Too Godard to be Tarantino, and too Tarantino to be Godard.

Rating: 5/10 (22 June 2006)

I first watched Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" over two years ago. I must admit I was amazed. Being not so much of a film-knower back then, I was completely set in awe about the fact that stylistically, this film was so unique - as compared to, of course, what I had previously seen. My formerly poor cinematic experience and knowledge led me to like this film. The raw violence, the exceedingly black humor, the story's complex and confusing structure, and finally, Tarantino's own treatment of the visuals, the sense of control the direction suggested, which lingered in long takes and worked as a very experienced tour guide to the viewer's eyes, falsely contaminated me with the belief that Tarantino was an auteur, or, depending on how generous I then was, a pure metteur-en-scene.
You see, my criterion for judging a film has always been its personal reflection. Not its originality per se, but the manner in which an artist's personal thoughts and emotions are uniquely portrayed on film, both in terms of style and content. A director's "signature" must be visible throughout his work's body. Thereby, by watching "Pulp Fiction" I perceived the much celebrated Tarantino as one of those unique artists, almost ranking among such great auteurs as Hitchcock, Ford and Kubrick. Mistaken as I was, of course, I saw my own sense of appreciation and respect for Tarantino destroyed at the time when I first discovered the works of Jean-Luc Godard. Tarantino may be successful and admired, he may have won awards and earned a lot of money, but the truth is that he has achieved all that by almost imitating Godard's work. It's a pity that people today know Tarantino and have not heard of Godard. If you haven't seen any of his films yet, please do, and you'll find out that "Pulp Fiction", "Reservoir Dogs" and "Jackie Brown" are nothing but mere imitations of Godard's style. The tenacity of the camera, the often one-sided angle of rendering a scene, the deliberate pacing, titles, freeze-frames and the frequent self-indulgence that characterize the films of the french master, are also the qualities of Tarantino's films. Some, however, believe that Tarantino has only exploited Godard, meaning that he has used some of Godard's better stylistic elements and blown them up into something better. This maybe true, but the fact remains that whenever I watch one of Tarantino's films, I find myself thinking about the influence of Godard...It's completely understandable how Godard, when he saw "Pulp Fiction", declared: "...they might as well have given me the money!!"