Tarantino and Gritty Realism
There is a certain visceral violent feel to Tarantino that is both real and exaggerated. When he came onto the scene, he was celebrated for bringing a gritty realism to an overly formalized action genre. But, like Sam Peckinpah, was it realism or a different kind of exaggeration? Peckinpah wanted to show that gunfights weren’t clean, so he slowed them down and spurted blood all over the place. However, though the slow motion was described as realism, there is never an observer who actually sees the event really occur in slow motion. It is more akin to looking at something under a microscope. A laboratory analysis rather than a representation of anyone’s actual experience.
Though Tarantino is more committed to genre conventions, in fact he celebrates them, his reputation for realism comes from the gritty dialog and bloody, bloody violence. If the pure spurting of blood is all it takes to create realism, Tarantino has probably gotten us there, all by himself. But, like Peckinpah, Tarantino doesn’t just add in the gritty details that had previously been missing, he isolates them, celebrates them, worships them even. The trademark ripped off ear is not just tossed in, it takes over the camera. No real observer could focus on that ear the way Tarantino does. Anyone who has ever been in an accident will probably tell you that, the action may slow down, it doesn’t focus in on the gross element the way Tarantino’s camera does. Violence and gore cannot be called gratuitous in a Tarantino movie. The movie is about the violence, or at least it is driven by the violence.
posted by dan @ 4/05/2005 10:31:00 AM
1 Comments:
When you refer to the "trademark ripped off ear" I'm assuming you are referring to Reservoir Dogs. Here's the thing, the ear did not "take over the camera."
In the finished picture, the camera looked away. But it did take over our mind's eye, focusing our imagination on the severed ear, intensifying it as Mr. Blonde splashed the cop with gasoline.
But we never got a closeup of the ear.
I guess I'm nitpicking here, but I'm not sure what you're going after. As I think about it, especially that gasoline, Tarantino's gore is painful - you flinch from a recognition of the pain, not from the detail of the image.
Perhaps that is what's different about Tarantino gore as opposed to Friday-the-13th-axe-in-the-head gore. You feel the pain...thekeez
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