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This review contains spoilers.
I recently watched a Taiwanese exploitation movie called The Lady Avenger. It’s a rape revenge movie that isn’t overtly artful by any means, but plays with a real urgency (likely helped by the production circumstances, which I’m guessing were pretty marginal). But in between the punchier moments we associate with exploitation, it finds room for notes that catch us off guard, lingering on images and emotional beats that seem at odds with the uglier content that preceded it. It’s a dynamic not entirely impossible in respectable cinema but seems endemic to exploitation, where the exploitative, outrageous content that gets asses in seats creates the contrast necessary for the moments of depth to land. I bring this movie up because seeing it so soon after a rewatch of Kill Bill brought my thoughts on that film into focus. Kill Bill seems more clearly now than ever to me an exploration of that very idea, founded by a belief that the movies it’s pulling from are in fact good movies and not just sources of cheap thrills.
Of course, thrills are in ample supply, particularly in the first half, which threatens to overwhelm us with the surface pleasures of genre cinema. We get the glimpse of the inciting incident, the heroine’s (Uma Thurman) wedding shot up by her former comrades, and then a lightning fast two hours of high style and splatter (the movie doesn’t even slow down enough to give her a name; she’s known only as the Bride), culminating in an epically violent fight scene in which the heroine takes on dozens of henchmen, systematically chopping them to pieces, and then facing their leader (Lucy Liu) in a one-on-one showdown in a snowy garden. The reference points are numerous and on full display: Shaw Brothers, Lady Snowblood, the Lone Wolf and Cub series, but Tarantino treats this set piece like a plaything, scoping out the location as if it were a dollhouse with roving overhead shots that move to the rhythm of the music of the 5.6.7.8′s. The music changes to Morricone, and soon he begins gleefully smashing his toys together to wreak havoc. (I assume Tarantino had a few Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joes, or at least a Snake Eyes.) His love for these influences doesn’t overwhelm the sheer thrill of the combat itself, which he depicts in a mix of lush colour, black-and-white and silhouettes, shifting from one technique to another as if the heroine is leveling up through a video game and keeping the audience guessing as to both what flourish and what giddily violent act he’ll serve up next. The film on the whole isn’t the most authentic exercise in grindhouse style he’s made (that would be Death Proof), but this sequence does offer his most full-bodied interpretation of said pleasures.
The second half decelerates from this manic pace and begins to unpack what transpired. We revisit the opening massacre and learn that the heroine actually has a name. She’s moved from archetype into actual character, and we get a sense of the wounds that led to and came out of that fateful event. There’s a training sequence, where Gordon Liu (who previously appeared as a commander of the henchmen the heroine slaughtered in the first half) plays the Pai Mei character he once battled in Executioners of Shaolin, and aside from being enjoyably stylish, this scene really buys into Lau Kar-Leung’s idea of kung fu as self improvement, marrying martial arts with character development. Throughout this, Tarantino challenges us to identify with the characters’ motivations, both the heroine and her nemeses, and to question the extent to which we derive mindless enjoyment from the proceedings. The Bride’s killing of the Vivica A. Fox character in the first half is juxtaposed uneasily with that character’s daughter walking in on them. Yes, Fox wronged her, but she too has loved ones and a life not without value. She meets a smooth-talking pimp (Michael Parks, in another neat bit of double-casting), but his capacity for cruelty quickly comes into focus when we glimpse the mutilated face of one of his prostitutes.
In probably the most affecting passage of the film, we spend time with Bud (Michael Madsen), Bill’s brother who has now retired as an assassin and works a demeaning job as a bouncer for a strip club. This formidable killer is now reduced to haggling for shifts and cleaning up overflowing toilets. There’s something poignant seeing him so defeated, even when Tarantino makes no excuses for his failings (he’s the only one in the film to use a racial slur, which like in Reservoir Dogs is used as shorthand for a character’s flawed nature), and his confrontation with the Bride finds him re-energized, if not necessarily more likable. There’s little warmth however in the character of Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah), the eyepatch-wearing assassin who may be most unapologetically cruel of the film’s characters. (Lucy Liu’s character in the first half is similarly vicious, but the film shows it to be at least in part out of necessity.) Yet her disgust at Bud’s unceremonious method of trying to kill the Bride rings true to the movie’s heart. These characters may hate each other, but there is a twisted sense of honour between them and a respect for each other’s true natures. The confrontation between the Bride and Elle Driver also features a gruesome shot of a bare foot squashing an eyeball, which suggests Tarantino, a notable foot fetishist, challenging even himself on his mindless enjoyment of this kind of thing. (Either that it’s doing a lot for him.)
When the Bride finally reunites with the eponymous Bill (David Carradine, bringing his entire history in genre movies to imbue his character with a certain depth), she finds him to be loving father to her daughter, who survived the opening massacre, and to be full of remorse. How much should we really cheering for her to kill him? This movie doesn’t have the political conviction of Tarantino’s subsequent films, but it does share with them a sense of morality so severe that it can’t help but draw out the discomfort in carrying out a quest for revenge. Tarantino has frequently mined pop culture to add meaning (my favourite example is a fairly succinct one: Bruce Willis finding courage and honour through a samurai sword in Pulp Fiction), and here he has the Bride bond with her daughter over Shogun Assassin, another film about a parent-child relationship in a world of great violence and cruelty. Bill gives a speech about Superman that summarizes the themes of the film in one monologue.
Kill Bill (Tarantino, 2004)
This review contains spoilers.
Of course, thrills are in ample supply, particularly in the first half, which threatens to overwhelm us with the surface pleasures of genre cinema. We get the glimpse of the inciting incident, the heroine’s (Uma Thurman) wedding shot up by her former comrades, and then a lightning fast two hours of high style and splatter (the movie doesn’t even slow down enough to give her a name; she’s known only as the Bride), culminating in an epically violent fight scene in which the heroine takes on dozens of henchmen, systematically chopping them to pieces, and then facing their leader (Lucy Liu) in a one-on-one showdown in a snowy garden. The reference points are numerous and on full display: Shaw Brothers, Lady Snowblood, the Lone Wolf and Cub series, but Tarantino treats this set piece like a plaything, scoping out the location as if it were a dollhouse with roving overhead shots that move to the rhythm of the music of the 5.6.7.8′s. The music changes to Morricone, and soon he begins gleefully smashing his toys together to wreak havoc. (I assume Tarantino had a few Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joes, or at least a Snake Eyes.) His love for these influences doesn’t overwhelm the sheer thrill of the combat itself, which he depicts in a mix of lush colour, black-and-white and silhouettes, shifting from one technique to another as if the heroine is leveling up through a video game and keeping the audience guessing as to both what flourish and what giddily violent act he’ll serve up next. The film on the whole isn’t the most authentic exercise in grindhouse style he’s made (that would be Death Proof), but this sequence does offer his most full-bodied interpretation of said pleasures.
The second half decelerates from this manic pace and begins to unpack what transpired. We revisit the opening massacre and learn that the heroine actually has a name. She’s moved from archetype into actual character, and we get a sense of the wounds that led to and came out of that fateful event. There’s a training sequence, where Gordon Liu (who previously appeared as a commander of the henchmen the heroine slaughtered in the first half) plays the Pai Mei character he once battled in Executioners of Shaolin, and aside from being enjoyably stylish, this scene really buys into Lau Kar-Leung’s idea of kung fu as self improvement, marrying martial arts with character development. Throughout this, Tarantino challenges us to identify with the characters’ motivations, both the heroine and her nemeses, and to question the extent to which we derive mindless enjoyment from the proceedings. The Bride’s killing of the Vivica A. Fox character in the first half is juxtaposed uneasily with that character’s daughter walking in on them. Yes, Fox wronged her, but she too has loved ones and a life not without value. She meets a smooth-talking pimp (Michael Parks, in another neat bit of double-casting), but his capacity for cruelty quickly comes into focus when we glimpse the mutilated face of one of his prostitutes.
In probably the most affecting passage of the film, we spend time with Bud (Michael Madsen), Bill’s brother who has now retired as an assassin and works a demeaning job as a bouncer for a strip club. This formidable killer is now reduced to haggling for shifts and cleaning up overflowing toilets. There’s something poignant seeing him so defeated, even when Tarantino makes no excuses for his failings (he’s the only one in the film to use a racial slur, which like in Reservoir Dogs is used as shorthand for a character’s flawed nature), and his confrontation with the Bride finds him re-energized, if not necessarily more likable. There’s little warmth however in the character of Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah), the eyepatch-wearing assassin who may be most unapologetically cruel of the film’s characters. (Lucy Liu’s character in the first half is similarly vicious, but the film shows it to be at least in part out of necessity.) Yet her disgust at Bud’s unceremonious method of trying to kill the Bride rings true to the movie’s heart. These characters may hate each other, but there is a twisted sense of honour between them and a respect for each other’s true natures. The confrontation between the Bride and Elle Driver also features a gruesome shot of a bare foot squashing an eyeball, which suggests Tarantino, a notable foot fetishist, challenging even himself on his mindless enjoyment of this kind of thing. (Either that it’s doing a lot for him.)
When the Bride finally reunites with the eponymous Bill (David Carradine, bringing his entire history in genre movies to imbue his character with a certain depth), she finds him to be loving father to her daughter, who survived the opening massacre, and to be full of remorse. How much should we really cheering for her to kill him? This movie doesn’t have the political conviction of Tarantino’s subsequent films, but it does share with them a sense of morality so severe that it can’t help but draw out the discomfort in carrying out a quest for revenge. Tarantino has frequently mined pop culture to add meaning (my favourite example is a fairly succinct one: Bruce Willis finding courage and honour through a samurai sword in Pulp Fiction), and here he has the Bride bond with her daughter over Shogun Assassin, another film about a parent-child relationship in a world of great violence and cruelty. Bill gives a speech about Superman that summarizes the themes of the film in one monologue.
Ultimately Kill Bill is about grappling with one’s true nature, both the characters, ruthless killers despite how they rationalize it, and the film, an exhilarating exercise in and shrewd deconstruction of exploitation.“Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman….You would’ve worn the costume of Arlene Plympton, but you were born Beatrix Kiddo, and every morning when you woke up, you’d still be Beatrix Kiddo. I’m calling you a killer. A natural born killer. Always have been, and always will be.”