After the Dust Settled: Post Considerations on Kill Bill
The Spill on Kill Bill
There are few movies that glorify gore for the sake of cultural expression such as Kill Bill. Quentin Tarantino whose credits include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown has made modern inroads with his glorification of a variety of mediums and genres sutured with violence in Kill Bill. The following is not intended to give a full blow by blow analysis or critique of the movie but an overview that will highlight some of the crucial points the movie established, thus impacting a Christian worldview. One could visit Focus on the Family’s Plugged In to get a family review[1] or Michael Medved’s editorial in USAToday for an overall critique of the film.[2]
The film which opened up on October of 2003, gave movie goers the ride of their life as they saw images that contrasted between what seemed real and fantasy, between the macabre and the tender moments of death and suffering. The movie’s main thrust comes from the “The Bride” played by Uma Thurman as the movie depicts her quest for vengeance as team of assassins left her for dead. The Rotten Tomatoes movie review website gives a great synopsis about the movie.
KILL BILL: VOL. 1 tells the first half of the sprawling story, which is quite simple at first glance. A female assassin, referred to as “The Bride” (Uma Thurman), is attacked on her wedding day. Dead are her soon-to-be husband and unborn child. However, she doesn’t die. Four years later, she wakes up from a coma looking for revenge. Although her ultimate target is her former boss, Bill (David Carradine), it’s quite clear that The Bride is saving the best for last. And before she can track him down, she must methodically take out the minions who ruined her life. VOLUME 1’s targets include Vernita Green/Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), and the heartless O-Ren Ishii/Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu). Using a blessed sword handmade by Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), The Bride begins her relentless assault.[3]
The film includes a variety of genres such as action, suspense, and horror among others. In addition, it artistically involves a variety of color tones that are used for different sequences with tender but eerie songs that are reminiscent of the Kung Fu theater scores and the Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns. If one could compare it with a painting, Tarantino uses a variety of stylistic instruments as well as mediums such as crayon, clay, oil and watercolor paints, and so on. The darkened theaters and the surround sound give this particular canvas an effect that could leave any viewer somewhat mesmerized. Nevertheless, we will discuss the juxtaposed images that give Kill Bill a name for its own.
In addition to the beautiful color expressions and mixing of different mediums is the actual content of the movie itself. One has to give credit to Tarantino as he tries to give new backgrounds to different shades of violence depicted throughout the movie. In cinema a person is made aware of incoming violence, whether it is glorified or not, by the usual shift in setting. The marked differences could be registered by a change of darker colors and suspenseful music thus categorizing violence as such. Nevertheless, in Kill Bill we see that Tarantino uses juxtaposed images to denote an eerie violence. For example, there are scenes in the movie where there is an immense amount of blood and gore by the heinous revenge The Bride carries out. This, in turn is backdropped by melodic tones that are downright opposite of what you are seeing.
Furthermore, the introduction of Japanese Anime and a style format that carries out like a book shows that Tarantino wanted to tell a story in every possible way. In essence, once again, Tarantino has to be given credit for exploring different avenues a storyline can be conveyed. Nevertheless, the content is what strikes a chord against the Christian worldview.
Means with Ends
As was mentioned before, what concerned us here is what Tarantino purported to convey in the storyline, in other words the content. As other critics have pointed out, there really is no content to Kill Bill’s storyline. As Michael Medved’s piece points out, there isn’t much of anything in the movie.
Widely described as the bloodiest feature film ever released by a major studio (in this case, Disney’s Miramax division), the movie stands out not because of the presence of graphic violence but due to the absence of anything else.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 offers no characters, no relationships, no plot, no suspense, no clever dialogue and no resolution. Instead, it plays like an extended, unspeakably gory trailer for Kill Bill: Vol. 2, scheduled to be released in February. Other films will deploy extreme brutality to advance or intensify a story, but this one concentrates on violence as a substitute for story or intensity.[4]
Hence, we should not confuse the means with ends. Just because the movie uses a plethora of means to convey content it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has any. This is a very fundamental and crucial point in regards to a Christian worldview. We entertain ourselves to death by the graphical acupuncture that stimulates us to a lull while content (in this case contentless) information seeps in to our minds. On amazing example was What Dreams May Come, directed by Vincent Ward. The scenery and background (music, lighting, color tones, etc) was so mesmerizing that few people noticed that it was assuming a pantheistic/new age worldview that advocated themes such as reincarnation and karma. It was a very beautiful and aesthetic movie indeed; however the message came with what I call a worldview compromise. A worldview compromise is where there is a sort of mental give and take that happens when we as Christians are not truly rooted in truth. Therefore, when we see movies such as Kill Bill and What Dreams May Come we compromise truth by passively receiving variables that without all the production glitter and glamour would otherwise strike us at being in odds with biblical principles.[5]
Conclusion
In short, Kill Bill is dangerous not because of how upfront it is with violence but because it caters to the non content-like stories (or lack there of) that are promulgated in a Western postmodern society. It is literally a passion play for it plays on the passions and not on the intellect, thus bypassing reason. Therefore, as our children lull before contentless material, they receive it with no reasonable justification. At least with content one has the opportunity to see if it is tied to themes such as redemption, vengeance, vindication, etc., so that we are able to use judgment, reason and opinion to justify or disregard. This is not the case with Kill Bill.
This reminds us of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) in the movie The Fifth Element where she happens to look through video player at what seems like hours of footage with images of violence. She stood there watching as she tried to learn from millennia of history through a series of images depicting pure violence. Afterwards she went into despair as she gave up on the idea of saving earth. The content she saw on the spaceship impacted her to the point of not wanting to exist anymore. However, what the movie failed to provide was that images are just that, images. In a certain sense they do not speak for themselves for they lack content and context; elements that are lacking in many movies today.
Therefore, it is imperative that one is more discerning with the content of movies. This will help in being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to such movies.
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