Quentin Tarantino Is An Auteur Because
Quentin Tarantino is an “auteur,” not just a regular director, because his technical competence demonstrates advanced creativity and storytelling qualities, his films showcase his consistent “personality,” and their “interior meaning” expands on important themes/implicit messages on social or cultural topics. For example, Tarantino’s films, Jackie Brown and Inglorious Basterds, expose strong themes of race inequalities, gender, financial power, the struggle for self-determination within a criminal underworld, aging, reinvention, and the complexities of interpersonal relationships.
His technical competence in Jackie Brown can be broken down into strategic camera movement, pairing the music’s rhythm to the scene, natural flow continuity editing, and realistic visual style, tying in with the novel Jackie Brown. His consistent “personality” is enhanced through the scene’s natural flow and unique videography. He is very picky about how the camera is moved.
His technical competence in Inglourious Basterds exemplifies dialogue, cinematography, editing, high and low angles, extended sequences to build up tension in scenes, non-linear storytelling, and stands out particularly in this film. Indie Film Hustle had this to say about Tarantino directing Inglourious Basterds, “the murder of Adolf Hitler in a movie theatre—began a different reality in which movies play a much larger part in society, and society as a whole has become more attuned to pop culture and exaggerated in violence, profanity and sex” (Indie Film Hustle, 2023). This quote provides how Tarantino incorporates underlying meanings into his films, themes of violence, cruelty against mankind, and survival in a criminal Gotham City-like world.
“This film (Jackie Brown) is his way of giving back to the ideas and people that gave him so much” (Indie Film Hustle, 2023) is a quote that supports the argument that Tarantino is a masterful director, an “auteur” and not just an ordinary director. Tarantino skillfully tells the stories of these characters, preserving important details in the visual films.
