Had another viewing of this and Basterds after a really long time and I observed some shit.
Much like TDKR, it's a film that seems to live from moment-to-moment, with each scene essentially being a small snapshot of a much larger canvas. Also like TDKR, this is where the majority of flaws come from. Both films, I think, could have really benefited from a pretty much unlimited runtime, if only because the complete picture would be fully realized. However I know, and I think even Nolan and Tarantino knew, that this is unrealistic.
The final act of this film is also quite messy. I could count several moments where it should have cut to black and let the credits roll, but it just goes on and on and on. It's really just Tarantino being extremely and overtly Tarantino, maybe even more than modern cinema standards and conventions can handle. It has some really weird moments of editing too, as if the last sequences of scenes were sort of cobbled together in the cutting room in the most "efficient" way possible. I imagine the same thing happened with Nolan's flick too; it seems like both directors had to make a lot of decisions based on efficiency rather than how things flow, simply due to the circumstance of having written and filmed a lot of material.
This is a bit difficult for me to explain, but Django also has a lot of musical cues that enter smoothly but get cutoff suddenly in a weird way. For example, the way the John Legend song starts and the way that scene plays out is really beautiful (this is one of the moments where it should have ended), but the film soon cuts it off and immediately introduces a jarringly different song ("Too Old to Die Young"). The same thing happens just a few minutes later when that same song is also cut off and the orchestral score kicks in. You might have to see this sequence to get my meaning, but it's moments like this that really show the very rough and inconsistent flow of the film. Basterds has some similar issues, albeit not as many. Namely, during the final scenes in the theater, you have the same hard cuts and sudden musical cues and cutoffs that seem pretty jarring. In the end, I think Basterds flows better overall and isn't as much of a "Tarantino gone wild" as Django.
Much like TDKR, it's a film that seems to live from moment-to-moment, with each scene essentially being a small snapshot of a much larger canvas. Also like TDKR, this is where the majority of flaws come from. Both films, I think, could have really benefited from a pretty much unlimited runtime, if only because the complete picture would be fully realized. However I know, and I think even Nolan and Tarantino knew, that this is unrealistic.
The final act of this film is also quite messy. I could count several moments where it should have cut to black and let the credits roll, but it just goes on and on and on. It's really just Tarantino being extremely and overtly Tarantino, maybe even more than modern cinema standards and conventions can handle. It has some really weird moments of editing too, as if the last sequences of scenes were sort of cobbled together in the cutting room in the most "efficient" way possible. I imagine the same thing happened with Nolan's flick too; it seems like both directors had to make a lot of decisions based on efficiency rather than how things flow, simply due to the circumstance of having written and filmed a lot of material.
This is a bit difficult for me to explain, but Django also has a lot of musical cues that enter smoothly but get cutoff suddenly in a weird way. For example, the way the John Legend song starts and the way that scene plays out is really beautiful (this is one of the moments where it should have ended), but the film soon cuts it off and immediately introduces a jarringly different song ("Too Old to Die Young"). The same thing happens just a few minutes later when that same song is also cut off and the orchestral score kicks in. You might have to see this sequence to get my meaning, but it's moments like this that really show the very rough and inconsistent flow of the film. Basterds has some similar issues, albeit not as many. Namely, during the final scenes in the theater, you have the same hard cuts and sudden musical cues and cutoffs that seem pretty jarring. In the end, I think Basterds flows better overall and isn't as much of a "Tarantino gone wild" as Django.
