Killing Quentin

I saw Kill Bill yesterday. The new auteur slick action style 2-volume epic from the icon-o-cultured mind of Quentin Tarantino.

It is a video game with better cut scenes.

Besides that, I don't really know what to say about it. A woman is betrayed, beaten, shot and left for dead. Four years later she wakes up from a coma and seeks revenge on her assailants. I can see how that could make an interesting story. And on that level I guess it is interesting. But the bloody montages that fill the spaces where the dialogue could have been are unimaginably and fantastically gruesome and drawn-out.

I have to ask; what is the point? Who gives someone like QT the right to put together a visual display of this magnitude. In an age where we seek peace in places of war and safety in times of uncertainty (not to get all hoity), where does someone, and for what purpose does someone make a picture like this? And after making it, does Uma Thurman (the revenge-bent Bride) or Lucy Liu (one of the betrayers) sit back and say, "Wow, that is incredible. I made that and that is an important piece of work and I am super proud to put that on my resume.".

Heads fly, arms fly, feet fly, eyes fly, blood flows like fountains, swords cut flesh like butter and slight/small quips of witty banter bridge the gaps from one fight to the next. Even the murder of a mother in front of her 4 year old daughter is worsened by a small coy coll-coated-threat thrown the daughters way by the murderer. And the sexual abuse of children drawn out in Anime? ("Lucky for her, he was a pedophile.") What is the point?

This is a movie about bad people doing bad things to other bad people. And there seems to be immense pressure to appreciate it simply because it is QT.

Now I'm not saying that movies have to be super redeeming or socially radical. Movies are tools of escape that are sometimes elevated to the place of evangelism. But what was the point of this stylized bloody excuse for a cool soundtrack? Did QT get all gelled up thinking about how he could play homage to the films of his youth by ripping together this gruesome montage. I don't know. Maybe Volume 2, which comes to theatres in February will resolve some of these issues. Maybe the fact that I have had such a strong reaction is the point. Maybe I've become so desensitized to the other casual violence that I needed something like this to point out my own inconsistencies. Maybe if I think about it long enough I will come to appreciate what I saw. I don't know.