Death Proof (2007)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Kurt Russel, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Poitier
Death Proof is largely considered Tarantino's worst movie. The director said so himself back in 2012, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Here's his quote:
"I don't know about the tuning fork idea. We can all cite examples of where it's not the case. But it's age, it's absolutely age. I'm really well versed on a lot of directors' careers, you know, and when you look at those last five films when they were past it, when they were too old, and they're really out of touch with the times, whether it be William Wyler and The Liberation of L.B. Jones or Billy Wilder with Fedora and then Buddy Buddy or whatever the hell. To me, it's all about my filmography, and I want to go out with a terrific filmography. [2007's] Death Proof has got to be the worst movie I ever make. And for a left-handed movie, that wasn't so bad, all right? -- so if that's the worst I ever get, I'm good. But I do think one of those out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-dick movies costs you three good movies as far as your rating is concerned."
Basically Tarantino, then 49 and midway through his career, expresses worry about becoming a "too old" director who makes movies out of touch with the times. He cites Death Proof as an example of this concern in regards to "one of those out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-dick movies"... in other words, his worst film.
First of all, a poignant choice of words, don't you think? Associating a limp, flaccid penis with a movie primarily about women, almost entirely concerning women's lives and their relationships with one another, consisting almost entirely of dialogue between women. To ask whether Death Proof passes the Bechdel Test would be pointless. It passed with flying colors years before the mainstream media was discussing under representation of women in film, before I (21 years old when Death Proof came out) had even heard the word Bechdel, despite taking film theory courses at Sarah Lawrence College (or maybe I was partying too much and not paying attention in class, but you get the point).
t is notable that Tarantino uses male impotence as an analogy to describe his pro-feminist empowerment film distinctly about violence and sexuality, and that he brings up Death Proof in the context of directors getting old and out of touch. It is almost as if he feels he wasn't in the right making this movie, that he was mislead in making it, or maybe, as a man, he wasn't the one who should have made it. "It has got to be the worst film I ever make". Does it? This makes me wonder: Did he think Death Proof was not his best film when he saw the final product, or when the reviews started pouring in about the "pointless dialogue"? No one complained about the pointless dialogue in Reservoir Dogs. See where I'm going with this?
To sum up, he was being way too hard on himself. We see an artist perhaps not fully confident yet in his unique and masterful visions, which is ironic, of course. Because everyone thinks of Tarantino as a pompous asshole.
Death Proof is one of Tarantino's best movies, a strange, genre-breaking and undefinable masterpiece. It has a one-of-a-kind in premise and discombobulated pacing, and oddly features a detestable yet charismatic serial killer who comes in and out of the lives of two groups of analogous yet distinctly complex female characters, all of whom are victimized and ultimately avenged in a "you have to see it to believe it" finale.
In 2017, Death Proof is more prescient, inspiring, and thrilling than ever. Even better, it marks Tarantino's transition from the brilliant nerd fanboy responsible for Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill I and II, to the contemplative and historically conscious visionary of Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained.
"Where are you getting this shit?", you may ask. If you saw Death Proof a few years back and think you know the movie well, you should take a break from reading this and watch it again. It's on STARZ, if you have STARZ streaming. When you watch it, make sure it's NOT GRINDHOUSE. I mean you can watch Grindhouse if you want, but in the dual feature (the first half is Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, speaking of outdated films) Death Proof is cut by nearly half an hour. Imagine how bummed I was to learn, having begrudged my way through the waaaaay too long Planet Terror, to find several of Tarantino's all-time best scenes entirely cut out. Yes, I am talking about the lap dance scene as well as the Tennessee convenience store scene, so watch Death Proof in its entirety, separate from Grindhouse, and thank me in the morning.
Now that you have seen it, follow along. The film is broken into two distinct halves. The first half takes place in Austin, Texas and centers around Jungle Julia (Sydney Poitier) a radio jockey, and her friends, Butterfly (Vanessa Ferlito) and Shanna (Jordan Ladd). They drive around, shoot the shit, and spend most of their screen time at two bars (Guero's and Texas Chili Parlor, for all you Austinites like me excited to see classic Tarantino at local watering holes). Their conversations cover the sort of topics women have with their friends (dating, for instance) but also topics that men have with their friends; who will buy the pot, music groups, sex.
Stuntman Mike (the iconic Kurt Russel) seems like the main character, and he is in so far that he appears in both segments. But his character remains undefined throughout, enigmatic and one-dimensional with a singular goal of preying on young women and killing them with his death proof stunt car. We never learn much about Stuntman Mike's backstory or the genesis of his perverted motives. His character only changes in the last twenty minutes, when he loses control of his car and position of power (terrorizing girls) and completely loses his shit, reduced to a bloodied and pleading coward, shrieking like hunted down prey.
The first half of Death Proof ends with one of the best scenes I've seen in any movie, probably the most visceral and horrifying car crash scene in the history of film. After this, all our girls are dead. We are left with no one to follow for the remainder of the movie, no one except Stuntman Mike. But unlike Norman Bates cleaning up the bathroom in Psycho (we somewhat sympathize with Norman, especially because we have yet to learn that he's the one who murdered our heroine), we have no allegiance for Stuntman Mike. In fact, after an absurdly long diatribe in a hospital corridor between a completely unrealistic cowboy Sheriff played by Michael Parks (RIP) and his cowboy son, we feel injustice. It's not fair Stuntman Mike escaped his homicidal crash with a broken collar bone and smashed index finger (intentionally mild injuries on the writer's part) . We loved our girls, and we got to know them well. They were vibrant and young, beautiful and strong, infectiously charming, innocent, and real. Here the audience feels the tragedy; they had their whole lives ahead of them and Stuntman ripped them off the planet in an instant. We want him to pay.
This is why holistically the movie feels off and lagging in the second half. At this point we have already passed the climax, the car crash (to be honest it's the best scene in the movie and no subsequent scene trumps it), not to mention the slasher-esque Rose McGowan death scene. Our main characters are dead and gone, and we are thrown into Tennessee 14 months later with Stuntman Mike in his car and his creepy black-and-white POV shot. We immediately learn that the second part is analogous in structure to the first; we have to start over again and hear similarly drawn-out dialogue (not that that's a bad thing) between four different female characters and we have to get to know them all over again.
This is the precise reason why Death Proof is so brilliant. It toys with audience perception of how movies should operate, how their plots should unfold, and who should be their protagonists. It's hard for me to think of any other movie that feels so strongly like two separate films.
Which makes it easy to miss the most important distinction between the two parts: The women in the second part work in the film industry, and two of them are stunt performers like Stuntman Mike. Is this the reason they give him a run for his money and quickly end him in the final twenty minutes?
Perhaps. But I would go so far as to argue that Tarantino is making a statement about female oppression and empowerment (whether he means to or not). The audience gets to know the female characters personally in a way Stuntman Mike never does. They are real people to us, but to Stuntman Mike they are weak, sexualized victims, ripe for stalking and terrorizing. Stuntman Mike is the epitome of masculine violence with his decked out car serving as his weapon of choice. Typical of slasher, horror, and exploitation films, the director deliberately sexualizes the female characters with his camera, except here they are given ample dialogue and screen time to become realistic and complex individuals. This is the significance of the aforementioned lap dance, and also why Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character is dressed like a cheerleader: the director is fully aware of male filmmakers' tendency to reduce women to caricatures defined solely on their sexuality. What we see in Death Proof is a farce on the stupidity of male predatory instincts and audience expectations of how women ought to be portrayed in film.
Zoe Bell (playing herself) and Kim (Tracie Thoms) are film. The reason they defeat Stuntman Mike in the end isn't because they are able to outmaneuver his stunt car; they outmaneuver the movie itself. They break the rules of typical female roles in film (sex objects and victims) to make their own stunts. In turn, they become something we haven't seen before. Not quite heroes (they are too merciless and vindictive for that), but something new all together. If their transformation into vengeful attackers feels abrupt it's not because Tarantino has randomly turned the plot on us; it's because his female characters snatch the movie away from the director and take matters into their own hands.
In 2007, Death Proof was so strange and ahead of its time viewers had trouble making sense of it. But if we consider it two years before Inglorious Basterds, and ten years before campus sexual assault disclosures, Sexual Predator Trump, and the massive Women's March, it starts making sense. A storm was coming, we just didn't see it.
More often than not, Tarantino's films feature strong, badass female protagonists. But with Death Proof we see the director graduating from the realism-grounded plots of the first half of his career in the 1990s. His early films broke the fourth wall by overtly emulating or alluding to other films the director loved, but they all involved realistic gangsters sharing realistic dialogue in realistic situations.
Death Proof and the 21st century films that followed also break the fourth wall, but in a far more complex way. Rather than a metaphorical wink at the camera or simple homage, Tarantino's later work challenges viewers' knowledge and assumptions of societal violence and historical fact. Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained are fantasies, alternate histories in which the good guys defeat human evil and end up on top in the end. A precursor to these, Death Proof is a fantasy of women evading male sexual violence to command the reversal of roles of predator vs. victim.
In these latter films, Tarantino gives us, the audience, what we want in the end: justice. Sadly, justice is rarely achieved in reality. But this is what cinema truly is, after all. In essence all cinema is illusion.
A+
