This post is part of a conversation

I admit – getting involved in a critical conversation about cinema with Mr Saturday feels something like I imagine David must have felt when he said out of the side of his mouth, “So, which one of these buggers is Goliath?”, only to have one of his generals say, “See the really big guy over there? See the much, much bigger guy standing next to him? He’s Goliath’s little brother, Julio, and he’s considered something of a midget in the family. In fact, I think they call him The Garden Gnome…”

You see, Darren Saturday is a bit of a ring-in in this conversation – he actually studied film and video, received his Masters in it, and even taught some impressionable young minds on the topic. God help them.

Me? I just like the odd movie [1], and I’m stupid enough to get involved in conversations with people who know much more about a topic than I could ever hope to.

But, as the saying sometimes has it, “Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.” So. Let me get my shoes on so I can do some foolish treading…

Yes motion pictures are a ‘modern’ art form but who is the artist – the director? The writer? The star the film is centered around? The person who shot it?

You know – I honestly don’t know. Who is the artist in a movie? And are all movies art? How seriously can you take an art-form that relies, as a rule, so heavily on the profit motive? If art does take place at some point in the creation of a movie, has it become largely an accidental byproduct of the need to see a massive return on investment? Was Lethal Weapon art? What about Die Hard? I don’t have the qualifications to make that call, but I keep asking myself: is every short story literature? Or is there a quality that sets some short stories apart from others?

In a way, I subscribe to the idea that art is often the sin of taking yourself too seriously – at least when it comes to the point where someone considers him- or herself as an artist, as opposed to, say, an entertainer. I suspect this is as true of directors, script writers, actors and everyone else involved in bringing a movie to the screen as it can be of painters, sculptors and people who make porcellain dolls. Mind you, porcellain dolls freak me out.

I am happy to go on the record as saying that Quentin Tarrantino is a popculture genius and contemporary filmmaking phenomenon.
His first two films ‘Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” really declared his mastery of bringing indie sensibilities to the mainstream and audiences rewarded him for it. His ear for engaging dialogue is second to none and his characters are inspired. In fact “True Romance’ which he neither directed nor starred, in is one of the best examples of great cinema dialogue in play.

I’m going to have to take your word on this – I have no idea what ‘indie sensibilities’ actually are.

To be honest, as far as I can tell, Tarantino simply trades in a tried and trusted Hollywood commodity: violence, and bucketloads of it. Tarantino’s ‘genius’, if you want to call it that, seems to have been in crossing the bridge between the blood-drenched slasher flick and something that critics can still write about in the context of ‘serious cinema’; and I suspect this has as much to do with audiences being jaded enough to be ready for that logical step, than it has to do with Tarantino bringing any legitimate cinematic vision to the industry.

Remove the shock value from anything Tarantino has done, and at best – to these eyes, anyway – you’re left with one movie that is able to stand on its own: Reservoire Dogs. Even Pulp Fiction trades on that heavy-handed Tanrantino slap in the face. In fact, it’s kind of depressing that I can sum up every Tarantino movie I’ve ever seen with a single sentence: “(Almost) No-one gets out alive.” End of story. Roll credits.

Maybe that is the quality of genius in cinema – that you become so stylised within your genre that you function as a reference point for anyone else’s forays into that genre. And yet, I have the same personal criticism of Tarantino that I have of Kubrick – when I watch movies made by either of them, I’m far more conscious of the director leaving his mark on the movie than I am of the movie itself. And, after all, did I shell out my dollars to listen to the story, or to listen to the storyteller? Me? I paid to listen to the story. If the storyteller is doing his job right, I shouldn’t be aware of him while I’m listening; and the unspoken part of this is that if I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed the storyteller and I’ll go back to him to listen to more stories.

Contrasted against Tarantino, I’d like to bring up two of my favourite film makers – the Coen Brothers. If violence is your thing, the Coen brothers are happy to oblige, but their movies aren’t so stylistically rendered and personality-imprinted that you can’t just sit back and enjoy the story you’re being told. Fargo, as far as I’m concerned, was a work of genius – darkly comic and subtle and understated. Everything (except for rare moments in Pulp Fiction) that Tarantino isn’t.

Since then of course he has been industrialized to the point that Tarrantino is a ‘blockbuster’ brand in his own right. Check the merchandise out! He has developed his own brand in his name and his career has struggled as he can’t quite decide if he’s an actor (he certainly isn’t) or a producer, writer, or director, or a celebrity. Probably the latter if we were to be honest about it. His recent outings with the two parter “Kill Bill” was stylistically brilliant in his distinct culturally reflective manner. It did suggest to me however that the studio/distributors (the money) could serve him better and in turn his fans by firmly saying ‘no’ a little more. Less sometimes is more. The two ‘Bills’ and “Jackie Brown” were overhyped and possibly overrated but his future projects in the works show great future promise.

And here’s where we come back into agreement, at least in terms of Tarantino being a marketing vehicle, as opposed to anything as ‘uncomplicated’ as a film maker. Again, the “Bill” movies didn’t do a lot for me. Basically it was Carradine in “Kung Fu” done to a contemporary gangland theme and borrowing very heavily from the Manga tradition. And co-starring Carradine, no less!

Maybe I’m a lost cause when it comes to The Quentin. I’m sure I’ll fork out for future Tarantino releases, but more and more he’s becoming an ‘I’ll catch it when it comes to DVD’ director for me.

Gene Hackman. How good is he. He’s like John Cusak. Never a bad film effort from either of these two guys in my humble opinion. In fact – I think Leonard Matlin and his reviewing bretheren should all assess films as either an A class Hackman-Cusak effort or if it really sucks – a Whoopie Goldberg-Martin Short effort.

Ah, Gene Hackman. One of my all-time favourite actors. I can’t even hold his appearance as Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies against him – and believe me, I’ve tried [2].

Did you ever see The Conversation? Now there was a movie with layers of subtlety!

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I’m going to post this now. I’ve wasted enough time and I have a headache from pretending I know what I’m talking about.