The recent statement made by Tarantino in London that violence is what the cinema is for and about, will not surprise either his detractors or fans, though it is a sad aesthetic limitation; I suspect it is a red rag to a bull or red herring: QT's work is as verbal and musical as it is visual. Indeed, if he ever makes a non-violent film (well) he can rest on his laurels. I find it intriguing that two of the best American films of the year are violent Westerns by other names - Basterds by QT and The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow.QT's film is a contrast to the Iraq bomb disposal film in almost every way: one is comedic, falsifies history, and flamboyantly cinematic; the other is tragic, attempts to be cinema verite, and uses documentary style - but both are about bands of wild (and less wild) American soldiers fighting on the margins of the acceptable. The Hurt Locker is one of my favourite films in a long time, mainly for how its main character mushrooms from villain to enigma to existential hero to symbol. And what a symbol - the last scene, and frame, of the film is one of the more indelible in cinema - quasi-sci-fi and weirdly life affirming. One has to go back to Yeats' poems of life-in-death and warfare to find such a disturbing portrayal of the ambiguous power and beauty of combat, suffering, even facing death. QT is wrong to think cinema is for violence only or mostly; cinema is for the poetry of life and death. Which is violent but more mysterious and deeper too.
{Meanwhile, those looking for Gun Crazy style noir and Marxist historical film-making with the gravitas of Costas-Gravas should consider viewing the recent German classic, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, which arguably glamourises - yet contextualises - the Uzi-toting killers - by rendering them as young and charismatic and deranged (and angry) as they actually were. As one of the lewdly sunbathing gang says, to an astonished Palestinian in a desert training camp, "guns and sex are the same".}
Comments