Inglourious Tarantino

I confess that a few years ago I contributed to Quentin Tarantino’s fame after seeing “Reservoir Dogs.” At the end of the film, a viewer who had not stopped commenting about it said loudly to his companion next to him, “What a wonderful flick, Alberto.” That is more or less — to my present shame — what I thought, and I laughed loudly in response to the comment.

The film was very well made and the performances by the leading actors were magnificent, without exception. I quietly assessed the film and thought that it dealt with an excellent story full of irony about violence and communication. It seemed to me that the critique it contained was very positive. And it made me a fan of the American director.

Now it has been widely announced that a new story by this filmmaker is going to be produced in the coming months. And I have to say that it does not cause the least stir of pleasure in me. I no longer find his proclivity for blood and violence the least bit funny.

What happened in Paris only reaffirmed my new position of being militantly (because I am) anti-Tarantino. [A position] so new that not even my significant other knew about it. Not long ago I recalled a film of his, “Inglourious Basterds,” in which there is a machine gun attack by Nazis in Paris — the same thing that some jihadi fighters carried out in a club in the Bataclan. And I imagined hundreds of young Muslims enjoying the vision of a machine gun attack against hundreds of young people like them, except that they were Christians. The irony was no longer there, just a cruel look and lack of criticism of violence. The same holds for another of the creator’s films, “Django Unchained,” in such a way that it seems I no longer know what to think about Tarantino.

The question is whether violence or just who exercises it is what matters. Is it enough for someone to be tortured simply because he was wearing a Nazi uniform? I do not believe so, and I want to believe that Western education systems are against it too. It would be awful if a Spanish film in favor of murdering Christians were to be seen in Morocco. This idea applies everywhere. I hope that Tarantino stops accruing as much money as he has in the past.