Dir: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba.
It’s very difficult to review Kill Bill. I’m loath to make any strong statement for fear that volume two of Tarantino’s opus will expose me for a sucker and a fool. This is not self-contained piece of work, indeed calling it a volume is erroneous. Really, this is a chapter if anything, and writing a review of it is like writing a review for a film you walked out of halfway through; something I’ve never done.
That said, let me add one more qualifying remark before attempting the impossible: I’ve never been a big fan of Quentin Tarantino. Now, due props to the man: Pulp Fiction was a tremendously important film, and it arrived at a very important time for cinema. However, betraying my fellow Gen X and Y’s, I’ve never really liked his style. Kill Bill is no exception to this. For me, its weaknesses are pretty squarely Tarantino’s, whether they’ll become forgivable in the broader context of the film, I don’t know. But, releasing Kill Bill like this is an arbitrary marketing decision, asking us to assess this “volume one” as a film, and that’s what I’m going to do, whether it makes me a sucker or not.
The Bride - real name unknown - was gunned down by her fellow death squad posse on the verge of marriage. Waking up from a coma four years later, she’s lost her baby, and a few marbles along the way. What is left, however, is a burning desire for revenge. With a nikko, more time-jumps than Back to TheFuture II, and a bad-ass attitude, The Bride is going to kill those who wronged her - especially her old boss, the titular Bill (a great cameo by David Carradine’s boots). At this stage that’s the story, and Volume One focuses primarily on the first killing, former buddy Lucy Liu.
From its’ outset, Tarantino crams references into Kill Bill like a dying Postmodernist. Mainly, the influence is seventies chop-socky movies, and the soundtrack, the cast, and the dialogue all reflect this. There’s a maelstrom of other touches, too. Some of them I got, some of them I didn’t - either way, I don’t think film literacy is a major criteria for seeing Kill Bill. And now we get to the problems. For me Tarantino really typifies hedonism in film. There’s so many stylistic flourishes and Motifs in Kill Bill - which is fine, but I just get the feeling there’s not really any method to the madness. It feels very impulsive, and shamelessly self-indulgent. Even the modest aim of really capturing a moment doesn’t explain half the stuff. Mixed in with the intelligent is the banal. One of the most important scenes in the film takes place in black and white, why?
Because it’s the only way censors would pass it. That’s not good enough, I want a reason. Tarantino really brings out the New Critic in me. Gone is the Barthe ideal of playing with a text, confronted with the fingerpaintings of an Infant Terrible, I want to know why, I want to know what value there is in it. It’s very old school, and very authoritarian, but I kind of feel that I’m playing off Tarantino here. No doubt about it, he is a very juvenile filmmaker. For all its strengths - and there are some great parts - I couldn’t help feeling that Tarantino is in every frame of Kill Bill saying “Look at me! Look what I can do! Look at how many movies I’ve seen!” I hate that. There’s a kind of naughty school-boy feeling as he breaks taboos left, right and centre. The violence - or whatever - doesn’t bother me at all per se, it’s the reasons behind it. I get the feeling the only justification for Kill Bill’s violence - indeed the entire film’s existence - is because he could. You push through the quotation marks and what’s left? Nothing. At least, nothing yet, and even if the second volume contain does contain a kind Pulp Fiction moral, is it worth it for the slim payoff? In the case of Pulp Fiction, it was, just. But this is a new world, I don’t think that’s going to be enough anymore.
The prime reason behind Tarantino’s appeal is obvious. His films are supremely autoerotic, and it’s an eroticism - inextricably married to postmodernity - that really captures our generation. I don’t think people fall in love with the films, how could you? They’re so self-reflexive that as a text they have the emotional resonance of a plank. They fall in love with the mythos. Look at what someone can do with a film, breaking so many rules! By identifying with it, we become part of a renegade discourse, and it’s a very seductive one. Tarantino’s onanism begets the same thing in us, and it feels good. In some ways, I think it’s a juxtaposition to the rebellion our baby-boomer parents got in the sixties. The thing is, we’ve forgotten that - these days - renegade is trademarked. Tarantino might be a stylistic maverick, but he’s selling a message you can buy at The Gap.
In this respect, Kill Bill becomes dangerously myopic; questioning the system leaves precious little room for self analysis. What, exactly, is Tarantino, railing against? As a protest cinema, it fails, and as celebration cinema its goals are suspiciously misty. You could read it as a celebration of freedom, but the fact of the matter is that Tarantino has been hopelessly confined. He puts everything on the screen, and it’s stuck there. Crafting a beautiful mirror for a generation of Narcissists made him a success, but the mirror has two faces, and Tarantino only gives us one.
C+ I would feel like a creep giving it more.
Patrick Garson.
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