Tarantino's philosophy and nods to a bygone era

Tarantino is at his best when he’s motivated by affection, and for that reason, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ranks among his finest; the serrated bitterness of his last picture, The Hateful Eight, has vanished. This is a tender, rapturous film, both joyous and melancholy, a reverie for a lost past and a door that opens to myriad imagined possibilities. It’s a stunning elegy for a lost Hollywood. It’s the most fun the director seems to have had in years, but it’s also, oddly, his most compassionate picture. And there’s a lilting sadness at the film’s heart. Like all of Tarantino’s movies, it’s filled with references you may or may not get: There are woolly, rambunctious Jack Davis caricatures from MAD magazine, nods to blond dream girls like Joey Heatherton and Anne Francis, allusions to a bygone era. 

Nor is it the first time he has made the outrageous suggestion that cinema, as both an art and an industry, can make up for some of life’s most grievous imperfections in ways that nothing else can. At the Cannes press conference, one reporter asked Tarantino why Sharon Tate had so little dialogue. “I just reject your hypothesis,” he said.  Tarantino did not approach Polanski, he admitted at the press conference. But Tarantino asked for and received help from Sharon Tate’s sister Debra, who is thanked in the credits. “There was a little bit more of her; everybody lost sequences. And she is an angelic presence throughout the movie, she’s an angelic ghost on earth, to some degree, she’s not in the movie, she’s in our hearts,” Tarantino explained. He too addressed the crumbling state of the Hollywood industry in the late 60s: "Sharon Tate and Polanski represent the new Hollywood, and Rick is notably not part of it. He doesn’t understand it. He was taught that the way to be a leading man was the audience had to like you. If he was offered Joe Buck [Jon Voight in ‘Midnight Cowboy’], he would turn it down. He’d walk out of ‘Easy Rider’ in the first 10 minutes!'” Source: www.indiewire.com

The complex narrative organization of 'Pulp Fiction' plays with temporal sequence, so that it is difficult to understand the causal connection between events. Most jarringly, Vincent, a leading character, is killed halfway through, only to reappear and play a significant role later in the film—but earlier in the temporal sequence of events. What is common to all the Tarantino films is that there are glimpses of compassion and morality among the tough, cruel, and immoral people that populate them. In Reservoir Dogs Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) takes pity on Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) when Orange is shot. He holds Orange’s hand and comforts him. When they arrive to the warehouse, Mr. White holds Mr. Orange in his arms.

After a night out on the town with Marsellus’s girlfriend Mia (Uma Thurman), Vincent Vega (John Travolta), one of the “low-rent hitmen” in Pulp Fiction, tells himself in her bathroom that he must have just one drink and then go home because he is facing a moral test involving loyalty and “being loyal is important.” As for what influences the movie's action, the episode in which Vincent is tempted by Marcellus' wife, Mia (Thurman), whom he's been asked to ''look after'', echoes the vintage noir 'Out of the Past', in which Robert Mitchum falls for a bad guy's girl. In Pulp Fiction, Jules Winnfield spares the couple who try to rob the restaurant, and its patrons, in the coffee shop where he is having breakfast with Vincent Vega. In Kill Bill Volume 1, Bill tells Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) not to kill “The Bride” (Uma Thurman) because to “sneak into her room in the night like a filthy rat and kill her in her sleep” would “lower us.” And The Bride and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) postpone their fight to the death when Vernita’s daughter comes home from school so the daughter won’t be traumatized. 

The “good guys” also sometimes show great courage and a strong moral sense in Tarantino’s films. In Pulp Fiction, Butch goes back to save Marsellus, the crime boss who is trying to kill him, from some perverts who want to rape and torture him. Butch does this because he thinks it is the right thing to do and even though he thereby puts himself back at risk. When Pulp Fiction's Butch takes a payoff to throw a fight and then doesn't, Tarantino nods to director Robert Wise's engrossing The Set-Up, in which the apostate pugilist (Robert Ryan) tries to flee from mobsters after failing to take a dive. In Reservoir Dogs the cop that Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) has captured refuses to disclose that Mr. Orange is the undercover cop that tipped off the police, even under severe torture and when facing the prospect of immolation. So within a sea of brutality and immorality, Tarantino still depicts some people acting admirably and displaying admirable human emotions. -"Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize With a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch" (2007) by Richard Greene

Tarantino: I never went to film school. I studied acting for about six years. My first teacher was James Best, who starred in Sam Fuller’s Verboten! [1959]. He’s the Confederate soldier in Fuller’s Shock Corridor [1963] and Jerry Lewis’s partner in Three on a Couch [1966]. And the other one was Pauline Kael. I got her book, When the Lights Go Down [1980], when I was sixteen. I’ve learned as much from her as I have from filmmakers. She taught me a sense of how to be dramatically engaging, how to make a connection with the audience. She was my professor, although I never met her. In the film school of my own making, she was like my Kingsfield in The Paper Chase [James Bridges, 1973]. The Killing [Kubrick, 1956] is my favorite heist film, and I was definitely influenced by it when I directed Reservoir Dogs. Before, my first script I ever did was True Romance.

What do you say when people say that movies like Reservoir Dogs do nothing to discourage violence?

Tarantino: Nine out of ten of the (crime, horror) films are going to be more graphically violent than Reservoir Dogs. I’m just trying to be disturbing. I know there are ramifications and consequences to the violence. With movies as an art form, I think 20 percent of that art form is supplied by the audience. I like things to be ambiguous. Constantly people will asked me, “Why did Mr. Orange tell Mr. White that he was a cop at the end of Reservoir Dogs?” And my answer to that is, “If you have to ask that question, you didn’t get the movie.”

Tarantino: I doubt Oliver Stone (in Natural Born Killers) would ever let a question like that be asked about one of his movies. He wants you to know exactly where he’s coming from, and his movies are making big points. He doesn’t want any ambiguity. He twists emotions entirely and he’s hammering his nails in. He wants to make an impact. He wants to punch you in the face with this stuff. I’m more interested in telling the story. To me, Oliver Stone’s films are very similar to the kind of films that Stanley Kramer used to make in the fifties and sixties, the big difference being that Stanley Kramer was kind of a clumsy filmmaker and Oliver Stone is cinematically brilliant.

What about earlier writers? Is your script for Pulp Fiction modeled on Cain, Chandler, and Hammett?

Tarantino: I don’t know how much I am actually influenced by those writers, but I have read them all and of course I like them. The idea behind Pulp Fiction was to do a Black Mask movie—like that old detective story magazine. Two other writers I’m crazy about are Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, both as playwrights and as screenwriters. In fact, on the first page of Pulp Fiction, I describe two characters talking in “rapid-fire motion, like in His Girl Friday [Howard Hawks, 1940].” I wanted Bruce Willis as the boxer Butch to be basically like Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer in [Robert] Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly [1955]. I wanted him to be a jerk, except that when he’s with his girlfriend, Fabienne [Maria de Medeiros], he’s a sweetheart. The jumping-off point—besides asshole here, sweet guy with her—was that Bruce has the look of a fifties actor. I can’t think of any other star that has that look. He reminds me of Aldo Ray in Jacques Tourneur’s Nightfall [1957] in particular. I told him I could imagine Aldo Ray being great as Butch and Willis said, “Yeah, I like Aldo Ray.” So I said, “Let’s go for that whole look. Let’s get a buzz cut.” I like mixing things up: for example that golden watch story begins in the spirit of Body and Soul [Robert Rossen, 1947] and then unexpectedly ends up in the climate of Deliverance [John Boorman, 1972]. What I most enjoy are space-time distortions, jumps from one world to another. 

Why does Schultz [in Django Unchained] makes the decision to sacrifice himself? He’s won [against Candie]. They’ve given [Candie] $12,000 ransom money. Schultz is going to shake hands [with Candie]—But he decides, “I’m going to blow you up away!”

Tarantino: I think one of the definite reasons, though, is Schultz had to put on this facade in dealing with this inhuman depravity that he’s witnessing. Now that he’s on the other side of it, it’s all raining down on him. He’s haunted by these memories. What he was working hard not to allow himself to feel is now permeating him. I think he’s actually realizing inadvertently he and Django caused D’Artagnan’s death. Without their presence, I don’t think Candie at that moment would have actually killed D’Artagnan, just for running away. I’m just saying it wasn’t Candie’s plan to destroy him at that moment.

So why did he destroy him?

Tarantino: To test Django. Because when Schultz offered to buy D’Artagnan all of the sudden—'Whoa, what the hell?' Candie knew it wasn’t right: “This is weird. These guys are up to something. Why would [Schultz] care? He’s getting into Mandingo fighting; why should he care about this guy?” Why did Django let this man be sacrificed? Django has got one mission and one mission only: extract his wife from this hell. Nothing else means a damn compared to that. There’s that moment [at the end] where Django turns to Broomhilda and has that kind of punky smile that Jamie does. If I’ve done my job right, modulating this movie the right way, then the audience will burst into applause. And they’ll clap with Broomhilda. -"Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated" (2013) by Gerald Peary