Quentin Tarantino and History Revisionism: Tracking the Authorship of Tarantino's Career

By Mason Leaver

Warning: This article features spoilers for Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
​
Quentin Tarantino is one of the most well recognized names in film today. In his nearly 30 year long career, he has managed to consistently deliver unique and interesting films. His early work, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994),  both focus on stories of crime, and they are both heavily stylized in the classic Tarantino approach. The films in the middle of his career, like Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003, 2004), and Death Proof (2007) similarly focus on stories of crime and revenge. By 2007, it appeared that Tarantino had a very particular style (over the top violence, extremely stylized cinematography, some nonlinear storytelling, and a very specific Tarantino aesthetic), and that his films would always revolve around the same stories of crime. Indeed, reviews of Death Proof reflect this fatigue with Tarantino’s work. Phillip French, film critic at The Observer commented that Death Proof chronicled “Tarantino's slide into one-dimensional caricature”. So it came as a surprise to many in 2009 when the floundering crime director released a World War 2 thriller, Inglourious Basterds. Inglourious Basterds’ entire premise revolves around an idea called historical revisionism. Historical revisionism is the process of looking at history from a different perspective or, as is the case of Tarantino’s film, presenting an alternate, idealized version of history. This trend of historical revisionism has continued throughout Tarantino’s career. By examining the works of Tarantino from Inglourious Basterds up to his most recent work Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood (2019), we can see that Tarantino’s career has transformed from crime stories to a heavy focus on historical revisionism. 

Tarantino directing Brad Pitt in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

The first film in Tarantino’s revisionist career is Inglourious Basterds. The film is one of the best in the director’s career, and marks a significant deviation in how Tarantino approached film making and story structure. Rather than being a small scale crime film, Inglourious Basterds focuses on two parallel stories set in Nazi occupied France. The first is the story of Shoshana, a Jewish woman who has hatched a plan to kill all of the high ranking members of the Nazi party, by burning down her theater. The other half of the story is about the titular “Inglorious Bastards”, a group of Jewish-American guerrilla fighters working their way through France. When the Bastards hear that the upper echelon of the Nazi party will be attending a screening in a certain theater in France, they plan on attacking the screening; a plan quite separate from Shoshana’s. Both of their plans work together to bring the end to the Nazi party. And it is here that we see the first instance of historical revisionism in Tarantino’s work. Obviously, Hitler and the entire Nazi command were not killed in a theater in one fell swoop, but this is the version of history that Tarantino presents us with. The ending of the film has a poetic justice to it; the Nazis are burnt alive by a Jewish woman and her African-French husband and brutalized by the bullets of Jewish-American soldiers. The spectral floating head of Shoshanna, projected onto the smoke of the theater like a ghost, fills the hearts of the Nazis with terror. It is a complete wish fulfillment fantasy of World War 2. Tarantino presents what we might wish had happened to the Nazis, an ending so much more just than the escape Hitler got. 

Shoshanna's projection laughs at the Nazi party as the theater burns around them

Tarantino’s next film was released in theaters three years later. Django Unchained  (2012) is the story of Django, a freed slave turned bounty hunter who works to free his wife from a brutal plantation owner in the Antebellum South. This film, much like Inglourious Basterds, focuses on a reversal of power; a righting of historical wrongs. Django is a slave scarred from numerous whippings, and half way through the film he whips a white slave owner. As Django travels through the south, he murders white slave owners with bounties on their heads and begins to put himself in a place of power and respect. Much like Tarantino’s previous work, this is a story of revenge, but this time it is through a role reversal of oppressor and oppressed. In an interview with Fresh Air, Tarantino said that Django Unchained gave him a chance to “put a spin on it and actually take a slave character and give him a heroic journey, make him heroic, make him give his payback, and actually show this epic journey and give it the kind of folkloric tale that it deserves — the kind of grand-opera stage it deserves” (Fresh Air).  Django Unchained is the second film in Tarantino’s career to focus on this historical revisionism, another wish-fulfillment, role reversal historical fantasy, delivering a version of history that we might wish had really happened. 

Django whips a slave holder

Tarantino’s next release was 2015’s The Hateful Eight. The film is about a group of eight characters stuck together in a cabin during a snowstorm, set during the late 1800’s. The Hateful Eight is not as centrally focused on historical revisionism as the previous two, though it is still a historical fantasy. There is however, one scene which focuses centrally on Tarantino’s trend of role reversal. Major Marquis Warren, a freed slave turned Union Major, manages to convince General Smithers, an ex-Confederate General, to draw his pistol. When General Smithers draws his weapon, Major Warren easily shoots him first. Warren managed to get Smithers to do this by telling him a horrible story of how Warren forced Smithers’ son to perform a sexual act for him. In his anger, Smithers tries to kill Warren. In this scene we see another reversal of the traditional oppressor and oppressed narrative. Here, the ex-slave is in control of the situation. Despite the immorality of his actions, it is clear that Warren is doing this as a way of getting back at the white southerners who wronged him. Shooting and killing a racist Confederate general is another small example of Tarantino’s righting of wrong. However, the character of Major Warren is a much more nuanced approach to the topic than either Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained presented. 

Major Warren

Finally, Tarantino’s most recent work, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, continued the trend in the summer of 2019. Once Upon a Time focuses on actor Rick Dalton and stuntman Cliff Booth in the Hollywood of the 1960’s. The film’s nearly three hour run time focuses predominantly on the story of Dalton and Booth, but some time is spent exploring the real life story of Sharon Tate, and the Charles Manson cult. Until the last 15 minutes of the film, the stories of Tate and the main plot do not cross. Until the plot reaches that night in August, when the Tate family was murdered by several of Manson’s followers. Here, the film takes a turn away from history, and the Manson murderers enter the home of Rick Dalton instead. What follows is an extremely over the top, brutal, and almost satirical scene where the actors defend themselves and brutally kill the Manson intruders. Once again, Tarantino turns history on its head and presents what he wishes had happened that night. Here, the old-guard of Hollywood confront and defeat the evil which Tarantino sees as the turning point of Hollywood. Rather than the innocence of Hollywood slipping away, Tarantino presents us a happy ending where good people live and Hollywood is stable. It is an idealized fictionalization of history. When one looks back on Tarantino’s career, it is clear that he has been authoring a career about role reversal and historical fiction; about righting historical wrongs. It is no coincidence that both Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood use the medium of film as a central part of this correction. Tarantino is creating a meta narrative about his films; film is a medium that allows us to explore alternative versions of history and to bring to light the injustices of the past. We can likely expect Tarantino’s next project to similarly focus on a retelling of history. 

For more on Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, check out our review here: www.cinemablography.org/blog/older-and-wiser-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review

Works Cited

“Quentin Tarantino, 'Unchained' And Unruly.” NPR, NPR, 2 Jan. 2013, www.npr.org/2013/01/02/168200139/quentin-tarantino-unchained-and-unruly.

“Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 24 July 2019, www.imdb.com/title/tt7131622/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_2.

​French, Philip. “Other Films: Death Proof | Evening | As You Like It and Others.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 23 Sept. 2007, www.theguardian.com/film/2007/sep/23/shakespeare.