Kill Bill Resistance is futile
Published April 23, 2004
Man, but Volume 2 is a huge gabbing talk fest. I definitely mean that in a good way, because no one can write dialogue like Quentin Tarantino. Not everything goes to his more obviously imitable broad stylistic touches, the comic riffs on cheeseburger royales and foot massages. Bud's opening speech about facing consequences has a Western tinged moralism that has a distinctive Tarantino flare. The reluctance and weariness of this speech, and the scenes of his humiliation as a lowly bouncer living in a trailer generate a character that casts a unique angle of shadows on his eventual sadistic actions with Kiddo.
But Tarantino still works the magic with his more obvious dialogue techniques. Bill finally makes a long, extended explanation to Kiddo for why he was angered enough to wipe out her wedding party. The bulk of the explanation builds from a unique intellectual interpretation of Superman and the implications of his Clark Kent alter ego, building a big metaphor for how he interpreted her actions. It just totally works. It makes sense intellectually, shows great personality implied in thinking this out, and plays very tenderly in the emotional frame between them.
Volume 2 plays out stylistically and to some extent in meaning like Pulp
Fiction. They're different movies, with different characters and
stylistic devices, but let's say that they look like they were made by the same
person. You could say that somewhat based on lots of little things.
There's the general theme of philosophical assassins in common, for starters.
One scene from Volume 2 particularly parallels the famous diner scene that
frames Pulp Fiction. Like the diner scene, the scene in which
Beatrix Kiddo takes her pregnancy test in a hotel bathroom features a
professional assassin who has a distinct moment of spiritual awakening followed immediately by a desperate effort NOT to kill someone totally deserving what
they would normally have gotten. However, in Kill Bill, this scene of awakening
was more a bonus, not the climactic denouement as it was in Pulp Fiction.
This seeking of redemption leads Tarantino the filmmaker and his characters to an almost amazingly quiet and tender resolution to a movie about seeking vengeance against a professional assassin for an incredibly hideous massacre. It would be difficult to imagine a more emotionally distant tenor from the wedding massacre to the tender family scenes at the end of the story. The effect of the daughter on both mother and father is the greatest profundity of the film. The parents both knew that this family night was the only time it would happen like this before one had to kill the other, and they were at pains to keep the experience totally pure.
- Kill Bill Resistance is futile
- Published: April 23, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Action, Video: Adventure, Video: Animation, Video: Art House, Video: Comedy, Video: Drama
- Writer: Al Barger
- Al Barger's BC Writer page
- Al Barger's personal site
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