Notes toward an idea about Tarantino and doors 






Watching Kill Bill yet again for a project, I was struck by how often crucial encounters occur in doorways. We all know about Tarantino and bathrooms; here is another signature location.

These doorstop confrontations begin with the Bride and Vernita at the Bells'. The Sheriff meets Son No. 1 at the Chapel door (just near the porch, really). The Bride bashes in Buck's head in a door frame. Budd faces down Bill, and later the Bride in the door of his trailer. The entrance to Hanzo's cafe is a curtain. At the beginning of Vol. 2, the Bride runs into Bill on the porch of the chapel. The Bride makes a dynamic entrance into Budd's trailer. There are several doorway movement "blockings," at least four, in Bill's apartment.

In Tarantino's films in general, doorways are the sites for confrontations and introductions, from the hideout doorway in Reservoir Dogs, to the first hit that Vince and Jules commit in Pulp Fiction, to Max Cherry's shop, where Ordell refuses to respect the boundary. Jackie Brown has two significant encounters in her own doorway, and the transition from jail to freedom reverse the usual psychological trajectory of doorway meanings mentioned below. Four Rooms is all about doors.

Do trunk lids count? There are plenty of trunk lids in Tarantino, including one at the end of Vol. 1.

Doorways and porches are thresholds, transitions from the cool outside to intimacy, from the wild to civilization, from our public faces to our private lives. Porches (a uniquely American invention) themselves are perches from which the bored and lonely can keep tabs on their neighbors or spot a newcomer in the distance. The most famous doorway in the movies is the frame within a frame of the doorway at the beginning and end of The Searchers. Tarantino mimics that in Kill Bill as well.  

 

Posted: Tue - March 22, 2005 at 04:52 PM          

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