Hollywood and Asian cinema

Quentin Tarantino's latest film, 'Inglourious Basterds' (yes, thats the title) has just been released in the United States, and is generating a great deal of interest. Taratino, in addition to being the director of such films as Pulp Fiction, 'Kill Bill' and 'Reservoir Dogs', has also distinguished himself as a wonderful script writer and actor. In his latest films, he focuses on Nazi-occupied France during World War II and the brutalities of the Nazis and the plight of the Jews. As in most of his other films, there is blood and mayhem, and violence is deployed as a way of understanding the world and making sense of our lives. The combative wit, clever dialogues, unpredictability of events and, cruelties that mark his earlier work are clearly in evidence in this film as well. Tarantino is well-known for his repeated references in his works to earlier films - what film scholars, using a high-sounding word, refer to as intertextuality. This trait is powerfully present in his latest cinematic creation as well.

Quentin Tarantino is a cult figure; his earlier film, 'Reservoir Dogs' continues to be very popular with aficionados of action/noir films. His later film 'Pulp Fiction', which can be usefully described as a postmodernist film, plays with the flow of time in an interesting way. He subverts the normal linearity of time to secure complex and unanticipated effects. The reason I have chosen to focus on Quentin Tarantino is because he has become a very important bridge between Hollywood and East Asian cinema. Tarantino's films 'Kill Bill Vol I' and 'Vol II' clearly testify to his deep-seated interest in Asian martial arts films - Chinese and Japanese. He has also been a great promoter of Hong Kong filmmakers such as John Woo and Wong-kar Wai in Hollywood. They in turn have been staunch admirers of Tarantino's cinema. Hong Kong filmmakers have played a crucial role in fashioning the current vocabulary and visual tropes and registers of Hollywood action films. The last sequence of 'Reservoir Dogs' bears this out. In addition, it is important to remember that Martin Scorsese.

'The Departed', which won the Academy award for the Best Picture a few years ago, is a re-make of a Hong Kong film 'Infernal Affairs' by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. What greater tribute to Hong Kong cinema than that.

The relationship between Hollywood and Asian cinema is an interesting one. Hollywood continues to inflect Asian cinemas in complex ways; however, it is no longer a one-way street. In the past, except for a rare filmmaker like Akira Kurosawa, say, his film 'Seven Samurai', not many Asian directors influenced Hollywood movie-making. Today the story is different. Asian filmmakers such as John Woo, Jackie Chan, Wong- kar Wai, Tsui Hark (Hong Kong), Ang Lee (Taiwan), Shekhar Kapur (India), Zhang Yimou (China) are making a great impact on Hollywood. Currently, Korean cinema is in many ways the most dynamic of Asian cinemas, and plans are afoot in Hollywood to entice some of the Korean directors.

It is in this context that the efforts of Quentin Tarantino assume a great importance. He played a significant role in gaining Western recognition for a Hong Kong cinema in general and a director such as Wong- kar Wai in particular To my mind. Tarantino and Wong-kar Wai share many features in common. In my book on Wong- kar Wai titled,'Ashes of Time', published by Hong Kong University Press, I made the observation that he is not an easy director to engage with. He shuns facile characterizations and stereotypes. As a filmmaker he is unafraid to break rules. That is because he takes rules with the utmost seriousness. His films lead to other films by him, thereby forcing us to recognize each of his films as an extension of his other works. He is a demanding film director because his ambivalent style defies easy comprehension. These observations are equally applicable to Quentin Tarantino as well.

The interaction of Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez with Hong Kong film directors like John Woo, Wong- kar Wai and Johnny To (also admired by Tarantino) has resulted in a new cinematic internationalism based on a confluence of features of action films and film noir and Chinese 'hero' films.

These action/crime films combine the transcendence of physical limitations of the human body and the spectacular gunplay, choreographed violence and quick-cutting of Hong Kong films, with the darker desires and psychological anxieties of Hollywood film noir.