Quentin Tarantino has praised Hans Zimmer’s score for Dunkirk, noting that it can be regarded as “defining” the last decade.
The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director spoke about about the original score’s 2018 Oscars snub despite the Academy rewarding the film in another area (Academy Award for Best Film Editing).
“It’s a score for one movie in particular that you could define the decade by,” Tarantino said on The Ringer’s ‘Rewatchables’ podcast. The acclaimed filmmaker expanded on Christopher Nolan’s World War II survival thriller, saying that it’s his second favourite movie of the 2010s.
“I had an interesting experience with it the first couple of times,” Tarantino said of the film. “The first time I saw it, I don’t know what I was thinking the first time. I just dealt with the spectacle of it all. I couldn’t deal with anything else but the spectacle of it all.
“I liked the movie, but the spectacle almost numbed me to the experience. I don’t think I felt anything emotional. I was awed by it. But I didn’t know what I was awed by…it wasn’t until the third time that I could see past the spectacle and into the people the story is about. I finally could see through the trees a little bit” [quotes via Indie Wire].
Dunkirk had been in Tarantino’s number seven position but rose to the second slot after a third watch. He explained that he is yet to reveal his top 10 movies of the last decade because he is still rewatching “a ton” of films in order to cement his decision.
Tarantino added: “Nolan’s Dunkirk screenplay cuts together three narratives that are each happening over different periods of time. “Oftentimes, you see a film where the style is about the adrenaline of it.
“The style is an immersive experience, but by the third or fourth viewing you get past the style and you realise the magician’s tricks. In the case of Dunkirk, it rewards Nolan’s efforts to see it more. There’s a point, by mid movie, he can’t do it wrong…it’s a symphony. Nothing doesn’t work.”
According to The Wrap, the director recently told reporters at a press junket in Moscow that he thought his depiction of Lee was fair and spot-on. “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy,” Tarantino said. “The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that to that effect.”
Tarantino’s response comes after Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee hit out at the Oscar-winning filmmaker for portraying her father as an “arrogant asshole who was full of hot air”.
