Tarantino has often been criticised for stealing from other directors. The most common charge concerns the influence of this movie on Reservoir Dogs. It's an easy charge to make; Tarantino as a huge film fan, who has watched a LOT of indie / arthouse / underground / foreign film and pinched the best, dumbing it down for a mass audience. These charges often go beyong complaining about Tarntino's obvious influences - here we read about the indie filmmaker who claims (somewhat fancifully, as it turns out) that Tarantino basically stole the whole 'Grindhouse' concept from him.

Is this very obvious appropriation of influences actually intellectual and artistic theft? Tarantino is very much a postmodern director (witness the use of non-linear plots, intertextuality, non-naturalistic devices and so on; all features associated with postmodern filmmaking) and one aspect of that is to stop pretending that anything is 'original'. Everything is simply a rehash of what went before. Jean Baudrillard's concept of 'simulacra' is handy here; given that a process of bricolage means that everything we see or hear is basically made up of bits taken from elsewhere (sampled music might be the most obvious example. Is it 'music'?), nothing is new. As such, what we are watching or hearing are mere simulations and we should stop expecting 'originality' or 'authenticity'.

Tarantino, of course, has also been massively influential in turn. Kaante is the most obvious example - the Indian version of Reservoir Dogs.



Reservoir Dogs



Lung fu fong wan (City on Fire) (no subtitles - sorry!)



Kaante (again, no subtitles; you don't need them to see the influence!)