The Tenth Film The Ten Little Piggies
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So hereâs the thing about this.
I feel like the movie relies hugely on ambient pop culture knowledge of the Manson family to power those segments, and I had none until I looked it up after the movie. All I knew is he was a serial killer and I thought âthe Manson familyâ must refer to his literal blood family. Itâs just a hole in my historical Americana knowledge.
So I really thought Tarantino just hated hippies! And I have big problems with hippies too (as did more thorough leftists at the time), but he wasnât attacking them from the left, but from the right. That makes me very uncomfortable!
Like, even in IB - where you have much more license to just assume your audience knows Nazis are evil, because basically everyone knows at least a little about Nazis - there are still scenes whose purpose is to establish âNazis are evilâ. The very first scene, in fact! It contextualizes the whole rest of the movie!
But in OUATIH, not only is there no indication that the hippies are actually a racist cult, the only investigation our lantern jawed hero does shows theyâre actually fine? They werenât hurting anybody really? But theyâre still psycho killers animated by stupid media studies gone awry.
Iâm pretty sure this is an deeply conservative movie and that it is not actually profound enough to be a double secret critique.
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it is hugely reliant on mason family knowledge, but I think even without that the ending is so deeply melancholic as to undercut any possible feelings of catharsis or triumph by the preceding violence. though tarantino obviously loves dalton and booth, i think he bakes in some ambivalence as to how weâre supposed to feel about the two of them. though the cliff wife aside can seem like a throwaway gag, it canât help but complicate feelings towards him. considering this is a film centered on a mythical hollywood tragedy, why evoke natalie wood if not to create ambivalence? i wouldnât say quentin supports all of daltonâs viewpoints either, considering his vociferous hatred of spaghetti westerns.
The Tenth Film These Dogs Are Barking
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I think this glosses over the much more interesting characterization of both brad pitt and the ranch owner in that scene, who were both made to seem different degrees of washed up / past their time / violent / motivated only by sex. in terms of the narrative the hippies were more like plants growing inside of some old wreckage than anything else, and the tragedy is that there wasnât much of anything for them to cultivate or vice versa.
like a remarkably huge amount of the movie was about how basically pathetic the lingering patriarchal structures of the time were, and how fleeting the era they thrived in was, and how so much of the time hence was compelled to relive their glory days.
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every male character in the movie was desperately in need and in search of being saved by a woman, not one of them deserved it, and they all were saved to varying degrees anyway. I donât think the movie fails to be critical of that.
like itâs historically honest to show the hippies being attacked from the right rather than from the left (even if, as you said, thereâs more than sufficient grounds to criticize them from the left), and I thought it was really bold/harsh of him to make that seem as close to wish fulfillment as it did by the end of the movie.
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I wish there were about four more hours of al pacino though
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I have to admit now that I havenât seen the movie yet, my intense devotion to Bruce Lee is at war with my love of horny foot shots soundtracked by forgotten classics of yesteryear
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part of the reason I think this is basically true is because Armond White said it was QTâs best film
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there is nothing remotely wrong with the Bruce Lee scene unless you take the position that Tarantino is completely uncritical of everything he puts on screen which is bananas
at the very least itâs tied with Jackie Brown for his best movie, but JB doesnât bring nearly as much of the shit everyone likes his other work for as this does
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Oh Iâve read all the takes. Iâm up to date
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the bruce lee is my hero and heâs not treated fairly take makes my eyes try to roll out of my skull, but the thereâs literally one nonwhite speaking role in this movie and heâs a goofball idiot caricature and weâre supposed to cheer when brad pitt beats him up take definitely has legs
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maybe QT making too many of the characters white was a negative side effect of him feeling unusually honest
Armond White is such a good critic except for when he feels the need to remind everyone why he doesnât mind working at the national review
heâs like the exception that proves the rule in terms of conservatives having something interesting to say
give him fucking Bret Stephensâ job
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he was honest about how he thought sharon tate was a beautiful simple ethereal angel creature and about how horny he was to see any women who would snuff out her precious flame have their faces graphically annihilated like sixteen times, thatâs for sure
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As someone who didnât know that Sharon Tate was a real person and etc, the whole Polanski family B plot was an incredibly weird and essentially unrelated fantasia about the power of cinema and etc., especially since I do know that Roman Polanski is a sex criminal. I was wracking my brain to think about how these two next door neighbors, at completely different points in their Hollywood career arcs and essentially unknown to each other, were supposed to metaphorically reflect one another, and nothing really fit until Kurt Russellâs solemn monologue about people and places and dates and times, at which point is suddenly occurred to me that QT was using the language of true crime and pseudodocumentary and these were probably real people and a real thing that happened that he was about to Ingluorious Basterds rewrite.
I mean when I write it that way it seems brilliant. I think it is brilliant! But I donât really buy the âyou are supposed to find the nominal âheroesâ just as sad and pathetic as anyone elseâ reading either. Itâs only Cliffâs commitment to misogynist violence (and his resulting highly but absolutely unspeakable homoerotic relationship with Dalton) that renders him capable of protecting pregnant angel Sharon Tate. I donât think any fancy double-secret critical reading can erase this simple fact.
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oh so he did a james ellroy
I should watch a movie in a theater again someday
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I did wonder as I was watching it âoh God imagine if anyone in the audience only knows Roman Polanski as a pederast and wonders why he of all celebrities is in the movieâ
I havenât watched inglorious basterds in years but I remember all the characters in that being paper thin and nothing much going on thematically, he got some good performances out of the actors but it was all really cheap compared to this.
I also basically forgot Sharon Tate was in the movie in my analysis because my brain apparently deletes human reproduction at the same time as it emphasizes male weakness so thatâs probably a fair point
perhaps Iâm being charitable, but the two times Iâve seen hollywood the ending just feels like a gutpunch underscoring the absolute failure of the insulated, outmoded hollywood rather than a triumph of images over reality like basterds. i honestly was thinking of twin peaks the return watching that ending, which maybe solidifies how charitable iâm being!
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