{"id":36443,"date":"2021-12-23T22:45:15","date_gmt":"2021-12-24T03:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=36443"},"modified":"2021-12-23T22:45:15","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T03:45:15","slug":"musings-on-an-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/23\/musings-on-an-ear\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings On An Ear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cTorture you? That\u2019s a Good Idea. I Like that One. Sounds Fun.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m often given a stink eye when I proclaim \u201cReservoir Dogs\u201d as one of my lesser liked Tarantino films. While I think it\u2019s stellar, I also think it possesses a lot of the hallmarks of a fresh talent desperate to impress right out of the gate. That said, I would agree \u201cReservoir Dogs\u201d is a wonderful example of crime cinema, and a wonderful exploration on the levels of brutal violence. All at once Tarantino explores cartoonish action movie violence, brutal realistic violence, and a personal kind of violence that people still talk about to this day.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The scene is set with \u201cReservoir Dogs\u201d: The diamond heist put forth by Joe Cabot was absolutely disastrous, costing the lives of a few of the skilled thieves hired by him and his son Nice Guy Eddie. What should have been an easy gig turned in to a bloodbath as Mr. Orange is lying in a pool of his own blood after a shot in the stomach; the remaining thieves meeting to figure out what the fuck happened. One of the more unhinged individuals among them is Mr. Blonde who shows up sipping a coke, relaxed as ever, while Mr. White and Mr. Pink try to settle what happened during the robbery.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s fascinating is that unlike everyone else, Tarantino gives us time to get to know Vic Vega\/Mr. Blonde. He\u2019s a great friend of Nice Guy Eddie, Paul Cabot is pretty much like a father to him, and he even did jail time for him for the Cabot\u2019s. He seems like a normal street hood that is entrenched in his life of crime, and it\u2019s how he likes it. When we meet him he\u2019s fresh out of jail ready for another heist. When we meet him again in his white and black suit, he\u2019s in his element, and the tides turn when he reveals he\u2019d kidnapped cop Marvin Nash.<\/p>\n

After beating him up hoping to find some information on him, Mr. White and Mr. Pink leave for a bit allowing Mr. Blonde some time with Nash. What begins as a routine violent interrogation by some pissed off criminals for hire soon turns in to a scene of pure sadism.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What makes the scene involving Mr. Blonde so absolutely horrendous and impossible to watch is the intimacy of the entire sequence. Director Tarantino rarely features long tracking shots in \u201cReservoir Dogs\u201d (save for the opening sequence), but suddenly he\u2019s following Mr. Blonde out to his car, and back in to the warehouse where Nash awaits helpless and strapped to a chair. This isn\u2019t a moment of business, but a brief interlude of pleasure for Vega, who expresses to Nash that he doesn\u2019t give a shit what he does or doesn\u2019t know about what happened. It\u2019s clear that no matter what Nash does, Mr. Blonde is going to inflict sheer brutality.<\/p>\n

From there we watch Mr. Blonde engage in to something of a personal ritual, pumping up Stealer\u2019s Wheels\u2019 \u201cStuck in the Middle With You\u201d and donning a straight razor. He does exactly what we expect, slashing Nash\u2019s face and indulging in his pain and torment uninterrupted (without Tarantino moving away from the scene). Then he makes the move toward Nash, with the straight razor. Tarantino does a peculiar thing, though. He pans away from the brutality. This in a movie where we\u2019ve seen nothing but gun shots to the face, gun shots to the stomach, buckets of blood, and two policemen gunned down in cold blood.<\/p>\n

Tarantino pans away slowly to the nearest wall from the suddenly realistic human suffering, allowing us only to hear Nash scream in unspeakable pain, while Blonde indulges in what is clearly a personal ritual. That might be why the scene is so infamous. This is a ritual that Mr. Blonde sets aside for personal pleasure and nothing more. Nothing from his cohorts being killed in or potentially everything falling apart really affects him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For reasons we never quite understand, he\u2019s just giddy to maim Nash as much as possible before White and Pink arrive with Cabot and Nice Guy Eddie. It\u2019s so personal that he practically breaks the fourth wall ordering the camera man to look away while he enjoys his own private hobby. It\u2019s something we don\u2019t see occur, and when all is said and done it\u2019s just as painful and excruciating to hear Nash wail in agony. I still cringe and still squirm in my seat. We don\u2019t see the severing of the ear, and we don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

Surely Mr. Orange is suffering, but someone outside the fold has become the prey for one of the predators. No matter how much Officer Nash begs or tries to reason, Mr. Blonde wants to hear none of it, first taunting him with his severed ear, and then dousing him with gasoline, preparing for the coup de grace.<\/p>\n

It was said that Director Wes Craven (and five other theater goers) walked out of the 1992 screening during this scene from sheer disgust; I understand his apprehension toward experiencing this truly stomach churning moment. Because for once, in a movie filled with Peckingpah-esque action, for a moment the violence is real. It\u2019s personal. It\u2019s stark. And there\u2019s some severe human suffering unfolding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cTorture you? That\u2019s a Good Idea. I Like that One. Sounds Fun.\u201d I\u2019m often given a stink eye when I proclaim \u201cReservoir Dogs\u201d as one of my lesser liked Tarantino films. While I think it\u2019s stellar, I also think it possesses a lot of the hallmarks of a fresh talent desperate to impress right out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[240,391,812,2871,1087,1116],"class_list":["post-36443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pcthugs","tag-crime","tag-gangster","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-reservoir-dogs","tag-thriller","tag-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36447,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36443\/revisions\/36447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}