Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

[Cold Bishop]

I'm going to predict that you will be disappointed because he can't avoid that no matter how much he tries (and I don't really think we would put effort into avoiding that tendency).

I think he did it with Jackie Brown. And there were certainly moments in Inglorious Basterds which hinted at the ways his myopically-cinephilic obsessions and intertextuality could be used for much more poignant and evocative effect. I don't think he can avoid that tendency, nor would I want him to - that is, essentially, his style - but I do feel it can be put to better use.

[Andre Jurieu]

The problem though is how he utilizes those images without applying any purpose to them. We get that American Boy quote in Pulp Fiction because he like Scorsese and likes the image from that film, but it accomplishes nothing outside of what the original did without the emotional backing of the context. His films are simply mixtapes and are no different from those youtube clips in what they accomplish. At least with someone like Godard he's utilizing those quotations to make some sort of point, but Tarantino is free of ideas.

Whoa! This is some powerful deju vu. It's as if I'm stuck back in 2009, or 2007, or 2004, or 2003, or 1997.

Awful humor aside, as happens every time that Tarantino releases a movie, this is all going to rest upon the perspective the viewer chooses to take. Personally, whenever I watch Tarantino's work, I perceive that he has a purpose when he utilizes whatever images/references that he's applied. I also perceive that he accomplishes something apart from the emotional backing of the context provided by the original. I certainly perceive that he accomplishes something different from youtube clips. I also perceive that his work contains ideas. Of course, depending on the work in question, I perceive that the purpose, context, accomplishment, ideas (etc.) within the movie differ in various degrees and in various aspects from the original influence.

Otherwise, as was the case in 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2009, I still find Tarantino's personality to be utter grating and the majority of his fanatics to be totally annoying.

[mfunk9786]

To clarify, Sausage: I have nothing against seeking out and discussing the references that Tarantino makes, but using that as a way of attempting to discredit or somehow prove that his work is bad is weak sauce.

[Mr Sausage]

To clarify, Sausage: I have nothing against seeking out and discussing the references that Tarantino makes, but using that as a way of attempting to discredit or somehow prove that his work is bad is weak sauce.

Ah, ok. My bad.

[Zot!]

The problem though is how he utilizes those images without applying any purpose to them. At least with someone like Godard he's utilizing those quotations to make some sort of point, but Tarantino is free of ideas.

They're totally different in their aim. Godard is a cerebral theorist with an academic approach to quotations, while Tarantino makes mainstream genre pictures that use a pastiche approach. He famously prefers the American Breathless remake. If you strip away all the external references I think they both still retain their talents. Their "sampling" is simply part of their art.

[Andre Jurieu]

I think he did it with Jackie Brown. And there were certainly moments in Inglorious Basterds which hinted at the ways his myopically-cinephilic obsessions and intertextuality could be used for much more poignant and evocative effect. I don't think he can avoid that tendency, nor would I want him to - that is, essentially, his style - but I do feel it can be put to better use.

For what it's worth, those are two of my favorite Tarantino movies because I think he finds a certain synergy created while weaving together all his allusions. Perhaps he could put his cinematic obsessions and inter-textual efforts to better use, but I'm also quite weary of the possibility that in any overt attempt to do so, his films would lose much of their vitality and instead become a tedious exercise. Plus, what he accomplishes with his methods is far more fascinating than most other practitioners.

To clarify, Sausage: I have nothing against seeking out and discussing the references that Tarantino makes, but using that as a way of attempting to discredit or somehow prove that his work is bad is weak sauce.

I'm in the same boat as mfunk, though I'm more inclined to state that a viewer should probably evaluate the whole before diving into the individual pieces. Indeed a great deal of what makes these films interesting is appreciating out how the pieces interact with one another, as well as figuring out the intentions behind the deliberate choices to diverge from the originals, yet the viewer probably has to find the sum total somewhat engaging before they decide to dig any deeper.

This is what allows Tarantino to slip in his own originality, too, since the parts that remain constant amidst the jumble of styles get isolated, allowing Tarantino to alter them in knowing ways (knowing in the sense that, being in on the allusions, and being fed enough of them throughout the movie to be reminded of all the familiar tropes, we are made aware of when Tarantino suddenly goes against the grain in some blatant way and can appreciate that deliberate addition to the list of conceits).

Over the past 20 years of discussion regarding his films, I honestly find that Tarantino doesn't get enough credit for this aspect of his methodology. The alterations Tarantino makes are equally important as his initial allusions, yet these tactics generally get discarded as mistakes in execution due to ignorance and sloppiness. It's a strange critique considering that these same voices generally disparage is work for being dependent upon the references he's making. So he's pretty much damned for his reliance upon references, while also being condemned for not using the allusion in the same exact manner as the original "master", yet also disparaged for not making the allusion his own. It's as if his critics choose to see evidence of ignorance when it suits their argument, as he's required to show knowledge by reproducing a carbon-copy of the original, but then reprimanded for an appropriately included allusion.

[feihong]

He seems to me a guy with simple but eccentric tastes and very imaginative ways of restaging and reinterpreting his huge catalog of influences. But for me his subject matter is very interesting because it seems largely disguised. And while most modern movies barrel straight towards some kind of boiled-down genre content without a smidgen of humor or philosophy, I very much enjoy how Inlgourious Basterds took 40-odd minutes out of its runtime for characters to sit down in a bar, talk about the movies, and play a game together. Even though the stakes in the scene were very serious, the cast was also acting out things that are important to Tarantino, and there was for me a sense of what Tarantino wants the world to be like overriding the way things are in reality or in modern movies. In that way he reminds me of Howard Hawks.

[mfunk9786]

That might be the best scene he's ever put together and he's got some doozies on the resume

[knives]

They're totally different in their aim. Godard is a cerebral theorist with an academic approach to quotations, while Tarantino makes mainstream genre pictures that use a pastiche approach. He famously prefers the American Breathless remake. If you strip away all the external references I think they both still retain their talents. Their "sampling" is simply part of their art.

I prefer the remake too humoursly though I'm not sure how it relates to the rest of your point which I largely agree with. As a director he has grown immensely and has shown a smart talent, it is exclusively with his writing that I have problems with. I suppose it is important to mention that what has soured me to Tarantino the most was the string of interviews he did during IB that suggested him to be largely straightfaced about his art and completely empty. I actually largely agree with Sausage in regards to his art separate from the artist, but given the artist those great things appear to be largely accidental and now I'm largely of the opinion that Cold Bishop has expressed. I think Tarantino needs an existing structure to hang his pastiche off of that has largely been missing in his post Jackie Brown work. If he could get a writing partner again or adapt books I think his need to quote would have something stronger to stand on.

To run with what Sausage was saying I don't think Tarantino works like Dante alluding to historical figures or other works of art so as to create a purpose. Tarantino is self aware like that which puts him ahead of his imitators certainly, but he also seems to largely be doing it because he likes the things he's alluding to and he seems to give no thought to how they affect the story beyond maybe a little comedy. It's a shallow allusion compare to these great artists Sausage has mentioned. For example with Inglorious Basterds (or however he spelled it) through allusion there is a lot of textual evidence within the film for a complex view of war and propaganda particularly as it relates to the cinema going on in a way that as sausage brings up changes the whole narrative of history. It is an astounding accomplishment that almost nobody could have done and certainly no one else has done, but from the man's own words it seems purely accidental. His stated intentions while having hints of that (de-victimizing the Jewish community by relating their plight in that situation to that of the Indians in the old westerns) most of the complexity of the film is in opposition to his statements which are largely pro-violence and seeing of the American forces in a purely heroic light.

[Zot!]

They're totally different in their aim. Godard is a cerebral theorist with an academic approach to quotations, while Tarantino makes mainstream genre pictures that use a pastiche approach. He famously prefers the American Breathless remake. If you strip away all the external references I think they both still retain their talents. Their "sampling" is simply part of their art.

I prefer the remake too humoursly though I'm not sure how it relates to the rest of your point which I largely agree with. As a director he has grown immensely and has shown a smart talent, it is exclusively with his writing that I have problems with. I suppose it is important to mention that what has soured me to Tarantino the most was the string of interviews he did during IB that suggested him to be largely straightfaced about his art and completely empty. I actually largely agree with Sausage in regards to his art separate from the artist, but given the artist those great things appear to be largely accidental and now I'm largely of the opinion that Cold Bishop has expressed. I think Tarantino needs an existing structure to hang his pastiche off of that has largely been missing in his post Jackie Brown work. If he could get a writing partner again or adapt books I think his need to quote would have something stronger to stand on.

I was just trying to make a point regarding Tarantino's taste, which run contrary to Godard, despite some superficial cribbing. While Godard see's hidden intellect in American pulp, Tarantino sees mostly style and attitude in the French New wave, and ignores the theory and philosophizing (that seems to be mostly stolen from kung-fu movies instead). I agree he was better off with a writing partner. I also agree that the tasteless patriotism and revenge fantasy of IB was if nothing, a bit too easy. But I wouldn't be surprised if he prefers Iron Eagle to The Human Condition.

[Mr Sausage]

To run with what Sausage was saying I don't think Tarantino works like Dante alluding to historical figures or other works of art so as to create a purpose. Tarantino is self aware like that which puts him ahead of his imitators certainly, but he also seems to largely be doing it because he likes the things he's alluding to and he seems to give no thought to how they affect the story beyond maybe a little comedy. It's a shallow allusion compare to these great artists Sausage has mentioned.

Well, to be sure, comparing Tarantino to Dante, Milton, or Nabokov is going to make Tarantino come off rather worse. I was making the comparison as a way to talk about a reader or viewer's approach to allusion, not to imply that Tarantino and Milton are necessarily doing the same things with their allusions. T.S. Eliot is a slightly better comparison, if only because he and Tarantino are fond of wide-ranging, fragmented allusions to the traditions out of which they've come.

But the writer whose work Tarantino most reminds me of is the Russian post-modernist, Vladimir Sorokin. Sorokin is almost constantly mimicking the styles and voices of past and current Russian authors and then jamming these styles together into these violent, clashing juxtapositions, these swirling pastiches of literature where many voices seem all to be speaking. In his earlier work this sudden switching between styles was destructive, forcing the discourse of socialist realism up against absurd violence and decadence in order to demonstrate how equivalent these two modes of discourse really were, how a Communist committee meeting and a frenzy of sex and murder end up communicating the same thing and are therefore not in opposition as styles. (His later work seems to be using pastiches of modern, decadent Russian writing--compilations of fragments of voices and styles--and then juxtaposing them with blocks of unified, absolutist writing, rather perversely to show that clashing fragments are a stronger bulwark than unified absolutism if the two ever come to a head).

I write all this as a way to point out that Tarantino is weaving so many different styles into the textures of his work as a way to centralize and epitomize a whole range of discourses that are commonly marginalized, and as a way to retell old stories and conceits so as to emphasize their history in film and their association with certain styles while allowing himself a way to make them seem new or strange, to alter them and add his own version to film history. Tarantino is primarily a stylist, and as such it's very easy to be dismissive of him for being closer to a stylist like Sorokin than a novelist of ideas like Dostoevsky. But Tarantino's allusions and pastiches are not unthinking copy-cats of a bunch of random stuff. He is doing something complex and interesting with his pastiches (and I say this as someone who is not a fan of the Kill Bill movies, his major demonstration of this style). He is forcing his audience to have a much more conscious awareness of the way that the various discourses in genre films relate to, divert from, or become equivalent to each other; and he does so by hinging those modes of discourse on some stable centre that they can share (eg. the theme of revenge). From there, he can mobilize these styles to encompass things they rarely did before: they can be reversed, repurposed, attached to issues they don't usually tackle. It's a weird, complex thing Tarantino does. It's not empty, although because it accomplishes this through a heavy concentration on surface texture, it can be mistaken for that.

[knives]

You've certainly found a way to have a leg up in me in regards to Sorokin who I am unfamiliar with, but taking in what you have said I don't think I disagree with you. I do think he does accomplish many if not all of the things you have said, but in Tarantino's case I can't help but wonder how much of that is by accident which is my concern at the moment. I have no problem complimenting what his films accomplish (nearly everything you've cited), but I feel uncomfortable crediting that to him in an active sense since this commentary on stories and perception via pastiche that seems to tie his films together seems to be largely an accident born out of his interests and how he likes to express them. The impression I get is that he is actively trying to make movie mixtapes and it is not a deliberate thought on his part to have said mixtape cause the audience to think beyond the knowledge that it is a mixtape even if they accidentally do.

[Mr Sausage]

I can't help but wonder how much of that is by accident which is my concern at the moment.

Does it matter? The effect is exactly the same either way.

I feel uncomfortable crediting that to him in an active sense since this commentary on stories and perception via pastiche that seems to tie his films together seems to be largely an accident born out of his interests and how he likes to express them.

If it's not a conscious design then it's just an unconscious one. Either way, some part of his creative mind keeps finding complexity in his genre pastiches. Who cares if it was his purpose from the start or an unintended byproduct of his sensibility. It's an expression of his own personality whatever way you want to look at it.

Worth remembering that it wasn't until years after making Eraserhead that David Lynch finally figured out what the thing meant, and then only after reading a random passage from the Bible one day.

You've certainly found a way to have a leg up in me in regards to Sorokin who I am unfamiliar with

Yeah, it did occur to me that this wasn't bound to be a very illuminating comparison for most people. But Sorokin is someone I'm very fascinated with at the moment, and it was really through reading him (and reading a particular essay about him) that I came to understand Tarantino's method better. So my mind just kind of went there.

[matrixschmatrix]

In a sharp, smart, entertaining way? Or just like a YouTube collage of old movie clips?

Welp there was a whole conversation in here but I do want to clarify that I would say emphatically the former, at least as a general rule. I think I'm in agreement with both you and Sausage here.

I would say that insofar as Tarantino is a postmodernist I think he is one of the most positive examples of the school, welding disparate ideas and characters and images together in a way that recreates their meaning rather than merely parroting them or colliding them together to create exciting meaninglessness. I think there are legitimate concerns with what he does- images which reflect only images sometimes seem to be, as Herzog described Godard, 'intellectual counterfeit currency', and it sometimes seems as though there are totally unreconstructed and deeply problematic ideas and ideology that are carried forward in Tarantino's cinema the same way George Lucas's recreated 30s serials sometimes unconsciously carried forward the colonialism or racism or whatever that had been encoded into the originals.

Regardless of that, I have to admit that I find Tarantino's work deeply and consistently involving, and there's a reason he has outlasted all the horrible imitators Pulp Fiction spawned- the man unquestionably has a movie sense and is as good at playing his particular audience as Hitchcock was. Though I don't think his quoting is intellectualized, I think he absolutely does know what he's doing, and as such his style never feels empty, even when you become familiar with all the works he paraphrases.

[knives]

You've certainly found a way to have a leg up in me in regards to Sorokin who I am unfamiliar with

Yeah, it did occur to me that this wasn't bound to be a very illuminating comparison for most people. But Sorokin is someone I'm very fascinated with at the moment, and it was really through reading him (and reading a particular essay about him) that I came to understand Tarantino's method better. So my mind just kind of went there.

If nothing else this conversation has been very illuminating for me in much the say way. As I've familiarized myself with the works that Tarantino has cribbed his works from I've often grown dissatisfied with his work as a result (Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds are the only ones I was well versed with going into which probably helped with my more immediate dissatisfaction). While I doubt his form of quotation will never be as satisfactory to me as Godard, Alan Moore, or Dante to name a random few I do think you've provided an interesting in to artistic complexity beyond the shallowness his stylization feels like that I could rest more easy with. It probably won't make complete sense without reading Sorokin, but by chance do you know where/ can link to this essay you've mentioned?

[feihong]

Sorokin sounds pretty interesting to me as well.

I agree with what Matrixschmatrix says here, for the most part. Friends often ask me if I look forward to American movies at all anymore, and pretty much the only ones I look forward to are Tarantino's and P.T. Anderson's. They're the American directors I can think of who will most likely put together something engaging.

[Mr Sausage]

It probably won't make complete sense without reading Sorokin, but by chance do you know where/ can link to this essay you've mentioned?

It's called "Vladimir Sorokin: Narrative Theater of Cruelty" in the book Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos. If you do read it, it won't seem immediately applicable (it's a really specific analysis of a couple of his short stories). It's more for the argument it poses, that transitions between clashing modes of discourse in the same work can cause those discourses to perform the same cultural or narrative rituals and therefore become equivalent, or interrogate each other, or reveal themselves to be hidden within each other and therefore part of the same discourse all along. I just thought while reading it that this idea can be extrapolated to genre pastiche in general, even those in which the purpose isn't destructive, as it is in Sorokin. The essay was more a jumping off point. Specifically, it suggested that Tarantino's code switching was in fact revealing the consistencies and equivalencies in what those styles tend to express. And rather than devolving into chaos as Sorokin's stories do, suggesting absurdity was always within this or that accepted discourse, Tarantino tends to find the shared meaning in the different styles, the way they overlap in constructive patterns.

[flyonthewall2983]

First trailer coming out tomorrow.

[knives]

How will Tarantino get his pop culture references in to this one? I don't imagine him much a reader beyond detective fiction.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm more interested in what choices he'll make for the soundtrack. I was doubtful the Bowie song would work in Basterds but I thought it did. I'm guessing it'll just be tons of Morricone with the occasional odd choice.

[Markson]

For those who can't wait: a trailer for the trailer (which includes actual footage).

[mfunk9786]

I learned from the Inglourious Basterds trailer not to dismiss a Tarantino film as too ridiculous or campy based upon the trailer alone - so I'm not going to be the one to be dismissive of this film in that way. It looks like it could potentially be a lot of fun, quite honestly - but the way the trailer is cut isn't necessarily doing it any favors.

[Mr Sausage]

I was hoping to at least hear a snatch of this in the trailer.

[Cold Bishop]

The trailer definitely plays up the Blax-Western angle. I know some people called it "Catcher Freeman: The Movie" when it was first announced, and the trailer definitely has a more comedic - and funky - tone than you might expect given the subject matter. Lots of quick zooms, so he's definitely leaning hard on the 1970s aesthetic.

It seems a little too spoilery for my taste (something Quentin's been good at cutting around with his trailers in the past), but perhaps these scenes glimmered aren't as consequential as they seem. In fact, after Inglorious Basterds, some of those subplots may be cut entirely.

As always, if you have trouble finding the trailer, look towards the Russians (but use protection).

[flyonthewall2983]

Here we go