What is it about Quentin Tarantino movies, I like so much?
They are all very violent. And it is not aliens or robots inflicting wounds and death, helping me file away, what I see, under “fictional, not to be taken serious” (apart from “From Tusk till Dawn”, a Rodriguez film written by Tarantino, were vampires play a part – another improbability, as I otherwise hate vampire films and mystery en gros), but regular characters in the stories. I don’t get, how he gets me all the time. As if the violence shown in his stories is so “unbelievable”, one accepts it as part of an artful concept. Not “really” that bad. Take Kill Bill 1+2. The sword fight set in that snowy Japanese garden. It is so beautiful to watch. Or the citation of Ezekiel by S.L. Jackson, just before he shoots all and sundry in Pulp Fiction. I hate to watch violent movies. And I love Tarantino flicks. Go figure.
Maybe it is his succinct view on violence and death, that gets me to accept it. Take “Reservoir Dogs”. He just explicitly shows the stupidity of crime and how it eats its children. In later works, he tries to give more justification to violence through the storyline. “Inglorious Basterds” or “Django Unchained” are good samples. There, violence gets harder to accept, all of a sudden. As if, by giving a motive for violent behaviour a little stronger than the otherwise just regular “bad-ass” criminal scenery in his movies does, one is suddenly burdened with answering moral questions one never got tangled up in, watching a Tarantino film before.
And maybe all I have said so far, is just rubbish. I am just prone to trash-movies, very artfully made by a certain Mr. Tarantino.