News
Briefly
Calendar of Events
Commentary
Sports
Diversions
World News
Classifieds
Login
Letter Submission
Search
Archive
Publishing Policy
Mail Subscriptions
St. Cloud State University
College Publisher
Home
>
Diversions
Taking a swipe at love
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, April 22, 2004
"Kill Bill Volume 1." was a love-letter. A geek-on-the-movies orgy, paying tribute to the exploitation flicks that alienated youth worldwide swarm to.
It was also a love of spectacle, extreme reality-dissolution exemplified in blood pumping decapitations and flamboyant wire-fu. And it was a love of music! I left Volume 1 so amped I didn't know if I wanted to pick up a samurai sword and behead an ultra-mod Japanese bodyguard or pick up my headphones and let the RZA decapitate me with razor-spun beats.
So is 'Volume 2' about love? You bet. However all bets are off when it comes to what this love means and the way this definition sprays back onto the first installment, in which Tarantino first crowned his blood splattered bride.
Having executed only two of the five from her "kill list" in 'Volume 1,' the bride who was left at the altar - pregnant, beaten to hamburger and shot in the head - has a beef with those who could not withhold their peace and accept her resignation from "The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad."
At the top of the list her former lover and leader of the massacre, Bill. But first she must leave Tokyo for Texas to murder Bud, the white-trash misogynist not to be mistaken for his weathered, lisping misogynist sadist guru brother, Bill.
Michael Madsen, the Elvis-esque black-haired Mr. Blonde from Taratino's first hit "Reservoir Dogs," is a little hard to watch as the hard-drinking, sulking, ex-assassin. Hard to watch moreso because it's hard to divorce Madsen the actor - looking overweight, tired and washed up -from watching Bud the character -looking overweight, tired and even more washed up.
'Volume 1' left on a jet plane from ultra-modern Tokyo. 'Volume 2' lands in the desert, where under the unforgiving sun, Tarantino drops both his beloved actress and his film into a hastily dug grave.
Why Tarantino feels he must almost kill Uma a couple more times before she is allowed to kill Bill is not completely beyond me, although I wish it were.
In the most recent Rolling Stone interview Tarantino deadpans vignettes about his second sexual experience: taking a prostitute on his mom's bed at age 17. This is not something I want to know. Likewise, the relationship between Bill and the Bride that rises from the film's purgatorial middle is more an unsavory chunk of too much information, than the emotional core that the director spoke of.
Tarantino, who is best known for penning Seinfeldian observational comedy for potty mouth ubercool gangsters, tries to sell a romance somewhere between sadomasochism and bizarre-o feminism.
Whether Bill (David Carradine) rambles on justifying the only truly horrific act in either of the two movies - and his most masochistic as he says in 'Volume 1' before shooting his former girlfriend in the head - or playing the flute while warning the kiddish bride about a truly vicious woman-hater Pai Mei (played with beard-twisting gusto by Gordon Liu who also played O-Ren's lieutenant Johnny Mo in 'Volume 1') and then dropping her at his doorstep, there's just something wrong with Bill.
I might be out of my mind to think so - and most of my friends have told me this. But it seems to me that 'Volume 2' is a wake-up call from the euphoric honeymoon of 'Volume 1.'
This time Tarantino's love isn't something that's very easy accept. I find myself staring awkwardly at those who embrace 'Volume 2.' Perhaps I'm giving the same perplexed look that opponents of Volume 1's over-the-top violence gave to whooping audiences who lapped it up (myself included.)
I'm also torn between wanting to (even feeling obligated to!) give Quentin another chance. Perhaps this time with a DVD screening of Vol. 1 timed to lead perfectly into a big screen outing with Volume 2. If there's ever been two movies that really are one movie I'd vote for Kill Bill.
The dynamite triggered by the showdown at the house of blue leaves that finishes "Volume 1" could segue nicely into the slowly stewing first half of "Volume 2."
But am I making that mistake that so often participants in abusive relationships make? Should I let the bastard do it again?
Forum:
No comments have been posted for this story.
Post a comment
