As a writer, I appreciate the time and effort that it takes to try and craft unique, interesting and fun dialogue, and I would argue that for films, at the very least, no writer does it better than Quentin Tarantino.
So far, I have seen three Quentin Tarantino movies: “Inglourious Basterds,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and, my most recent watch, “The Hateful Eight.” I realized after watching that last movie that Tarantino has the best dialogue out of almost any director that I have seen.
The dialogue of Tarantino is representative of how he styles his movies. It is my personal belief that the goal of a Tarantino movie is not to be artsy but to be fun. There is really only one other director that I can think of off the top of my head that can rival Tarantino’s efficiency and style when it comes to dialogue, and that is Edgar Wright, the director of “Baby Driver,” “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.”
Tarantino’s dialogue reminds me a lot of the jokes in the show “Community,” where both cater to people who need seven layers of depth in their dialogue in order to feel anything. Tarantino does this perfectly, as his dialogue can spoil his movies before the movie gets to that plot point, which is absolutely insane to me.
The dialogue in Tarantino’s movies also makes you think about the characters. The most recent example for me that I can think of is in the his movie “The Hateful Eight,” more specifically, in the chapter titled “Domergue’s got a secret.” Somebody poisoned the coffee in the haberdashery, and Domergue is the only person that knows who, and it’s not even revealed to the audience who poisoned the coffee until much later in the movie.
The fact it’s not revealed made me think about each of the eight characters and which one could have or would have poisoned the coffee. A big reason to rule out characters was the dialogue that they had earlier in the movie, where each one of them tells their motivation to the other characters. Spoilers, it’s a lie, but, nevertheless, it still made me think about which person would have poisoned the coffee based on the information that we had at that time.
And it’s for the depth of that dialogue and the stylization of it, which never wavers in the face of its nauseating depth, that makes me think that Tarantino is the best director when it comes to dialogue.
