True Romance: Fairy Tales for the Working Class.

A random encounter that leads to a love supreme, romance, hard won by way of the fires of jealousy, chauvinist chivalry, violence, female rage, and bull**** -That’s the cut and dry of Tony Scott and Tarantino’s 1993 vivid fever dream of mayhem for love “True Romance”. A movie so nonsensical, it only makes sense when you understand that that is its intention. This is a modern fairytale. It’s a funny thing, even though the bulk of these stories, as we understand them, were written by men, they are most commonly associated with the feminine. But they have always been as much for men as they have been for women, if not more. Romantic tales of destiny, courage, righteousness, and of course “true love,” could be argued to be more male driven than female, and Tarantino’s script, Zimmer’s score, and Scott’s enchanting lighting and color palette only further serve to justify the conciet and further the grandiosity in their particular tale, which is counterbalanced by its pragmatic look at how two working class people who need each other make their own magic.

Written by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, colored in by Tony Scott, “True Romance”’s best quality is its distinct disdain for reality. Very little about it feels “real”. From the kismet meet cute of its protagonists to the four-team standoff at the end, this is a movie extremely proud of its movieness and its fairytale-dom.

Alabama (a heart-stopping Patricia Arquette in both look and performance) is a sex worker paid to court Clarence (Christian Slater, about as unattractive as you can possibly make Christian Slater) a sexless ne’er do well who is happy to be one, but unhappy with the results. After all, this may be Tarantino’s closest avatar, the man who bored and annoyed poor Fiona Apple to tears would seem to have a lot in common with a character who goes on random diatribes to random women who didn’t ask in hopes that his esoteric, concrete opinions on Elvis and Sonny Chiba will cause them to fall in love. Tarantino seems to have some sense of self-awareness though, because at first sight we see how bad this all looks. The first woman turns Clarence down flatly, but sympathetically, and the film seems to have no spite for her. It’s about the realest thing the movie does, because from here the movie becomes a “mad love” folk story: dark, unravelling, and opulent.

Whereas usually the woman sees their love mangled, here it is a man who seems out on his one true partner, and through a bit of happenstance and the scheming(of others) he meets his paramour. After Alabama meets Clarence and accomplishes her goal of wooing him to bed by listening to him intently, she too falls under his love spell. The “Why?” is hard to ascertain, and unnecessary. This is not a romance or a romantic comedy; we don’t need to see what made the two fall in love with each other; it is taken for granted that they are pre-destined. Why did the prince immediately fall in love with Sleeping Beauty? Why does the Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson) fall in love with her prince from a distance? In these stories love is an enchantment, a spell; it is instant; it needs no justification, nor any reason. These are two people in need of each other and they recognize it instantly with no artifice, and like most fairy tales and even legends, love is easily fallen into, but peace in it is hard gained.

The same goes for prosperity in America, a straight-faced look at the fact that delusion is vital to any person(s) belief in “making it” in America. The American dream is simply that. You must create your own mythos, slaying dragons, conquering several quests, sacrificing in order to obtain a happy ending, but also in reality - lying, cheating, and stealing. Two of these things' cross paths and swords, and so must our two protagonists – with all the mythical creatures of the underworld. Those creatures in a modern setting are not dragons, witches, and monsters, but pimps, gangsters, and the notion of celebrity. This Little Red Riding Hood with her newfound lover in tow instead of meeting one wolf meets an arsenal of wolves, each one at a different stop dressed up as different characters in her world, trying to consume them before they deliver a large suitcase full of cocaine to live their happy ending.

The dialogue isn’t concerned with realism, typical of Tarantino, it’s not very concerned with the way people really talk either. Almost every monster they encounter has Shakespearean monologues on deck before every action, like riddles as a rite of passage. A pure killer stops in his tracks when the woman he tries to kill tells him to “wait.” When she says you look ridiculous, he is compelled to look at himself, like Narcissus at the lake. One of our protagonists sees Elvis regularly; Christopher Walken is Sicilian. The film has a voice over for a reason. These are two people with big imaginations, telling the audience the story of how they fell in love at first sight. Two people who needed to have a big imagination because their realities were too grave to abide in. So they meet at the movies, and movies being our modern mythology, and folklore, they decide to make their life one where beauty and ugliness live side by side, much like the fairytales of old.

That relationship between beauty and its opposite makes up the entire ethos of the film, and as such is complimentary to its forbearers who always sat the horrific by the side of the enchanting. Serene settings, and well adorned beautiful people are placed next to lurid tableaus of violent, vicious creatures, and moral depravity. “True Romance” is no less a world for the racist, homophobic, mean spirited. It’s a cruel labyrinth of decadence, full of the most tragic characters you’ll ever find drenched in fuchsia and pastels.

Clarence, now madly in love with Alabama is willing to do anything for her. This is beauty. Hans Zimmer’s whimsical score for them further suggest as much. But upon hearing she has been shackled by one of those mythical creatures- a white pimp who acts black and plays himself far bigger than his role in society – Clarence is sickened; both by the idea of another man having a hold on Alabama, and his treatment of women in general. He decides this man needs to die. We see Chivalry, chauvinism, and romance caught in a whirling dance. After vanquishing Alabama’s captor, a whole different story is unlocked.

Another small similarity to Red Riding Hood appears as Dennis Hopper (Grandma) is eaten by a wolf who lies in wait for Clarence and Alabama. The poetry is he won’t give up his son, that love means more than his life despite their troubles. Knowingly on his proverbial death march, he becomes bathed in the heavenly light of redemption before being shot in the head and spit on; beauty, and ugliness, restoration, and desecration.

Alabama is a sex worker, and for the most part her chosen career path isn’t vilified by the movie, (although her purity is restored by her willingness to join in unholy matrimony with Clarence). Alabama’s style itself is a mixture of the hideous and the insanely beautiful. It’s meant to be tacky, but the daring choices and lack of tact make her pop. She is also childlike and naïve. In one of the few departures from the common tropes of a fairy tale she is also a fighter and a slayer of her own dragons. When put into a room with a wolf she can become equally feral. This serves as the only proof that “True Romance” is nonlinear and messy, not evidence that it isn’t a modern fairy tale.

For all of this tale’s warts and hideous faces, its elegance and beauty are found beneath the surface of its beastly appearance. Much like the climactic bullet opera at the end, it's a blood-soaked feathered sofa, both comfortable and grisly. A hodgepodge of borrowed ideas from tales of old that came together like Voltron to form one big gooey theme; “Ain’t love grand”.