Benjamin Lewis launches a passionate defence of Quentin Tarantino’s brilliance and explains why he thinks that it doesn’t matter that the writer/director still hasn’t won the Best Director award at the Oscars…
If I were to ask you to name me one director off the top of your head from the last five or ten years, who springs to mind? Maybe it’s Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park), Peter Jackson (The Hobbit) or James Cameron (Titanic)? What about Quentin Tarantino? An enigmatic and divisive, yet brilliant auteur. But despite an array of nominations and awards from many festivals, there is one glaring absence from his collection, which has meant that, in an official sense, he has been unable to join the upper echelons of directors.
I am indeed talking about the Best Director award at the Oscars (an award that all of the aforementioned directors have won).
Tarantino has twice been nominated for Best Director, in 1995 for Pulp Fiction and in 2010 for Inglorious Basterds. However, both times he lost, to Forrest Gump in 1995 and The Hurt Locker in 2010. On both occasions, Tarantino should have won.
I will embrace my position next to Tarantino on the Academy’s blacklist for saying this, but it is a fact. This is not to detract from the quality of either film, but especially in the case of 1995, Pulp Fiction was effectively the only choice; heavily stylised, it has numerous references to pop culture, a non-linear structure and memorable dialogue. Not only did this set the foundations for Tarantino’s own later movies but it would significantly impact other films, too. As Moviemaker Magazine later wrote, it was, “Nothing less than a cultural phenomenon”. This is a declaration that you would find hard to apply to Forrest Gump, despite its repeated references to cultural crazes.
So why then have the Academy not deemed Tarantino worthy of Best Director over the years? If we look at his four most critically successful movies according to Rotten Tomatoes and overlook Reservoir Dogs due to it being his directorial debut, the other three were all nominated for Best Picture and/or Best Original Screenplay (Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained) and two for Best Director (Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds). Of these, the only two awards Tarantino won were for Best Original Screenplay for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. Why is this?
The unfortunate fact is that the Academy is a tight-knit group, who are incredibly political and hostile to outside threats posed to the established status-quo of Hollywood by unorthodox people outside the clique producing unconventional films. According to a recent demographic investigation by the LA Times, the collective is 94% white, with a median age of 62, and 77% male.
If we bear this in mind, the failure of many non-conformist, unconventional and extreme films in the eyes of Academy to win after their nominations makes perfect sense. This is seen clearly with Tarantino, whose handling and choice of extreme violence, an abundance of aesthetic blood and sensitive subject matters, so intrinsic to his style, are also responsible for the catch-22 situation he finds himself in.
Perhaps a brief comparison of Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump is in order. Forrest Gump has a formulaic and linear plot, has a less gritty and overt portrayal of violence, is less stylistic and also less relevant to the time in which it was made. Pulp Fiction is the complete opposite to this and other movies, which cater for the tastes of the Academy. This is most evidently seen with the boring, patriotic, already forgotten Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – a film rightly rated poorly and yet nominated for Best Picture due to its subject matter and creation with the Oscars in mind.
Ultimately, it is my belief that it is Tarantino’s lack of Best Director confirmation that is not only testament to his directorial brilliance, but to his moral worth, too. It is the very unconventional characteristics of his style that are so frowned upon by the Academy – disdain of cinematic convention and aestheticization of violence – that have earned him so much popular and critical acclaim and success. In refusing to change his cinematic style or beliefs in order to be judged more deserving by his colleagues and contemporaries at festivals, he only further cements his standing as an inspirational director.
Benjamin Lewis
Agree or disagree with Ben? Why not join the debate about Forrest Gump, Tarantino and the worth of the Oscars in the comments section?
exeposedev 