110th Street is a street in upper Manhattan, New York. It usually serves as the boundary between Harlem and Central Park, and is also the dividing line between "black and white".
▲ Harlem, Manhattan
Harlem is a black-populated area known as the "Capital of Black Culture" and has always been equated with poverty and crime. 110th Street, as the starting point of Harlem, gives this street closely related to black people a special meaning. In 1972, the gangster action film Across 110th Street, directed and starred by tough guy Anthony Kun, was stirred up, and the Harlem district depicted in the film was a hell of violent chaos, disregard for the rule of law, money and fear. The film also contributed to its eponymous theme song, "Across 110th Street," which tells the story of a black-American man struggling with endemic poverty and institutionalized racism.
▲Movie "Blood Spilled 110th Street"
Twenty-five years later, ghost director Quentin Tarantino released his self-written and directed "Black End Jackie Brown", another gangster film with a unique style. From the film's original English name "Jackie Brown", no one may be able to guess what the content of the film will be. But after watching it, I think the title of this film is too good: because the focus of the whole film is around the heroine Jackie Brown.
▲ "Black End Order" Phoenix Satellite TV Movie Station broadcast at 11:20 on October 25
At the beginning of the film, Bobby Womack sings "Across 110th Street" with a slightly hoarse magnetic voice, allowing the film to kick off in a thick nostalgic wind. Jacqueline Brown (Pam Greer) slowly moves forward on a flat escalator in the airport, walking through seemingly everyday scenes. The stillness of the surrounding scenery and The maverick behavior of Jackie seem to tell the audience: this is a special woman.
Jesch is a middle-aged flight attendant in charge of third-rate domestic flights, but secretly, she has been using her position to help arms dealer Odell (Samuel Jackson) smuggle drugs and stolen money for huge profits. In an accident, Jaych's smuggling was exposed, and she herself was arrested. Upon learning of this, Odell sends Max (Robert Foster) to kill people. What Odell did not expect was that Max fell in love with Jackie, and the two immediately hit it off, plotting a conspiracy to trick Odell around, and even sent his confidants Melanie (Brigitte Fonda) and Louis (Robert De Niro) to help him. When Odell discovers that he has been deceived, he realizes that the situation has long been out of his control.
On the surface, "The End of Black" is a popular crime film, plus a section of fighting wisdom, which can be said to be a classic routine of street crime films. But under Quentin's co-ordination, coupled with a number of wonderful performances of Cast: Odell's arrogant villain, Marcos's low-key full-time and reversal, Melanie's sexy heat, Louis's timidity, the image of several characters are very clear and prominent and addictive. The real protagonist and smart person of this film is still Jacquez: her strong calm in the face of danger, the desolate state of mind of taking risks for five buckets of rice, and the emotional collapse caused by excessive panic have all made this character come alive. The two-and-a-half hour duration is not only not boring, but also allows the audience to immerse themselves in the story as Jackie's adventures continue to immerse themselves in it, watching the characters in the film risk and cheating each other, worrying about them.
Everyone in this movie is smart, and whoever is smarter can win in this game of cat and mouse.
And in the tense atmosphere of the whole film, there are occasional sweet scenes of the male and female protagonists being careful: the emotions between Jayce and Max. Max silently guessed Jacques's plan against Odell and offered some key help. Jaych also accepted help without consensus, and the mutual attraction and tacit understanding between them is self-evident. In a situation where everyone is at risk and speculating on the true motives of others, this delicate feeling makes the interaction between the characters more interesting and maintains a delicate character balance relationship. This may be one of the Chinese translations of the film are "Dangerous Relationships".
Not only is Black Final Order a tense crime drama, it's also a film in Quentin's hands that has a modern sense of the struggle against race, gender, and class. The protagonist Jacquez is a middle-aged woman, a black man with a criminal record, working as a flight attendant on a low-cost route in Mexico, assisting in smuggling and being arrested by informants, and almost being killed by the boss after being in black jail... ... Jaych quietly carried off these pressures, calmly assessed the situation, and came up with a plan to send the boss to prison. She shows us that even as the most exploited and vulnerable woman in society, she can play the exploiters between the legs with scheming, determination and perseverance.
The film portrays Jackie as a black woman who transcends a multi-layered racist, sexist society. Through a battle of wits and courage with gunmongers, cops, and collaborators, Jacquez is portrayed as a black female hero who, after suffering institutionalized persecution, personally eliminates her oppressors.
But in American society at the time, as a black woman, she would only live in a relatively frustrating, even dark, tedious routine. In the film, we can also see Quentin's overuse of one word: Nigger (a derogatory term for black people). Odell has mentioned the word 38 times in the film, and the issue erupted in heated controversy and condemnation after the film's release.
Whatever Quentin's intentions in using this pejorative term, it is undeniable that Quentin has taken the position of a black man in his plays to narrate the story. In an interview back in 1994, Quentin claimed to have attended high schools where almost everyone was black, grew up surrounded by people of color, and kept hearing the word thrown out by people from all walks of life. Therefore, it is dishonest to skip the word when describing the dialogue and life reality of the black characters at that time.
Quentin's portrayal of black people in this film is also reminiscent of the black exploitation films that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
"Exploitation film" refers to commercial films that use special themes as selling points to attract audiences. This kind of film often uses elements such as eroticism, violence, drugs, and gore, and most of the films are just a cliché story, without a deep theme, which is cool and cool. And "black exploitation films" is one of the classifications of exploitation films, with black actors as the protagonists, indiscriminate formulas of genre works.
The rise of black exploitation films is attributed to the demands of black audiences in the 1960s, when Hollywood movies were basically white-oriented entertainment, and the roles of black actors in movies were nothing more than dragon runners or poor people, unable to get rid of the stereotypes created by white people. In this regard, in fact, Hollywood movies at that time were also exploiting the image of the Sick Man of East Asia as Asian actors.
▲ In "The Birth of a Nation", black people still retain a negative image of barbarism and viciousness
By the end of the sixties, vulnerable groups in the United States began to focus on their rights and their sense of self, including the black community. During this period, the portrayal of positive black characters became politically correct, and black actors and audiences were no longer satisfied with being foil roles for white people. At the same time, due to the popularity of television, the Hollywood film industry is facing recession, and studios are considering making new genres to pull audiences back to theaters. It was in this context that black exploitation films came into being.
In this type of film, it is usually depicted that black people defeat big men through wit and violence, and achieve the final victory. The blacks find psychological satisfaction in the plot of the movie.
Later, this genre of film developed into another extreme. Film manufacturers found that this novel genre film was welcomed by people of all ethnic groups, and as long as they made this kind of film more exaggerated, more tragic, more heroic, it could arouse greater interest from the audience. For example, shooting black slaves who are abused under slavery, and black people at the bottom who are bullied and suppressed by white groups, even if the plot is far from reality, the audience is happy to see is the ultimate goal of the theater. As a result, black exploitation films, like other exploitation films, have become more and more biased, creating another stereotype of black people, and naturally triggering corresponding resistance.
The original purpose of black exploitation films was to provoke a reflection on the black community in American society, and when the image of black people was recreated by the film into gangs, guns, poverty, and revenge, the stereotypes that should have been seriously examined and reflected on became another negative image. By the 1970s, opposition to black exploitation of films had risen, and such films had disappeared in Hollywood along with other exploitative films. In fact, today's films are beginning to look at black history calmly and avoid overcorrected interpretations. Many action movies also retain the shadow of black exploitation films, and black characters usually do not appear as the ultimate villains.
▲ "Green Book" movie clips
Director Quentin is keen to dig into subcultural genre films that were once impossible to enter the house, and after incorporating personal style, they are promoted to the public. The film "The End of Black" is also undoubtedly Quentin's tribute to black exploitation films, and the female lead actress Pam is famous for the "Fox" war and became an important actor in black exploitation films. Jackie changed the name of Fox director Jack Hill, and Brown Brown was the name of Pam's character in Fox. Quentin stitched together black exploitation films with crime films to complete a political and moral challenge.
Perhaps "The End of Black" is similar to the black exploitation movie, the heroine resists the pressure of white police officers, and fights with various masters to achieve the final victory. But the difference is that it is a change of routine character setting, confrontation with black bosses, falling in love with white people, and the sense of truth in the character flaws, making this incredible story seem more in line with this complex real world.
Black or white, Quentin put more emphasis on the portrayal of the characters. A pair of flesh and blood male protagonists, Jaych did not have a smooth sailing in the struggle, nor did he have a perfect ending. She was lonely and helpless, and although she had a brief love affair with Robert, she was unable to fly away from him in the end. Robert, the only man in this story who isn't entirely bad, when he first arrives at her little apartment, Max sees novel masks and posters, strange and delicate things that lead him to discover the beauty of Jackie.
Jaych's life has been doing what women have had to do for centuries: supporting your man. She helped her pilot husband smuggle some drugs 13 years ago, and now had to pay for an airline that hired a black flight attendant with a criminal record. But when she was arrested by the police, she finally began to make decisions for herself.
Max was clearly in love with her, and he saw how capable she was, so he was willing to help her take the plunge, but he lacked the courage of a lifetime. Jechi is because of her racial identity, she has to seize this unexpected opportunity, so she is willing to risk everything to escape her current life instead of being kicked back to the bottom of society. Perhaps we all have this feeling from the beginning of the movie when we see her walking through the crowd with the song of "Blood Sprinkled 110th Street".
"I'm the third of five brothers
I had to do anything to survive
I wouldn't say I did everything right
Trying to break poverty is a daily protracted battle
Having failed for so long, I didn't feel upset
I know there's a better way to live and I just want to find it
You don't know what you're going to do until you're really stressed."
Film Forecast
Movie The End of Black Order
11:20 on October 25
October 26 at 4:10 AM
Let's have a game between smart people!
Text: Skylar
Editors: Fore Magic Song, Batam