Volume 2

Volume 2

If Kill Bill vol. 1 had been what Kill Bill vol.2 is, I probably would have been apathetic to the entire series.

For certain, I didn't want talking. I told Kristi back in the day, "If there is no talking in the entire movie, I will be happy." And in the end (or middle?), I was impressed with Quentin Tarrantino's ability to embed complex themes into the two hour fight sequence with as little talking as possible and to still keep it constantly fresh with an amalgam of international action movie styles. (Was just thinking, incidentally, about Cottonmouth's board room scene being Tarrantino's way of suggestively defending his creation as a legitimate fight movie.)

That said, at the cliffhanger conclusion of Volume 1 what I wanted for Volume 2 was not non-stop action, I wanted talking. I didn't have any desire to see the Bride storm through dojos for another 2 hours. Yeah, some swordplay was going to be necessary, but I understood the world the characters lived in and wanted to, obviously, the plot to reach a full-fledged fruition but also to be given a deeper look into the mythology of the characters. And it's what we get.

What seems clear to me is that Tarrantino is one of the best character developers in cinema. Kill Bill (and arguably the entire filmography) is a handful of interesting characters tossed together in a basic framework. They invent their own story and Quentin just tweaks the knobs and dials... "What happens if we have Uma Thurman, Darryl Hannah, and David Carradine all get their training from the same guy?" "Let's set it so that David and Uma and Michael Madesn have the same one-of-a-kind sword." Most of the intricacy of the character's relationships to one another stays in the subtext but feels nevertheless more true because of it. The story is controlled by the characters, and as such allows the actors to dazzle. So, how Tarrantino approaches some scenes is, in some sense, dependent upon how the actors control their characters. In other cases, Tarrantino adjusts the controls... camera angles, lighting / color design, exposure, whatever... and the characters play through. There's a symbiosis to the whole thing.

A few years ago, I winced at the idea of Tarrantino doing a Dirty Dozen style World War II flick; I couldn't see him being able to make the transition from Resevoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction into that... But, here in Kill Bill, he proves his proficiency at character design and his intent to let that design drive the story.