I thought I'd take a bit of time to look back at one of my favorite Tarantino movies, a weird little show called Four Rooms. It was actually written and directed by four different people, each segment being written and directed by one of them. The opening segment, The Missing Ingredient, is done by Allison Anders, The Wrong Man by Alexandre Rockwell, The Misbehavors by Robert Rodrigez, and Quinton Tarantino closing up with The Man From Hollywood.
Four Rooms stars Tim Roth as Ted the bellhop, the only guy working at a hotel during New Years. While each story is self-contained, they are all happening at the same time, and you will see references to the other stories. For example, during The Misbehavors, the two children in the room called a random room. You realize that the call that happens in The Wrong Man, when the crazy dude answers his room phone, that it was the call the kids made in the Misbehavors. The movie does a great job at showing you when everything is happening, all while keeping each story separate and focused on its own segment. The overall idea is that not only is Ted the only one there, but this is his first day on the job. His day just gets progressively worse as more and more horrible things happen to him. It starts off not to bad for him, actually pretty great.There is a coven of witches who come to this hotel on New Years to perform a ritual to call on a witch they worship, and one of the witches need to get male semon to complete it, so is trying to seduce Ted. Probably the least interesting story, but you get a couple good scenes that make it worth the sit.
Where things start getting crazy is the second story, The Wrong Man. He tries to deliver ice to a room but got the wrong room number. What ends up happening is he walks in on a quarrel between a drunk man with a gun and his wife. He and the crazy man form a weird brief friendship and bond over them being made fun of for their names in high school, but I don't want to give away more than that. But Ted goes from a witch trying to seduce him, to being held at gunpoint by a drunk in a hotel room.
Then the third story he is bribed into babysitting two kids, whose father is Antonia Banderez of all people.There is this running theme of this story about something smelling really bad and them trying to figure out what it is, and it pretty much serves as the stories punchline. It comes way out of left field and turns what was, by comparison to the previous story, a very tame and silly tale into something insanely over the top and grand. Plus you get Banderez talking like this whenever he is on screen, and it'shard to put into words just how fantastic this is.
The big thing I want to talk about though is 'A Man From Hollywood'. Before just leaving after the finale of Misbehavors, Ted calls his boss to say he quits. But when the Penthouse phone rings, she hears it over the phone and convinces Ted to stay on for one more room, since it's a big Hollywood guy up there.
Ted brings a strange list of items they requested, including a bucket of ice and a cleaver. After some drunken shenanigans by the star, Ted is asked to help them recreate a scene from The Twilight Zone where a guy bets his finger that he can light his Zippo Lighter several times in a row without it not igniting, and they want Ted to be the hatchet-man.
Despite being four different stories,this really is what everything has been leading up to. The Man From Hollywood is the only of the four stories that didn't interact at all with the other stories, happening entirely after the rest have already resolved. All the tension and frustration of Ted has been building up to this point. And something happens I don't think I have ever seen in a movie, the Climax happens, resolves, and ends within the span of a few seconds, and then credits roll. This may sound bad at first, but it may be the most perfect ending any movie I have ever seen has had.
You don't even get any kind of post-climax wind-down, it just happens and the movie is over. Despite that, everything just feels right about it. There is nothing wasted,the moment was set up perfectly by not only the story being told in the fourth part, but the overall emotion built up from the beginning.I felt perfectly satisfied, like there really was no better way this could have played out. Everything was made worthwhile in that two seconds.
The show is consistently funny throughout, the twists that happen are amazing, and the show does an amazing job at getting you behind Ted and his frustrations with the job. Paired with how well it manages to show the different stories happening at the same time, despite being told separately, and a build-up to possibly my favorite ending of any film, I can't recommend Four Rooms highly enough. Definitely give it a watch.
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