I emerged from my opening night screening of "Kill Bill" in complete and utter shock. I was struggling to find the words to describe this blood-soaked mess of a revenge movie, and then they started coming to me in droves: "exhilarating," "stunning," "oddly beautiful" and, above all, "absolutely brilliant."
Quentin Tarantino, the eccentric auteur that brought us the new-classic "Pulp Fiction" almost 10 years ago, finally has affirmed what many have thought but none could prove: That he is a tremendous directorial talent. We all knew that he was a fantastic writer of dialogue and story structure, especially after being drawn into his previous works, but these were story-driven movies resulting in his skill as a director being neither challenged nor displayed. In "Kill Bill" if anything is lacking, it is the story.
The plot is simple enough; anyone familiar with Kung Fu movies will know it. A hero is wronged by a large group of karate-chopping men in black, and he spends the whole film trying to fight though them until he reaches and kills their boss (sounds kind of like "Double Dragon"). In our story Uma Thurman is the nameless heroine (simply referred to as "the bride") and the boss is the faceless Bill, played by David Carradine. Bill's henchmen in this first installment of the film are Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii and Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green. The bride tracks them down and kills them in an attempt to search and destroy the entire team that left her in a coma after her wedding day (a long story, trust me). That's really the entire story, but it doesn't matter, because however lacking in plot, this movie is about Tarantino's love of the genre, and his mastery over it is enthralling.
Normally in this segment of the review I would discuss the actors and their performances, but this time I will not. Not that they are sub-standard by any means (Uma Thurman is excellent), but rather in this film they are more stuntmen than actors; playthings for Tarantino to use for cinematic effect.
Quentin Tarantino shows us in this movie directorial skill that we weren't sure anyone had, let alone him. He flows smoothly through different styles of cinema and different narrative devices with little effort, and it gives the whole film the type of breezy style that a Kung Fu caper is rarely afforded. At least a few of these devices deserve mention here.
First, his trademark use of non-linear narrative structure has us jumping through time just as we did in "Pulp Fiction." In this movie it plays just as well, but this isn't new, so it's not altogether shocking.
Second, Tarantino employs long camera takes that float though, around and over the action. The most impressive of these takes place right before the final showdown, starting on a band beginning a song, and following various characters around the restaurant in one uncut motion until the band finishes it. The choreography involved must have been, in a word, difficult.
Third, during the penultimate battle in the restaurant, Thurman plucks out the eyes of an assailant, and instantly the screen turns black and white, and it continues this way for the better part of ten minutes, until a random close-up of Thurman blinking shoots the frame back into color. This is just a case of a great director showing off.
Fourth and most impressive is the 20-minute anime sequence in the middle of the film, which gives us the background of O-Ren. Never before has a major motion picture director been so daring as to go outside of his own medium in order reach the intended effect of a scene. As a result, this animated sequence of the Tokyo underground is strikingly moving, and a great deal of that must be because it was conveyed in anime, a distinctly Japanese art.
Finally there is the fact that the bride's name is bleeped out of the scene every time a character mentions it. There is no real reason for this except for effect. Tarantino is playing with his audience, and for years people will be asking what the main characters name was. In many ways it is mean to do this to an audience, but it has to be fun for Tarantino to mess with our heads.
Finally, I want to say that "Kill Bill" is not for everyone. The faint of heart and the adamantly anti-violence should not go see it, but for those of you who do, you are in for a cinematic treat. Rarely do we get to see a master work his trade, but in "Kill Bill" we are getting one better: we are witnessing the future of American film come into his own, and that should be worth the price of admission.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
