Here's a quote: "At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind to thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. No matter how charming they may be, a grown man would think he were reverting to childhood by nourishing himself on fairy tales....The fabric of adorable improbabilities m…
Here's a quote: "At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind to thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. No matter how charming they may be, a grown man would think he were reverting to childhood by nourishing himself on fairy tales....The fabric of adorable improbabilities must be made a trifle more subtle the older we grow....But the faculties do not change radically. Fear, the attraction of the unusual, chance, the taste for things extravagant are all devices which we can always call upon without fear of deception.There are fairy tales to be written for adults, fairy tales still almost blue." (Andre Breton, "Manifesto of Surrealism", 1924.) In "Basterds" and "Once Upon a Time" Tarantino gives us precisely what Breton is calling for. The point of these films is to dissolve the artificial barrier that "adulthood" has imposed between ourselves and the marvelous, and it does not matter at all whether or not this effect was deliberately sought by Tarantino. I felt real fear in watching the opening scene of "Basterds" and the crescendo of creepiness and fear in the Spawn Ranch tableau in "Once Upon a Time" is almost unbearable. Tears filled my eyes at the end of "Once Upon a Time" when beautiful and joyous Sharon Tate invites DiCaprio's character into her home, when the carnage of the night has safely passed over them. Our own time is redolent of Breton's, may it not end in yet another world-consuming cataclysm.
Very well said and I have found myself near or in tears at the end of HOLLYWOOD the last few times for precisely the same reason: it’s shockingly sentimental, almost, a real surprise for someone not often categorized as overly sentimental in his storytelling. (I actually think this is wrong—Jackie Brown and KB Vol 2 also are deeply sad-sweet—but it’s still not what we think of when we think of Tarantino.)
Here's a quote: "At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind to thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. No matter how charming they may be, a grown man would think he were reverting to childhood by nourishing himself on fairy tales....The fabric of adorable improbabilities must be made a trifle more subtle the older we grow....But the faculties do not change radically. Fear, the attraction of the unusual, chance, the taste for things extravagant are all devices which we can always call upon without fear of deception.There are fairy tales to be written for adults, fairy tales still almost blue." (Andre Breton, "Manifesto of Surrealism", 1924.) In "Basterds" and "Once Upon a Time" Tarantino gives us precisely what Breton is calling for. The point of these films is to dissolve the artificial barrier that "adulthood" has imposed between ourselves and the marvelous, and it does not matter at all whether or not this effect was deliberately sought by Tarantino. I felt real fear in watching the opening scene of "Basterds" and the crescendo of creepiness and fear in the Spawn Ranch tableau in "Once Upon a Time" is almost unbearable. Tears filled my eyes at the end of "Once Upon a Time" when beautiful and joyous Sharon Tate invites DiCaprio's character into her home, when the carnage of the night has safely passed over them. Our own time is redolent of Breton's, may it not end in yet another world-consuming cataclysm.
Very well said and I have found myself near or in tears at the end of HOLLYWOOD the last few times for precisely the same reason: it’s shockingly sentimental, almost, a real surprise for someone not often categorized as overly sentimental in his storytelling. (I actually think this is wrong—Jackie Brown and KB Vol 2 also are deeply sad-sweet—but it’s still not what we think of when we think of Tarantino.)