tarantino

Here’s the problem with Quentin Tarantino’s revisionism

His films try to right historical wrongs by pretending like they didn’t really happen.

...

ile Tarantino remains one of the most technically skilled filmmakers of his generation—few have his capacity for writing crisp, sardonic dialogue, bringing out the best in actors, and pioneering new forms of cinematic structure—the second half of his career has been defined by films that fit the same misguided moral scheme.

Like Inglourious Basterdsand Django Unchained, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywoodis an act of wish fulfillment. Whereas before he ended World War II and avenged a brutal slaveowner, his latest counterfactual revenge fantasy prevents the Manson family killings of Sharon Tate and her three friends—a moment that shattered the Hollywood culture he idealizes. You could say this film is the third installment of Tarantino’s revisionist trilogy in which the atrocity in question—whether it’s the Holocaust or slavery or a hippie-led murdering spree—is stopped in its tracks by the intervention of a Sergio Leone-like twist. Hitler’s face is riddled with bullets, a plantation is set ablaze. Evil is overcome by a bag of dynamite, or a blowtorch.

Tarantino’s penchant for gratuitous violence is nothing new. It’s evident in his best early work. More recently, however, he’s burdened his films with trying to right historical wrongs. The problem is that he doesn’t try to right them by grappling with them today. Instead, he’s made films like Basterdsand Djangothat depict the culprits as having received the retribution we all wished they got but never did. Now, with Once Upon a Time, he’s acting as if it never happened at all.