Geysers of Blood

Kill Bill - OCTOBER 10th VOLUME 1 -

After a day of reflection, I've decided that Kill Bill is just the right kind of movie to divide in two.

I want to know how it ends--don't get me wrong about that. And watching it was, while sometimes straining, always entertaining--Uma Thurman's delicate facial expressions make up for the lack of dialogue in Volume One. But I couldn't have made it through the other 100 minutes or so of the film--not yesterday, and probably not today, either.

Much has been made of the fact that Tarantino shoots the movie in a variety of styles, all of which share a common trait--they obscure reality. Blood shoots from wounds like it would in a cartoon. The characters are often caricatures of themselves--indeed, Lucy Liu's character is animated for half her screen time. The story is so over the top as to be outside the realm of possibility.

Normally these traits make a movie watchable. They make it an escape. I can sit through three hours of Lord of the Rings and beg for more when it ends because the situation, however dire, is an escape from the reality of my life and bears little relation to it. These traits are the reason the Matrix sequels could have been packaged as one and many would have been made happier as a result.

And these traits are the reason why I can't imagine watching KB in one sitting. All the cartoony elements mask the underlying simplicity of the story: a heroine who got screwed and wants to face the people who did it. Yes, her screwing is drastic--how many of you were shot in the head on your wedding day while the rest of your wedding party was killed?--but so is her solution. It stands in all too easily as a metaphor for our own pain, our own primal urge for revenge. Tarantino lets loose the ambitions that civilization encourages us--and rightly so--to suppress. KB strikes a chord with a deep and disturbing part of the human psyche, the part that craves vengeance and holds a grudge. Incredibly, it does so without miring itself in the hours of philosophical debate about the nature of revenge one would expect from dialogue-fanatic Tarantino. Somehow, he lets the action do the talking.

If you can stomach the body count--and it's high, oh so high--go see it. Tarantino may well have lost his mind. But the man knows how to make a movie.