven't heard of 'em.
Now, the "auteur" theory of film making, that film making reaches its artistic zenith in when it is under the control of a single artistic presence, is something I am familiar with.
And I am not surprised that some people would regard Tarantino as a film "auteur," that is, and individual who imposes a unique artistic vision on a film, as, say, the Coens, or Fellini, or Bergman, or Welles, etc.
Truffaut and the other French critics-cum-directors never called it or considered it a theory. They only had a more general idea of authorship. Andrew Sarris formulated The Theory. So the "Auteur Theory" is an American theory.
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