Quentin Tarantino by Edward Gallafent

Author:Edward Gallafent [Gallafent, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Film & Video, Performing Arts, History & Criticism
ISBN: 9780582473041
Google: 6vewE_5azzoC
Amazon: 1281771198
Publisher: Pearson Longman
Published: 2006-07-15T05:00:00+00:00

5 Landscapes

Los Angeles is the world capital of the detached private house.

(W.A. McClung (2000), Landscapes of Desire: Anglo mythologies of Los Angeles)

Introduction

In this chapter I want to reflect on the settings of the films and how we are directed to see them: how places and spaces relate to their narratives and subjects. Tarantino's presentation of the urban landscape might not be thought to be a particularly interesting aspect of his work. He is not interested in an area's famous landmarks, or in presenting a panoramic view of a city. In terms of settings he rarely draws attention to the spectacular in the first three films, and often seems more interested in presenting generic rather than highly individual settings. Most of his characters are shown as inhabiting places that are familiar to them, or treating an unfamiliar setting as if it does not much surprise them. (Vincent's reaction to Jack Rabbit Slim's in Pulp Fiction would be an example of the latter.) But Tarantino's interest in how these settings weigh on his characters' and his audience's attention, and what actions they enable and what is prohibited in them, is nonetheless an important part of the films.

Some spaces, and thus their meanings, reveal themselves to us quite gradually or partially. Establishing shots are at points markedly absent, and where Tarantino does use them, he seems to enjoy making them overt, marked either by being shots that include signs (the 'Hawthorne Grill' in Pulp Fiction) or by using subtitles to announce them ('Del Amo Mall/ Torrance, California/Largest indoor Mall in the World' in Jackie Brown).

If there is a single aspect of place that is important to Tarantino's characters, it is the various kinds of differences between exteriors and interiors. It would be possible to argue that the exploration of a range of feeling and experience related to this, from absolute exposure to apparently complete privacy, constitutes a prominent characteristic of Tarantino's work in the first three films.

One space that connects the films can be considered here. It is a crucial mediation between interior and exterior in modern experience: the inside of a moving car, offering the chance to allow the outside world to pass at a distance, and sometimes to flee from the threat posed by it. Something that perhaps makes it attractive to Tarantino is that it is not possible to photograph the inside of a car, or really to see it, as a whole. It is an entirely familiar kind of space, a tight interior of a special kind of awkwardness, where seated figures cannot all look directly at each other easily or for long (contrasting, for example, with a table in a cafe, which offers exactly that possibility).

So Tarantino shows us that a moving car can be a good place for conversation and anecdote among acquaintances (the four thieves discussing Pam Grier in Reservoir Dogs, Jules and Vincent's conversation about food in Pulp Fiction, Jackie and Max's first scene together in Jackie Brown). But each film also shows us a

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