Cinema Speculation

INDIA has a strong, indigenous culture of loving performance art in various forms, including cinema. Whether we like it or not, we’re surrounded by people who love different kinds of cinema. For decades, through it’s rich dichotomy of commercial and art-house sensibilites, Indian cinema has frequently been used as a prism through which societal issues such as poverty, sexism, language, culture, religion & capitalism have been seen and shown. The contemporary challenge though, is having an original and meaningful opinion of cinema. What should dictate our reaction to cinema as a work of art? Should commercial success be the yardstick or should it be cultural impact & longevity? Should we boycott cinema that we think is too unusual, abnormal, realistic, violent, jingoistic, politically and/or religiously biased or unoriginal? To what extent can filmmakers exercise their creative right to freedom of expression? What are the duties of a filmmaker and an audience that come bundled with that fundamental creative right? In the age of social media, we’re tuned in to so many opinions around us that having one of our own becomes near-impossible. Should we trust a film critic or a social media influencer or the filmmakers themselves to tell us if their art is good or not, or should we go out, give the art a chance and watch it? And what about the omnipresent dilemma - to stream or not to stream?

QUENTIN Tarantino, therefore, is the perfect person to put pen to paper and write an actual book (not a podcast or a Netflix special) on communally watching, absorbing & having an objective opinion about works of cinema art that impacted his growing up years. He is likely the only un-cancelled, fearless, uncompromising, highly intelligent yet idiosyncratic, original filmmaker left standing in Hollywood who has enough scholarship to wield the kind of authority needed to write this book. In Cinema Speculation, his first non-fiction book that spans the decade between 1970 & 1980, Tarantino takes us on a journey of a decidedly passionate movie buff who was encouraged from an early age by his mother to cultivate his interest by watching all kinds of movies. The best thing about this book is that it demystifies cinema analysis and critiquing - all it takes is commitment and thoughtful consumption to form objective opinions that encapsulate the experience of watching a piece of cinema. The book also shows us how one can love and fight for one’s city despite a variety of cultural forces & problems at play. In the LA that Tarantino grew up in, there was a massive counterculture movement; Old Hollywood was making way for the new filmmakers who came in 2 generations led first by Sam Peckinpah and then by Francis Ford Coppola ; uptight snobs at home and in power were being shown how to tolerate satire at the cinemas & violence and its portrayal within the context of cinematic storytelling was being reinvented.

MOST of all though, what the book does really well for the movie buff reading it, is it reminds them of their own cinematic experiences that left an impact worth reassessing - so many of my own favorites & why I love them made more sense to me as I read this book. For instance, the use of a Jazz-infused score along with a conversational, character-driven narrative that I loved in Steven Soderbergh’s beautifully shot & acted gem Out of Sight traces back to Peter Yates’ classic Bullitt, which also pioneered the viscerally shot car chase without which Christopher McQuarrie’s cerebral, ice-hot detective procedural Jack Reacher & Nicolas Winding Refn’s most accessible movie starring Ryan Gosling (in a role tailor-made for a young Sylvester Stallone, if you think about it) Drive are hard to imagine. Bullitt’s effective use of urban music & landscape for emotional effect also, upon reflecting, can be traced forward to another modern classic, Doug Liman’s Swingers. Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, another landmark piece of commercial cinema assessed by Tarantino in this book, practically invented contextually staged, unflinching violence which has later echoed in everything from the work of David Fincher and Denis Villenueve to Anurag Kashyap. Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of the leading character drew the young Tarantino in despite its racist undercurrent and on-screen evidence of troubling behavior - not unlike the feeling we are left with after being unable to take our eyes off the flawed but tantalizing eponymous character of the refreshingly polarizing Arjun Reddy. The hidden gem though, which also gives the book it’s name, is the chapter with Tarantino’s assessment of Taxi Driver and what it would have looked like under different circumstances - a bold leap only he can take as the inventor of speculative fiction in cinema. Highly recommended reading for anyone who is a movie buff, a fan of the author or of cinema as art form.