Following Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has seemed content with wowing the world only sparingly, spending the rest of his time referencing himself in his own films.
Of all the modern directors, only Quentin Tarantino could truly claim the elusive title of household name. Many critics cite his Pulp Fiction as both the greatest and most influential film of the 1990’s, and not without reason. The seminal 1994 Cannes Film Festival Palm d’Or winner about gangsters, hitmen and drug addicts engaging in stylized conversations on everything from foot massages to the benefits of robbing banks over liquor stores, was as fresh and unprecedented as any film before it. All eyes immediately turned to the mastermind and his next work.
Jackie Brown and Wasting Time
Fast-forward a decade or so, and Tarantino’s fame has only increased. Film geeks all over the world hold his name dear to their hearts and copycat directors have been making mediocre Tarantino-esque ripoffs a dozen a year. However, Tarantino himself has only made three more films. What has QT been doing?
The truth is that after following up Fiction with a good but ultimately forgotten 1997 film – Jackie Brown – Tarantino seems to have lost a lot of his ambition for making great films. He is apparently now more interested in “presenting” the films of peers. “Quentin Tarantino Presents Hostel” “Quentin Tarantino Presents Hero” “Quentin Tarantino Presents The Protector” Could it be that selling his fame to movies he had little to do with has cut into Tarantino’s work time?
Another reason that Tarantino’s output has so greatly declined is that he has cinematic ADD. From the Vega Brothers movie, to Kill Bill 3 and 4, to his nine hour long WWII epic Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino has been jumping from one project to the next in whimsical urges to make more self-referential films, but never sticking to any of them.
Kill Bill
Not to say he has completely wasted his time. In 2003 and 2004 Tarantino gave the film community two of the great action movies of recent years: Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol.2. However, great as they were, there was something disconcerting about them: they were easily the director’s least serious films to date. Following the relatively straightforward Jackie Brown, Tarantino perhaps felt that the stylistically over-the-top, reference-filled style that made Pulp Fiction groundbreaking was a sure fire way to make a hit. With Kill Bill, it worked. But could it get old?
Death Proof
2007’s Death Proof suggests that it might. As just one example, in the film a character references the "Big Kahuna Burger" – a restaurant mentioned in one of the most quotable scenes in Pulp Fiction. Referring to it in Death Proof feels desperate. Just the requisite Tarantino self-reference.
A lot of directors go bad. What makes Death Proof truly sad is that there is just enough genius in it for it to be clear that Tarantino, when he tries, is still one of the best directors working today. The centerpieces of the film – two attempts by Kurt Russel’s character to massacre groups of women with his indestructible car – were amongst the most exciting sequences in 2007. They left anything in Planet Terror, the more consistently good but ultimately unmemorable other half of Grindhouse, in the dust. If Tarantino can still make scenes with such power, imagine what he could do if he actually tried to make a good movie.
I suppose that when you’re as revered as Quentin Tarantino is, you don’t have to try very hard, but here’s to hoping something inspires him to want to make a good movie again. Because frankly, no one can make a movie quite like QT can.
