The alienation in Reservoir Dogs

Rating: 7/10 (24 August 2013)

Reservoir Dogs is a classic Quentino Tarantino film: tough characters, non-linear storyline, lots of action, shootouts and no unnecessary shots. So that means everything is very precisely thought through.
I found one theme very interesting for me in this movie and that is the alienation between the criminal team who is doing a diamond heist.
Sure, criminals usually don't trust each other, but usually you have to trust a person very much if you are attempting to do a heist together. So it is quite interesting that the members of this team are deprived of their names, personality - they all are assigned names and they are all wearing the same outfit as if to say that in this heist they leave their personal lives and identities behind them and they are different people here. Although in the beginning there are many close shots as if trying to get into the personalities, trying to make you acquainted with them.
Actually there is distance even between the people who have the same profession - I'm talking about the two policemen. The wide space between them suggests that even though they are in the same boat working for the same cause they are so different. One of them got in that place by mistake: he was captured and tortured. The other one got accepted to the team after he pretended that he is a criminal.
Another thing which just deepens the alienation is what you can see from MR. White's example. If you get attached to someone you get punished. He trusted his hurt partner Mr Orange who apparently was a policeman and he defended him he killed his partners and then got shot himself by the police.
Another great thing in this movie is the music: it is used just a few times, in the intro, credits and in the torture scene. Now in the torture scene the music is used to show distance from human emotion. The lack of music elsewhere adds the realistic sense to the movie.
So this movie for me really shows how people are just working for one goal, not caring about each other, alienating each other from themselves.