TRUE ROMANCE Explained: Immaculate Love Amid Murderous Chaos

PART I: Aspects of Love and Moral Contradictions In the Rhythm of Rock’n’Roll

Alabama had to travel through all the highs and lows from Tallahassee, Florida, to Motor City in Detroit to find her true love. And to this day, what happened remains like a distant dream to her. But that dream was real, it was a dream that changed her life forever. She always asked why the world keeps falling apart and why everything is so painfully shitty. He answered: “That’s just how it is. But remember, it works both ways.” This is what true romance looks like.

Clarence embraces Elvis’s philosophy. He embraces it because “The King” is someone important in his life. He is his master, his advisor, his role model, and of course, his idol. “But enough about the king”…

When it comes to love, nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter what is behind you or what lies ahead – what matters is the moment when you can love, everlasting, like an empirical dream. When love takes hold of you, and you take hold of it – you’re ready to do anything for it. If it demands sacrifices – you’ll sacrifice, if it requires renunciations – you’ll renounce everything, if something threatens it – you’ll defend it. Love changes your whole life – it is the key to many doors, but it also closes many doors. You open new horizons of life with it, seeing beauty and joy that were previously unreachable. You separate yourself from everything that lies behind you and draw new life-giving strength from its source. When it comes to love, when it’s about the person you cherish with that feeling – nothing else matters…

When Alabama met Clarence, she experienced that beautiful feeling, she knew he was the one to whom she would give her heart. Don’t ask why. They say you just know. Clarence was so struck by Alabama’s personality and feelings that he saw in her the object of his dreams – his dream girl. In her behavior, he saw what was familiar to him, what he loved. He saw beauty in her that he could never see before. That was love. A mutual statement that we are made for each other and documenting it with a lasting connection, that is, the joy we give each other. In this state, everything has a rosy hue. A life full of worries and failures turns into one great love-induced ecstasy. It doesn’t matter that she was a call girl. That their meeting was actually arranged and paid for, and that their relationship was supposed to be limited to one passionate night. It doesn’t matter that he accepted the fact that he would never find a girl who would understand him and accept what he represented. None of that matters in the face of love. What’s before and after her doesn’t matter – only this moment matters.

And so, she is just a prostitute. Clarence met her in a movie theater. At a kung-fu marathon with Sonny Chiba. Then they went for a pastry. She told him what excites her and what depresses her, who her favorite actor is, what her favorite color is, and where she comes from. He, on the other hand, decided that she was his dream girl. After all, not every girl loves kung-fu movies, Elvis, sugar, and pastries. And she loved them, just like him. Then Clarence took her to his little kingdom, the comic book store where he worked. He showed her his favorite episode of Spider-Man, in which the Nazi jerk Kraut rips off Nick’s ring necklace. The ring lands overboard, and Nick dives to retrieve it. Amazing, right? She, in turn, realized that she loved him very much. That night was not just a dry act of earning a paycheck for Alabama. The sex that night was an expression of pure, immaculate love. A love that forced her to reflect. It allowed her to discover the whole truth about herself. She made a point, however, that when it comes to relationships, she’s a 100% monogamist, and that she probably loves him. The next day, they got married.

However, in love, when something threatens it, you will defend it – you will do everything you are capable of doing and what you aren’t. If someone threatens the person you love, you won’t back down from anything to protect them. These are the rules of love – dura lex, sed lex.

Clarence learns from Alabama about a certain Drexl. He is her pimp and will surely claim what’s his. “Clarence, can you live with the fact that this bastard will keep walking the earth, breathing the same air as you?” Elvis is right, he haunts Clarence and tells him how he should act. After all, this is about love. Clarence didn’t think about the consequences of his actions when he shot Drexl between the eyes. He showed no mercy, humanity, or reflection on his actions when he turned Drexl’s den into a bloody bath. His eyes filled with rage, his thoughts were consumed by anger and an unspeakable desire for revenge. His mind said: “I’m not capable of this,” Elvis replied: “I’d kill him.” Instinct silenced any rational thinking. Clarence carried out an act of unspeakable aggression in the name of his lover’s good.

Can this action truly be called an act of love? It would be an absurd assumption, because aggression and evil cannot be the foundation of that feeling. And yet, it was love, and it was a defense of it. Nothing else matters – only love. The interpretation is broad, and in this case, interpreted by Tarantino. Another question arises. Can a normal person do something like this in the name of love? Certainly not, anyone else would have approached the matter more humanely, and definitely wouldn’t have set the boundaries of their relationship’s territorial sanctity with a gun and its six friends – bullets. But this is a hero drawn by Tarantino. Let’s not jump to conclusions that lead us to a sad chasm of nonsense. Clarence’s attitude must be taken with a grain of salt, as a metaphor for the manifesto of total devotion to love.

Drex’s den turned into a bloody battlefield full of hysterical guests. Clarence demands that Alabama’s belongings be handed over to him. He receives the suitcase and leaves the gathering. Alabama glorifies his act and calls it very romantic. If we accept that the act was an unconditional surrender to love and done in the name of love, indeed – it was truly romantic and can be presented as a grand gesture of great affection. However, if we assume that Clarence turned into a crazed beast and smeared Drexl and his buddy on the wall, and didn’t care about it afterward, then we face a moral question: is murder an act of flawless love? There is only one rational answer to that – Tarantino. That’s just how he is. The love he presents is richly embellished with blood. However you look at it, with this act, Clarence expressed his position. But he also gave expression to his madness and the nature of a born killer.

This is what love looks like for Clarence and Alabama. I wouldn’t go so far as to compare it to the feeling between Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers. There, the whole relationship was based on killing, it drove them and gave it meaning. This couple was fundamentally evil, killing was their passion, their way of life, and the source of their love. In True Romance, we deal with murder as a necessary evil. Murder is the liberation of the relationship from danger.

However, I wouldn’t say that this love is entirely normal. It’s beautiful, but the people declaring it are immoral and exceed the bounds of what is called humanity. However, let’s evaluate the feeling, leaving the people aside. Then it truly appears as something incredible. Two lonely individuals meet, and something starts to burn in their hearts. They are made for each other, share similar interests, see the world the same way, their souls are deeply connected. They surrender to romantic ecstasy, and nothing is the same anymore. Everything that was, no longer matters and stays behind them, and they delight in this beautiful feeling, wanting to stay in it forever. They are capable of sacrifices, even giving their lives for each other, of permanent protection, devotion, and understanding. Their love doesn’t know what fear, pain, or sorrow is. They are immersed in a true romance, and if it’s about love – nothing else matters anymore.

PART II: Events from the Perspective of the Suitcase, or a Gangster Movie (Tarantino-style)

From the perspective of Quentin’s other films, the suitcase is a very important character in the events, it is the one that sets the plot in motion, causing a series of events and their consequences. It sets in motion a chain of misunderstandings, fights, and bloody excesses. The suitcase is a treasure, the protection of which and the fight for it is usually paid for with a mass of corpses, liters of blood, and kilograms of bullets. In Reservoir Dogs – a study of betrayal, revenge, and anger, we find diamonds stolen during a heist in the suitcase. In the cult Pulp Fiction, its contents are probably the soul of Marcellus Wallace, in any case, an orange glow, “something beautiful.” In Jackie Brown, the suitcase contained money, for which the entire game was played. In all these films, our good old friend, the suitcase, played a significant, if not decisive, role. It initiated the cause-and-effect chain that the main characters followed. It drove the entire action and initiated a series of consequences, influencing the general plot of the film. The same happens in True Romance.

In the suitcase with clothes brought by Clarence, the lovers find drugs worth several hundred thousand dollars. They then set off to Los Angeles to meet their actor friend Dick in order to sell the goods. Meanwhile, the Italian mafia awakens from its slumber. Infuriated by the murder of Drexl and the disappearance of the drugs, they will seek harsh revenge and the valuable suitcase. The bad characters have a motive, which allows them to torment the positive heroes, who see in the mentioned suitcase a ticket to their happy future, while the chaotic cops want to shoot everyone, enraged by the sight of the white powder. And once again, the cause-and-effect machine is set in motion, presenting us with great action cinema. I wouldn’t want to reveal all the cards and break down the plot of True Romance into its basic elements. I just want to point out the fundamentals and motives that build the entire action and storyline. We already have the all-powerful and omnipresent suitcase – a symbol of human vanity and earthly actions, something crucial and universally desired. The factor that influences the overall shape of the events is the possessors (not owners) of the suitcase.

We meet Clarence as an ordinary, likable guy. Evil only awakens in him after his conversation with Alabama when he learns about Drexl. His true nature is revealed in the pimp’s den. Clarence is ready for anything, even cold-blooded murder. Driven by his sense of love and by the spirit of Elvis, who is the embodiment of his inner evil, he kills and will be ready to keep doing so in the name of his relationship’s safety. I would like to point out that love is a perfect excuse here, explaining the actions of the two main characters. Indeed, in this film, there are no purely positive characters. With Tarantino, we encounter this device at every turn, all his characters kill cold-bloodedly, for purely earthly reasons, and certainly not rehabilitating reasons, they are filled with evil and rage, they are gangsters, murderers, or psychopaths. And this is what is remarkable and specific – Tarantino pits the black bad characters against each other in a deadly showdown, each guided by their own interests. As a result, we get an extremely brutal film, one that exudes violence and is drenched in blood. Because in such a film, no one holds back, they all go for each other’s throats.

PART III: To Summarize…

Tony Scott created a film infused with the spirit of QT. Special attention should be given to the phenomenal dialogues, particularly the conversation between the Italian gangster Vincenzo Coccotti (played brilliantly by Christopher Walken) and Clarence’s father (even more brilliantly played by Dennis Hopper) about the Sicilian heritage.

But aside from Tarantino’s absurdity, brutality, extraordinary characters, and gangster atmosphere, we also see Scott’s touch in the film. He excellently portrayed the feeling that arises between the two main characters. Initially, the film seems almost romantic. In the warm atmosphere, enhanced by Zimmer’s music, love grows, optimism wakes up, and a positive view of the emerging relationship remains until the very end. In fact, in the initial sequences, we won’t find QT, only a couple of people hopelessly in love with each other. And that is beautiful and innovative, even though, paradoxically, it’s the first film in the QT style. Only later does the action pick up speed, and then it rushes full throttle until the end. However, the aura of great love doesn’t fade, and in the final reckoning, it wins. That’s what I appreciate about True Romance – it gives me something that can’t be found in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.