The entirely accurate criticism Quentin Tarantino can’t stand: “It’s just, you know, vaguely insulting”
The joy of discovering a new film that hits you right where you need it can only be compared to the feeling of falling in love. Stumbling across a rare gem of cinema that seems to understand how you’re feeling – exactly at the right time – is something quite magical, even cosmic. A film can comfort you through the toughest of periods, becoming a small part of you that you can’t easily let go of.
For Quentin Tarantino, his feelings towards his favourite films have always been incredibly strong. He is a self-confessed cinephile, and a steady diet of movies he was perhaps too young to see as a child, like Deliverance, paired with an early job at a video store, prepared him for a career dedicated to cinema.
The filmmaker’s first attempt at making a movie, My Best Friend’s Birthday, was never completed, but that didn’t stop him from giving up on his dreams of becoming a renowned director. In 1992, his debut feature film, Reservoir Dogs, emerged to both great acclaim and controversy, asserting Tarantino as a fresh new face in the industry. While he was praised for his unique and highly-stylised approach, as his career continued over the years, it didn’t take long for critics to point out the many references to other movies to be found in Tarantino’s work.
Evidently, Tarantino’s intense love of cinema – something he has honed to near-encyclopedic knowledge – has encouraged him to pay homage to the movies that have shaped him the most. Most obviously, he took direct inspiration from Django when naming Django Unchained and Once Upon A Time in the West when it came to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. He also borrowed from both Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à part and Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 for the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction, while Django Unchained’s ending takes significant influence from the closing sequence of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
You can easily see Tarantino’s love of exploitation cinema, classic westerns, and martial arts movies throughout his work, and in many instances, it is glaringly obvious that the filmmaker is trying his best to emulate something that has already been successfully executed by another director.
Yet, mention Tarantino’s frequent use of homage to him and he won’t be best pleased. The filmmaker finds it frustrating when people reduce his work to nothing more than an amalgamation of influences, once explaining to NJ.com, “It’s like I’ve got a target on me. Critics know I’m a cinephile, and they know I’m not shy about embracing genre, and they turn it into a kind of checklist. … It’s just, you know, it’s vaguely insulting.”
While it’s understandable to find constant comparisons to other directors annoying, Tarantino can hardly refute the fact that so much of his work relies on homage, from movie titles to lines of dialogue, action sequences, and plotlines.
“’Oh, he takes a slice of Leone, adds a pinch of Cimino,’ that whole thing. I wouldn’t have lasted this long if that’s all there was to it,” he concluded.
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