Kill Bill: An Epic

Its controversial to say this, but I love Kill Bill. I think its an epic, a masterpiece. While critics generally like some really hated it, I mean some despised it. And I have a theory on this, on situations like that where a select group of people really hate something that is fairly well received. It can fall into one of two categories: one, the film hits a bunch of shallow deep notes for critics, or two a select group of just completely misses the point and the movie just swishes right over their heads, and both those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

But I had the great pleasure of rewatching both Kill Bill's recently for the first time and in several years and enjoyed it even more. I watched them with my new trained eye, taking in the way they were shot, the music, the mood, the tone, all the things I've gotten from watching movies closer and learning more about film and acting, and it was one of the few movies I enjoyed much more with this closer examination.

The one thing you have to like Kill Bill for is that it dared to be an Epic, it didn't half try, it wasn't embarrassed, or held back wondering what would be thought about it, it was an all out, everything on the table Epic. That is the one thing every critic should give it as its due, regardless of how they felt about it.

Kill Bill is a stylistic masterpiece, no other way to put it. The fleeting camera angles, the black and white to color mixture, the reversions to cartoons or dancing colors, is simply put some of the greatest cinematography I've come across. Uma Thurmon's scene in Volume 2 where she's buried alive is one of the best I've seen done.

What is perhaps so lovely about this movie is that its depth speaks on its own if you know how to listen. It doesn't try it simply is profound, which marks it apart from many other movies. Its a breath of fresh air because its never too serious, its never cliched or preachy, (like No Country for Old Men), but its beautiful. I kept having to fight the urge to weep because I was just so astonished and taken in and inundated by this movie. As someone deeply in tune with the pop culture it is an ode to, I could connect with it.

The films are very different but in a purposeful way, they are meant to compliment each other; you cannot understand or enjoy one fully without having seen the other and taken time to ponder them together then rewatch them.

The first film is a bloody ode on the violence, it is saturated in violence, so much so that some people take the violence at too much face value instead of the intent and see the movie as a mindless, gory action flick. My grandparents for instance went to this movie thinking that it was a Clint Eastwood movie for some reason, and to this day they swear by it that it was the strangest, most awful movie ever made.

The second film is what establishes its greatness though. Volume One is good but what it lacks Volume Two provides. Volume Two is really the most critical to watch; you can understand the movie just watching Volume Two, but you could not understand it just watching Volume One. The stark difference in tone exists as well. While Volume One is a not entirely serious glorification of violence Volume Two is slower and ponders this violence.

All of the great moments in the film really, belong to Volume Two. David Carradine truly shines in his role and the characters are given more flesh and blood and come to life as real people which ponders the question of the dehumanizing effect of the violence of the first one. The epic blood gushing nonstop violence of the first movie is replaced by no gushes of blood or epic attacks in the second one.

I'm trying not to give too much of the movie away lest it be ruined but the ending, from Carradine's discussion of Superman to his five slow steps into the distance as he dies are something so powerful, so special, so profound that I can scarcely describe the experience of watching them. They are this way because they pretend to be nothing, they don't try to be that way, they lack the superficial pompous, and false epic of "great" films like The Last King of Scotland, they are what cinema is supposed to be; they don't even try to pretend they are real life because the harder a film tries to replicate reality the greater and more terrible its failure was. Instead this film creates its own reality and in that reality it truly shines because we don't have to question anything or mar anything through the lens of our reality. That's why those other films miss the point reality. I don't want our reality when I watch a movie, I wanna get away from it, I wanna watch an innovative look at something fresh, something new, something different.

I can't say enough as well for the acting; I cannot even begin to imagine this film without Carradine or Thurmon. They are there characters, that's the sign of a great performance. They aren't even the actors Uma Thurmon and David Carradine they are Bill and Beatrix Kiddo. My heart was sealed on this film watching her cry on the floor of the bathroom at the end of Volume Two as her daughter watched Bugs Bunny in the other room before she wiped her eyes and leaves off into the sunset. Its the existential criticism on the pointlessness of all the violence she went through to get to that point and its a fitting end for an epic movie.