Most movie lovers revere Stanley Kubrick as a god among men, but Quentin Tarantino isn’t much of a fan — in fact, he once called the legendary director a “hypocrite” for his stance on violence in film. Before the release of Kill Bill, The New Yorker did a profile on Tarantino that dug into his filmic appeтιтes and H๏τ takes. While many cinephiles would put Kubrick on the Mount Rushmore of filmmakers, Tarantino admits that he’s not as taken with Kubrick’s work. He even prefers Adrian Lyne’s controversial 1997 version of Lolita over Kubrick’s adaptation.

Kubrick’s films often dealt with the moral complexity of violence. He turned a family man into a murderer in The Shining, he examined the morality of war in Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket, and he even suggested that apes evolved into humans when they discovered the ability to use violence to get what they want in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But Tarantino felt that Kubrick’s stance that his films critique violence was built on hypocrisy, and he made that opinion known.

Tarantino Thought Kubrick Was A Hypocrite Over His Stance On Violence In Movies

According To Tarantino, A Clockwork Orange Revels In The Violence It Claims To Critique

Tarantino was unconvinced by Kubrick’s take on his own work in A Clockwork Orange. At the time of the film’s release, Kubrick’s “party line” was that he hadn’t made “a movie about violence,” but rather “a movie against violence.” But Tarantino didn’t find A Clockwork Orange to be anti-violence at all. He thought the first act reveled in Alex DeLarge’s crime spree and that the rest of the film, when he gets his comeuppance, felt much more disingenuous by comparison. Kubrick essentially tries to have his cake and eat it, too.

He didn’t dislike the film overall. Tarantino found that twisted opening 20-minute sequence to be “pretty f**king perfect.” He described the first act of A Clockwork Orange as being “about as poppy and visceral and perfect a piece of cinematic moviemaking as I think had ever been done up until that time.” He just wishes that the second and third acts had committed to the sadism instead of devolving into a morality tale. Kubrick told a dystopian story of crime and punishment, but Tarantino was much more convinced by the crime than the punishment.

Quentin Tarantino Has Always Been Very Clear About The Role Of Violence In His Movies

Tarantino Sees No Correlation Between Movie Violence & Real-Life Violence

Tarantino has always been very clear that he doesn’t believe there’s any connection between movie violence and real-world violence. As far as Tarantino is concerned, where real-life violence is reprehensible and destructive, movie violence is pure escapist spectacle and nothing more. He takes great joy in showing the Bride brutally slaughtering the Crazy 88’s and doesn’t consider that cinematic bloodbath to have any bearing on real-life atrocities. Quentin Tarantino has never hidden behind Kubrick’s excuse that the graphic violence of his films critiques violence; he’ll openly admit that his cinematic violence is for entertainment purposes only.

Source: The New Yorker