Cópias em glória: o cinema bastardo de Quentin Tarantino

Abstract

American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has been recognized in the international film scene since the 1990s for influencing contemporary imaginary and cultural production. This dissertation aims to understand his work as a particular creative project. As the main corpus for this study, we have selected the films Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol 2 (2004), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), since they are, among the filmmaker’s work, the ones in which we found greater control of film discourse, due to the exercise of screenwriting and directing. We conducted a comparative analysis of these movies among themselves and in relation to other films, in which we identified opportunities to establish contrasts. We highlighted and discussed the following aspects of this filmography: (1) a particular mode of expression, identifiable as authorial style, (2) employment in high degree of quotation and intertextual play, and (3) the occurrence of critical discourse on cinema and culture. To achieve our goals, we employed a comparative methodology derived from semiotics and film studies formal approaches, as well as the critique of ideology, from a psychoanalytic matrix. We conclude that Tarantino’s creative project is characterized by the way he selects disparate, contrasting and unusual elements from the sea of intertextuality to present them according to a playful cinematic approach that simultaneously evokes and deconstructs norms and conventions of the audiovisual medium to establish new paradigms of artistic achievement.