Quentin Tarantino's films, the best and favorite to use are between those who are half-baked, because of misunderstanding, because of doubt, because of distrust, because of the lie revealed suddenly turned against each other, the muzzle of the gun pointed at each other, the bridge section of the instant fire. For example, the gentlemen of various colors in "Falling Water Dogs" temporarily help each other to do things, they do not trust each other, but they must trust and cooperate hard; the members of the death squad who break into the German army in "Shameless Bastards", in the tavern and the German officers, laugh and laugh without smiling, and point guns at each other under the table; the ending cycle of "Django Rescued" opens fire.
In a fierce firefight, almost all the parties fell to the ground. Die.
In his films, what makes people feel terrible and dangerous is not a powerful monster and a supernatural ghost, but an ordinary, seemingly familiar network, but mixed with this suspicion between people who do not trust, this hostility, this essentially incompatible, fragile relationship with water and fire. A small distrust, turned into Mars, thrown into it, and instantly ignited several villains turned into gunpowder.
Maybe this is the world in Quentin's eyes, the essence of the relationship between people in modern society in Quentin's eyes: fragile balance, tense game, one-pin piercing, chain killing.
Everyone was tensed up in a fragile trust, trembling and reluctantly cooperating. Over time, mutual hostility and prejudice, distrust, gradually tense, deepen, almost at any time because of a small conflict, scratched, triggered, ignited, fully erupted, and finally died together.
In 1992, a "Falling Dog" made Quentin popular in Hollywood, and then continued to bring a variety of genres of word-of-mouth masterpieces to the world audience, this article will summarize the characteristics of Quentin's film works, and these features have also added new colors to Hollywood movies, thus establishing Quentin's position as a Hollywood ghost director.
Personalized characterization
Quentin's films most of the time tell the life of gangsters, most of whom are adulterers, marginal people who walk at the intersection of good and evil, forced to make a living in the bottom society, crime is only a means of making a living for them, and violence is their weapon, cynicism is their commonality. He did not portray these characters as a face of good people and bad people, but looked at them according to the standards of treating ordinary people, showing the charm of ordinary people, and also showing their values for people.
In the minds of most moviegoers, gangster films are male protagonists, promoting the masculinity of men "saving the United States" and "chivalry", such as American Westerns and Chinese martial arts films. Men are the embodiment of chivalry and violence, and women should be opponents or victims of violence, and in the film, they are only included in the image system as vassals such as the lovers of male protagonists. But in Quentin's later series of films, "Dangerous Relationship" and "Kill Bill", the film is based on sexy women as the protagonists, and women become the executors of violence, they use drugs, smuggle, and kill people, which breaks the male world that Quentin has been constructing in the first three films.
Aesthetics of violence
Under hollywood's concept of "fist (violence) plus pillow (sex)", sex and violence have become the two major manifestations of American films, but Quentin's films almost ignore the sexual aspect and only discuss naked violence. Quentin's aesthetic of cinematic violence is also a stroke of cinematic history that cannot be ignored.
In his work, stylized scenes of violence are everywhere. Although many films have been about violence, no director has been as obsessed with it as Quentin. Quentin's violent aesthetic adheres to the banter and ritualization of Clockwork Orange and the truth and cruelty of Taxi Driver, and on this basis gives new connotations, resulting in its own unique qualities.
Inspired by Quentin, more directors began to look at the violence itself, and violent films emerged one after another. In this way, the nineties formed a trend of violent aesthetics in cinema. His violence does not carry a heavy social responsibility and moral significance like Takeshi Kitano, nor does he exert his strength and chivalry to the extreme of romance through violence like Wu Yusen.
Unlike Takeshi Kitano who is "for life" and Wu Yusen who is "for art", Quentin's violence is "for the game". Quentin's violence presents a postmodernist clamor and playfulness in its overall style, and his violent films embody an absurd sense of noir, with violent scenes full of poetry and fun.
In Pulp Fiction, Butch and Marcellus are imprisoned by the hardware store owner, a boxer who is surprised by the boxing world, a gangster boss with a tiger's back, and he uses the games that children often play to decide who is raped first. The extremely unbearable events themselves are weakened by the participation of this game, which leads to the fun of the scene. Quentin subverts violence itself, pulls away from the essence of violence, and transforms it into a game, an ordinary state of life.
The violence in Quentin's films is unpredictable, and it will be perpetrated at any time to anyone. In most of Quentin's films, casualties are often peaceful one second and bleed down the next. It was only a few seconds before the audience's psychology was challenged.
The protagonists in Quentin's films are also not so lucky, Vincent in Pulp Fiction, O'Doyle in Dangerous Relationships, and Copperhead in Kill Bill all returned without warning. Especially in "Dangerous Relationship", Lewis is because of Melane's incessant complaints, which makes her shut up forever in an instant. In Four Rooms, Rowan loses a bet and is unabashedly chopped off by the concierge for having his little finger chopped off. Although we knew something about this bet before, it was really implemented that the parties and the audience were a little caught off guard, and they all woke up after staying for a few seconds.
From the nature of violence, the violence in Quentin's films belongs to game violence without depth, and from the perspective of violent content, Quentin's films are mainly about violence between gangs. In order to seize territory, to fight for revenge, they use violence as the best way to solve problems within the underworld. Killing people and paying for one life is the code of conduct in their world, and hedonism is a common feature of the characters in Quentin's film scenes.
Rebel against the mainstream narrative model
When Quentin edits the film, he gets rid of the mainstream linear narrative mode, the order of events is not in the order of development, the dead can be reborn, and what has happened can be treated as if it did not happen. In Quentin's films, the traditional linear narrative model is abandoned, the normal time and space are broken into pieces, the spatio-temporal logic of the original story is diluted, and the original story sequence is deconstructed, resulting in a new logical order and obtaining a complete illusion to make the audience admit that what they are seeing is the order in which normal events occur.
In the movie "Falling Dogs", a simple robbery is broken down into several paragraphs, interspersed with some insignificant premise additions. Compared with the traditional film narrative structure, this film is fragmented and does not match the preface. This reform of the language of images has caused a wide range of discussions, just like the shock brought to the audience by Godard's "jumping".
Quentin's "Pulp Fiction", which brought Quentin world fame, still follows the "cluttered" narrative mode of "Falling Water Dogs" and achieves the "three-part style" that is talked about. Break the traditional linear structure, rearrange and combine the storyline, and use a circular structure to tell the storyline: a pair of lovers rob the restaurant - the killer is ordered to kill - the killer spends time with the boss's woman - the boxer deceives the boss to go far and fly - the killer deals with the aftermath after killing - the killer encounters a lover robbing at a restaurant. In the common plot of these gangster films, Quentin chose a narrative mode that was completely different from traditional gangster films, subverting the traditional narrative method and becoming a classic of postmodernist films.
Most of Quentin's films abandon the traditional Hollywood narrative method and describe the story as a pattern of end-to-end response in a chapter-by-chapter narrative. Real life is inherently chaotic, using disrupted fragments to combine the plot, allowing the audience to watch the development of events more as a bystander. In fact, there is a certain intrinsic correlation in several seemingly unrelated story questions. "Falling Dogs" is mr. Orange throughout the film, playing a symbolic role; in Pulp Fiction, Vincent participated in the development of the entire film.
The narrative surprise is also Quentin's ingenious narrative method. When the audience anticipates the development of the plot with habitual thinking and prepares, the plot often develops in the other direction, and when the audience is not mentally prepared, a thrilling fight will break out. This pattern of not playing cards according to common sense is something Quentin is very keen about.
Refreshing audiovisual effects
Quentin's films show a strong sense of innovation and unique audiovisual effects. They have created novel structures and techniques to adapt to the needs of new plots, and have also organically integrated media such as television, video, digital multimedia, popular music, and computer games into the narrative and performance of films, forming unique film characteristics, which in turn affect mainstream film production.
For example, in "Kill Bill 1", the foreground introduction to the "Hundred Steps Snake" is expressed in the form of animation. The blood dripping from the parents is visually exaggerated in front of the frightened eyes of the "Hundred Steps Snake", and the cutting scene of the hand blade enemy also reduces the bloodiness of the violence through animation.
In addition, Quentin uses editing to disrupt the time and space order of the film, split the narrative elements of traditional genre films, and reshuffle and combine these elements according to the wild ideas, subverting the original viewing experience, breaking the original narrative mode, and reconstructing the new narrative mode. At the same time, he uses editing techniques to connect the repetitive passages in the structure, so that the plot of the film that does not match the preface can be coherent, just as in "Pulp Fiction", the scene of the lover who robs the restaurant pulls out his gun appears twice, and the scene of Mr. Orange moaning in the car in "Falling Water Dog" appears twice.
In several of the non-linear narrative films mentioned in this article, Quentin is connected by a common event or character. Quentin connects truncated passages in this overlapping way, giving the viewer clues that can coherent the plot. In this way, Quentin subverts the traditional narrative model without losing the audience because the technique is too avant-garde. Quentin is not deliberately opposed to the mainstream narrative model, he just wants the story to be told through the most suitable narrative method, according to the content of the story to deal with the form.
Innovative language expression art
In addition to the violent aesthetics and subversive narrative style in the film, which is the consistent style of Quentin's films, witty and humorous lines with narrative functions are also one of the characteristics of his films, and the ridiculous dialogue and monologue are a way for Quentin to deal with violence, and it is also a bright color on the entire black tone of his violent films.
Bloody and brutal violent deaths avoid visual stimulation to a certain extent and weaken the adverse effects of violence through nonsensical lines and malleable speech. Quentin's films have slang about fast food, clothing, drugs, etc., as well as large paragraphs of profanity, these slang and swear words witty and humorous, not only in line with the identity and personality of the characters, but also contain the simple philosophy of the underlying culture, deepening the audience's understanding of different aspects of the underlying culture of the United States.
The language in Quentin's film, from its content, in addition to humor and ridicule, the biggest feature is that there is no theme, and on the basis of a certain thing, it expands wildly, deviates from the main plot of the film, and forms a nonsensical language style. On the other hand, its speech has a unique narrative function, which can replace action scenes, expand the ideographic function of speech, and form malleable speech.