Quentin Tarantino is convinced no one actually likes ‘Vertigo’: “I don’t believe anybody”
The worst kind of self-appointed cinephile is the one who says you’re wrong for enjoying movies they don’t like, or you’re wrong for liking movies they don’t enjoy. Unfortunately, Quentin Tarantino has repeatedly proven himself to be one of those guys.
It applies to actors, too, although the two-time Academy Award winner quickly learned that Hollywood hath no fury like a Paul Dano scorned. Shitting all over someone for no reason is a dick move, and since he’s so prone to having his head vanish up his own arse, Tarantino probably didn’t even realise the irony in slating Dano’s abilities when he’s never given a performance that’s anything more than crap.
The writer and director used to like Jean-Luc Godard’s work, but when he stopped, the legendary auteur suddenly became an irrelevant relic of a bygone age. Robert Altman took several barrels, he couldn’t get into François Truffaut, and he wasn’t a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, either.
All of those are opinions that he’s entitled to, but saying that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is better than The Last Crusade is fucking idiotic. Mentioning Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake in the same breath as Alfred Hitchcock’s original? Don’t be stupid. Unironically defending Battlefield Earth? Piss off, mate.
Since he’s right and everyone else is incorrect, though, Tarantino simply refuses to believe that a single person who claims to adore a stone-cold cinematic masterpiece isn’t talking mince. Why? Because he doesn’t think it’s as good as everyone cracks it up to be, which obviously invalidates everyone else who thinks it’s a top-tier, timeless thriller from one of the all-time greats.
“I really don’t get Vertigo,” he declared. “And I don’t really believe anybody who says they love it to that degree.” The 1958 thriller is, at the bare minimum, one of Hitchcock’s finest hours behind the camera, and there are many who’d gladly call it the best thing he ever made, and no picture becomes known as one of the greatest ever unless it deserves to be.
This is the same Vertigo that a certain Martin Scorsese admitted to being “obsessed” with since the first time he saw it, the same Vertigo that the inimitable Park Chan-wook, himself a Hitchcockian obsessive, called the filmmaker’s definitive movie, and the same Vertigo that Tarantino’s idol, Brian De Palma, called the feature that inspired him more than any other.
Sorry, lads, but he’s not buying it. Even though those four, plus David Lynch, to add another iconic name into the mix, have spoken glowingly of Vertigo and their adoration for it, Tarantino remains adamant that there’s absolutely no way anyone, regardless of who they are, loves the movie as much as they say they do.
It’s a very odd and incredibly specific hill to die on, but all you have to do is consider what some of cinema’s finest talents have to say about it, and you quickly realise that Tarantino is spouting shite again.
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