Quentin Tarantino’s only perfect movie, according to Quentin Tarantino: “It’s just what it is”
There’s a fine line between self-confidence and egomania, and it’s one that Quentin Tarantino has been walking for his entire career. He’s one of modern cinema’s most influential and distinctive auteurs, and he’s fully aware of that fact.
Some directors try to play down their achievements and accomplishments, but not Tarantino. He’s even sticking to his guns to retire after ten features because he’s grown so obsessed with leaving behind a spotless legacy to avoid becoming a shadow of his former self, which has only served to create an insane amount of pressure on whatever that final film turns out to be.
Even when he was working at a video store, the two-time Academy Award winner had enough self-assuredness to fully believe he would make it to the top of Hollywood, which is exactly what he did. Tarantino has become one of the definitive filmmakers of the last 30 years, but even he wouldn’t go out on a limb and say that everything he’s touched has turned gold.
The most notable and obvious examples are Grindhouse and Death Proof, with Tarantino admitting he severely underestimated how much the average moviegoer would care about a double feature inspired by the exploitation flicks he was raised on. Kurt Russell’s vehicular thriller is a solid enough standalone outing, but its writer and director still ranks it at the bottom of his personal pile.
Cinematic perfection is a difficult, and some might say impossible, thing to achieve. And yet, Tarantino was happy to suggest he’d managed it. Obviously, personal bias is a factor, but when he described Kill Bill as “my most personal movie” to Charlie Rose, he pivoted to another as the best he’s ever been.
“I mean, forever when people would ask me what my favourite film is of mine, it almost felt like sacrilege to say anything but Reservoir Dogs because it changed my life,” he offered. “And there will never be that again. And I actually think it’s kind of a perfect movie for what it is, and actually, it’s been 17 years, so I can actually say that now without sounding like I’m self-aggrandising myself. It’s just what it is.”
Tarantino might want to look up the meaning of self-aggrandising because when filmmakers call a movie they wrote and direct themselves to be the embodiment of perfect cinema, it certainly fits the bill. That said, more than three decades after its release, there’s no shortage of people who either agree with him or argue that Reservoir Dogs remains his best work.
Is it perfect? Well, that’s an open-ended question that doesn’t have a definitive answer. Is it even Tarantino’s finest feature? Again, that’s entirely up to each individual viewer to decide. However, if he thinks it’s the only one of his nine movies to date that deserves such exalted status, then there’s nobody better placed to state that case.
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