I have a strange relationship with Quentin Tarantino. I think he is a remarkable writer. The man takes some serious risks when it comes to structure and storytelling. And in cases like “Pulp Fiction” it paid of. By telling the story out of order from multiple perspectives he successfully made a gruesome and basically unremarkable story quite interesting and provocative. Oscar Gold.
However, even though I respect Tarantino’s daring as a filmmaker, I can’t say that I am on the Tarantino bandwagon. Just like all other risk takers out there Tarantino has fallen short just as many times as he has succeeded. Natural Born Killer, From Dusk Til Dawn, Four Rooms and Death Proof were not exactly cinematic genius. However, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill are films I would be proud to have in my library.
That being said, I am a terrible gage of Tarantino quality. Jackie Brown is still my favorite Tarantino movie, yet most obsessive Tarantino fans write it off as his worst film. So… apparently, I have no idea what I am talking about.
Which brings me to Inglourious Basterds. A movie where I have no idea what the actors were talking about. You see, somehow I stumbled across a showing of the movie without subtitles of any kind… and only about 30% of the film is in English. It’s mainly in German and French… two languages I do not understand… and a little bit of Italian… another language I do not understand. So without subtitles… I… well… I’m a bit lost. I was able to follow the story… I understand what went down… and frankly, it seems like the most mature picture made by Tarantino… and Christoph Waltz’s performance seemed amazing… it’s still really hard to judge, because the foundation of Tarantino’s storytelling is found in the dialogue. Sure, I understood the story… but without the dialogue, the nuances of his story are lost on me.
Honestly, I need to see it again… but I’m going to learn German and French first… of and Italian… oh who am I kidding? I need subtitles… give me some subtitles dang it!
2 comments:
Do you happen to know if Tarantino intended there to be subtitles? The version I saw also didn't have any.
I did okay through Kill Bill Vol. 1 but Vol. 2 I was done with Tarantino. I think the hype got to his head some. Still haven't seen Inglourious Basterds. Not sure I want to even now.
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