Of course our reprieve is a brief one, a momentary satisfaction of our baser instincts that passes quickly, like all adrenaline rushes. When it happens, you realize that a vengeance has been done, that you wanted it done. Orange (Tim Roth), who’s been slowly bleeding out all this time, forgotten in the background. Tarantino lets us feel the creeping horror, the suspense, and finally the release, the ecstatic exhalation when Mr. Even more troubling, the scene convinces us of the “incontestable justice” of that desire. It forces us to imagine Marvin’s suffering, to view the almost pornographic hole in the side of his head, making us want to hurt and torture Mr.
HERE I AM STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU MOVIE
This scene is the Mike Tyson of movie scenes. Joyce Carol Oates once said of a young Mike Tyson, “…he has the power to galvanize crowds as if awakening in them the instinct not merely for raw aggression and the mysterious will to do hurt that resides, for better or worse, in the human soul, but for suggesting the incontestable justice of such an instinct… ” That is why the movie, and this scene in particular, succeeds: because it implicates you, as a witness, in the violence. At least that, if not actually capable of enacting hurt, too. We are capable of imagining and even of desiring to hurt. As if “Stuck in the Middle With You” were the obvious musical accompaniment to torture. Tarantino has admitted in interviews that the song came first, before anything else. To this day I cannot hear that song without seeing the warehouse, Blonde dancing, and helpless Marvin Nash taped to the chair. It’s as if the song only exists in this room, a product of this particular, horrible moment. The music swells again as Blonde reenters the warehouse. You hear the sound of children playing, somewhere in the distance, hopefully far away. The music dies out behind the closed door. The song meanwhile continues to fill the warehouse space, rising up like a breath - and then fades into an exhalation, a brief respite, as Blonde makes his way outside to retrieve a can of gasoline from his car. “Hello? Hello?” he waggles the ear around, talking into it. The camera returns as Blonde stands holding up the severed ear and looking at it, pinched between his fingers. Kirk Baltz and Michael Madsen in ‘Reservoir Dogs’ And then the camera turns away, gazing above to a doorway where the words “Watch Your Head” have been spray painted. We see Blonde’s back, the arching arm, the razor, the reach. Instead he reaches over the rookie officer’s head. With his back to the camera Blonde sits down on Marvin’s lap, almost as if he’s going to kiss or hold him. He slashes him across the cheek, then grabs his face, studying his work. As the music plays Blonde dances toward Marvin, comically shuffling and wielding the blade like a brush. He’s breathing heavily, and grunting beneath the gag.
Two red stripes of blood stream down from Marvin’s nose, painting the silver tape. Blonde struts across the warehouse floor like a rooster, the razor in his hand. It’s then that we hear the first bouncy notes of the song by Stealers Wheel, “Stuck in the Middle With You,” and its lyrics (“I don’t know why I came here tonight / I got the feeling that something ain’t right”), as if the music were saying what you’re thinking. “Do you ever listen to K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the 70’s,” Blonde asks as he turns on the radio, twisting the knob to find his station. Blonde, a cigarette dangling from his lips, pulls a straight razor from his boot - what kind of psychopath carries a straight razor in his boot? - and you feel certain that something very, very bad is going to happen. Marvin Nash is crying for his life, and you’re thinking about his children at home, his wife waiting for him to return. He just wants to torture Nash, and he tells him this, tells him that he is going to hurt him because he just likes hurting people. Blonde doesn’t care whether he knows or not. Marvin’s got children for god’s sake! Unfortunately Mr. He sputters and spits, snot and blood running from his nose as he swears to knowing nothing about their jewelry store heist being a setup. Rookie cop Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz) duct taped to a chair, wounds blooming from his face while Michael Madsen, or Mr. With little effort I can conjure up the scene. The images catalogued forever in my consciousness from Quentin Tarantino’s first hit film, Reservoir Dogs (1992) queue up whenever I happen to find myself thinking about severed ears, torture, or, more frequently, when I hear a particular song. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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