I saw the second and final installment of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill last night. Although I enjoyed it, possibly more so than Volume One, I couldn't help but come away from the movie feeling there was something missing. It felt thin. But, perhaps I was partly guilty for having higher expectations than were appropriate. That mystical feeling so frequently delivered by the man born to take lurid, pulp films into the lime light was somehow absent. I missed the "intrusion of the bizarre" propelling the story and the connections made to characters through their dialogue. In place of these things was a world of filmic conventions (albeit ones not familiar to a westernized audience perhaps) layer upon layer where as Peter Bradshaw aptly put it: "everything happens in a weightless comic-book universe where the normal rules of physical existence have been abolished, or at any rate extensively modified. It's a world in which international travel and the purchase of new cars may be achieved without money, a world where people can ascend six feet unaided through an earth pit, where they can fire guns indoors without disturbing a sleeping child in the next room."
To be sure, the films are a visual feast. They are as inventive as they are referential. Enigmatic as they are concrete. For example, I love the in your face odes to Sergio Leone in Volume Two, and the "look at how much further animation can take the audience" prompted by Volume One's use of animation "to show something that could not otherwise be shown." As well as the feeling of utter dumbfounded shock as Tarantino holds you in darkness while the heroine's coffin is lowered into its deep grave having nothing but the horrid sound track to guide you. Lurid, for certain, but so stylised it si absurd. This is when Tarantino is at his best. Taking something to the absurd, yet in some extraordinary way, retaining believeability. The cinematography can hardly be faulted. It is as rich in detail and nuance as it is commanding of the simple and straight forward. And that is also true of nearly every other technical and artistic aspect. Indeed, some images are nothing short of arresting.
Volume 2 definitely benefits from an emphasis on drama and character development, thus resulting in a reduction in the violent escapades that featured so strongly in Volume One (mind you the removing of Elle's (Daryl Hannah) second eyeball is a grotesque flourish in the extreme). But, in so doing Volume Two merely exposed that there was really very little there dramatically, and the film lost momentum and purpose as a result. A fate not suffered by the first film in that there was so much happening by way of choreography that it created a true imersive environment that did not allow you to ponder motives. Good thing as the only motives present are revenge and insanity - thus the flatness and brevity of the ending in Volume Two.
What I can't help feeling is that Tarantino's is using this overtly visual format to express a flourishing interest in montage. Montage not only in a dramatic visual sense, but also in how one may tell a story. Quickly jumping back and forth across cuts as he does from comedic to horrific to dramatic modes of conveying the story. This above all was the highlight for me from Kill Bill as a whole, even though it threatened to bring down the house around him at every change of scene. Sometimes this alone was thrilling. A master work, no, but certain to be influential in western film making. At best, I think it may become one of those films I return to frequently precisely because it is troubling and intriguing cinema.
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