Tarantino State of Mind
Feb. 7th, 2026 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
setsuledI've been back in a Tarantino mood over the past couple weeks. Is there any other director who has so successfully combined unfiltered artistic vision with mass appeal? I would say only Steven Spielberg is comparable among directors who've been working since 1980. His undeniable power to attract audiences has kept off the harpies of resentful press. That's how we all know he'll survive the stupid kerfuffle around his Paul Dano comments, and why spiteful people made those comments go viral in the first place. I watched 2012's Django Unchained again on Amazon Prime and 2007's Death Proof on The Criterion Channel.
If he'd never made any other movies, Django Unchained would have been enough to make Tarantino a keystone in the history of 21st century cinema. Its existence and continued popularity despite swimming gleefully against the grain of Hollywood politics make it a rare reflection of true American cultural morality.
Death Proof, meanwhile, is almost the opposite of Django Unchained. With Django Unchained, Tarantino tapped a rich vein in the cultural zeitgeist while Death Proof was too much of a cinephile's daydream to be successful at the box office. It remains Tarantino's only true box office disappointment. All of Tarantino's movies are post-modern in one way or another--that is, to truly appreciate his intentions, one must have some outside knowledge of cinema history. Most of his movies, though, can be appreciated by audiences who have no such knowledge. Most of the audiences who cheered in the theatre for Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained had little to no knowledge of Spaghetti Westerns and didn't understand that Tarantino was making a statement by deliberately importing aspects of a dead sub-genre to deal with a culturally sensitive topic. They didn't understand the genius of his alchemical experiment but they didn't have to; all they knew was that it was cool to see a former slave get back at the system and people that had wronged him and that was more than enough. Death Proof kind of requires some familiarity with '70s exploitation films. Appreciation for such films, or faux-appreciation for them, has grown in the years since Death Proof's initial release but at the time a lot of people really didn't get it. I remember being in a movie theatre lobby and hearing some people deriding the poster of Rose McGowan with the machine gun leg from Death Proof's companion film, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (the two were originally released as a double feature). They didn't understand how the plain absurdity was a feature, not a bug. Though there's a difference between Tarantino's love of '70s movie cheese and Rodriguez's. Rodriguez's vision is much more ironic than Tarantino's.
One of the most interesting aspects of Death Proof for me is the intentionally bad editing. I love how the conversation between the girls in the car in the film's first dialogue scene is edited. There are little stutters breaking up lines and then some abrupt cuts right in the middle of lines of dialogue.
Anyone watching without knowing that Tarantino is deliberately imitating the ragged prints of cheap exploitation films from the '70s he adored since childhood might just assume Death Proof is poorly edited. That in itself might sound absurd to people with dyed-in-the-wool perceptions on American media, who doubtless feel like they've possessed familiarity with the concept of cheap old movies since birth. But imagine you grew up in a different culture with a different media landscape and randomly clicked on Death Proof on some streaming service.
The lucky few will view Death Proof with the same innocence that inspired Tarantino to love the rough editing in those old exploitation films. Those of us in the know, meanwhile, are invited to stretch our imaginations and try to see what Tarantino saw. The eeriness of the disjointed editing, the sense of the characters carrying on with their lives beyond the limits of the filmmaker's intentional manipulations.
Death Proof, despite its amazing car chase in the final act, also suffers from a deliberate lack of momentum. A lot of the fun of the movie is just hanging out with these beautiful ladies in dive bars.
Criterion Channel currently has Death Proof on a playlist of movies showcasing exemplary work from stunt performers.
If he'd never made any other movies, Django Unchained would have been enough to make Tarantino a keystone in the history of 21st century cinema. Its existence and continued popularity despite swimming gleefully against the grain of Hollywood politics make it a rare reflection of true American cultural morality.
Death Proof, meanwhile, is almost the opposite of Django Unchained. With Django Unchained, Tarantino tapped a rich vein in the cultural zeitgeist while Death Proof was too much of a cinephile's daydream to be successful at the box office. It remains Tarantino's only true box office disappointment. All of Tarantino's movies are post-modern in one way or another--that is, to truly appreciate his intentions, one must have some outside knowledge of cinema history. Most of his movies, though, can be appreciated by audiences who have no such knowledge. Most of the audiences who cheered in the theatre for Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained had little to no knowledge of Spaghetti Westerns and didn't understand that Tarantino was making a statement by deliberately importing aspects of a dead sub-genre to deal with a culturally sensitive topic. They didn't understand the genius of his alchemical experiment but they didn't have to; all they knew was that it was cool to see a former slave get back at the system and people that had wronged him and that was more than enough. Death Proof kind of requires some familiarity with '70s exploitation films. Appreciation for such films, or faux-appreciation for them, has grown in the years since Death Proof's initial release but at the time a lot of people really didn't get it. I remember being in a movie theatre lobby and hearing some people deriding the poster of Rose McGowan with the machine gun leg from Death Proof's companion film, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (the two were originally released as a double feature). They didn't understand how the plain absurdity was a feature, not a bug. Though there's a difference between Tarantino's love of '70s movie cheese and Rodriguez's. Rodriguez's vision is much more ironic than Tarantino's.
One of the most interesting aspects of Death Proof for me is the intentionally bad editing. I love how the conversation between the girls in the car in the film's first dialogue scene is edited. There are little stutters breaking up lines and then some abrupt cuts right in the middle of lines of dialogue.
Anyone watching without knowing that Tarantino is deliberately imitating the ragged prints of cheap exploitation films from the '70s he adored since childhood might just assume Death Proof is poorly edited. That in itself might sound absurd to people with dyed-in-the-wool perceptions on American media, who doubtless feel like they've possessed familiarity with the concept of cheap old movies since birth. But imagine you grew up in a different culture with a different media landscape and randomly clicked on Death Proof on some streaming service.
The lucky few will view Death Proof with the same innocence that inspired Tarantino to love the rough editing in those old exploitation films. Those of us in the know, meanwhile, are invited to stretch our imaginations and try to see what Tarantino saw. The eeriness of the disjointed editing, the sense of the characters carrying on with their lives beyond the limits of the filmmaker's intentional manipulations.
Death Proof, despite its amazing car chase in the final act, also suffers from a deliberate lack of momentum. A lot of the fun of the movie is just hanging out with these beautiful ladies in dive bars.
Criterion Channel currently has Death Proof on a playlist of movies showcasing exemplary work from stunt performers.
