The cinematic subgenre Quentin Tarantino can’t stand: “What the fuck is this shit?”
It doesn’t matter how much of a cinephile anyone claims to be; people like what they like, and some subgenres aren’t going to float someone’s boat, regardless of how many attempts they make. For Quentin Tarantino, one film was enough to convince him that he’d seen all that he needed to see.
His tastes are as obvious as they are pronounced, though, and they have been since Reservoir Dogs. While he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of the medium, it’s become abundantly clear that Tarantino holds certain styles of cinema much closer to his heart than others.
The two-time Academy Award winner adores Clint Eastwood’s classic westerns, the work of Sergio Leone, the late-1980s to early-1990s heyday of Hong Kong action cinema, early Brian De Palma, B-tier horror, gnarly exploitation flicks, and the occasional studio-backed blockbuster, unless it’s been made by Marvel.
There are some niche offshoots that it’s impossible to imagine Tarantino enjoying, and one of the 21st century’s buzziest trends is among them. Without resources to draw on, a wave of aspiring auteurs opted to cobble together shoestring budgets and shoot with their friends, prioritising dialogue and character interactions over plot, often set within one or two locations to make the most of their meagre funds.
It was eventually dubbed ‘mumblecore’, and not everyone was thrilled about the designation. Greta Gerwig, who was heralded as one of the movement’s most important and influential voices, hates that word with an intense and burning passion, but she’s never been able to escape it, which comes with the territory when you’ve literally been dubbed the ‘Queen of Mumblecore’.
As much of a self-confessed Noah Baumbach fan as Tarantino is, having previously likened him to the Paul Mazursky of his generation, the subgenre at large left him scratching his head. “All that mumblecore stuff happened when I was in Germany doing Inglourious Basterds, so I didn’t even know about it,” he told Vulture.
Being a writer and director who thrives on bombastic set pieces, thumping needle-drops, exaggerated characters, and excessive violence, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that after reading up on what constitutes a mumblecore film, the Pulp Fiction creator’s immediate reaction was a telling, “What the fuck is this shit?”
However, the Duplass brothers got a pass, whereas mumblecore did not. “I said to my friend Elvis Mitchell, ‘Have you seen any of those mumblecore movies? I was curious and watched Baghead, and I thought it was really good,” Tarantino explained. As it turned out, that conversation told him everything he needed to know about whether or not he should take a deep dive into the medium.
“He goes, ‘You saw the good one. They’re not all like that. You reached into a pickle barrel and grabbed the right pickle.'” Instead of a ringing endorsement, Mitchell informed Tarantino that he’d seen the only mumblecore flick that was worth watching, and that was all he needed to hear. It never felt like it was up his street anyway, even if Baumbach and the Duplass siblings got pass marks.
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