The magpie deserves our respect

Rating: Null/10 (27 April 2004)

The grand enterprise is all out in front of us now. The spectacular, well-oiled cinematic entertainment machine. It works very nicely and it looks like it's built to last.
By now many moviegoers know the program. `The Bride' (Uma Thurman) got badly beaten, shot in the head, and left for dead at the altar. She survived a four-year-long coma, came to, and set out on a vicious revenge quest to wipe out her former Deadly Viper Assassination Squad cohorts who'd betrayed her. Now, in part two, she gets to their boss, her lover, Bill, who's responsible for the Massacre at Twin Pines that started everything off in the first place.
Volume 1 was mostly battles and back-stories as Uma wiped out the first Deadly Vipers and a whole army of Asian killers in a Tokyo nightclub called The House of Blue Leaves in a dazzling bloody sequence ending with a silent mano-a-mano in a beautiful snowy garden. Volume 2 finishes up the story and delivers a fuller serving of trademark Tarantino talk and more of the Western element, as well as more Asian stuff, this time Chinese. The big change in the equation is that The Bride's adversary, Bill (David Carradine) finally appears, and talks - a lot.
If Tarantino has an obsession as a filmmaker, it's back-stories, and both segments have major flashbacks to develop them. But what Volume 2 does is develop characters more with on-scene dialogue, while continuing with the back-story element.
It's a little bit misleading to try to draw contrasts between the two parts, though, because the whole thing was conceived and reads very much as a whole, even if Volumes 1 and 2 were edited separately. There's a harmonizing rhythm shared by the whole approach (and brilliant'look' provided by Director of Photography Robert Richardson) as well as the way both parts start with The Massacre at Twin Pines and have a series of smaller battles that leads up to a grand finale.
For anybody who can open up to it the whole thing functions admirably, showing us along the way as much movie virtuosity and fun as we're likely to experience in a good long while. Mr. Tarantino has now proven himself not just the brilliant `enfant terrible' of American filmmaking of the 90's but definitely one to watch out for in the 00's as well.
As the Terrytune clip in the movie says, `The magpie deserves your respect.' The man is a genius magpie, and both `Kill Bills' are the apotheosis of those collecting tendencies and videogeek obsessions of his. He's said `Kill Bill' is `a duck press of all the grindhouse cinema' he's seen in his life. It's predominantly a synthesis of different Asian martial arts sources (shooting was done in both Tokyo and Beijing) and stuff from Westerns ranging from classic John Ford to Sergio Leone -- a quirky compendium that transcends the traditions it feeds on by blending elements of allusion and reference into a language this filmmaker speaks like nobody else. `Kill Bill 2' has something to say, but it never ceases to be a product of allusion and referentiality -- to grindhouse, to itself and to other Tarantino movies.
You don't have to recognize all the allusions, but if you don't even know they're there, you won't see how `Kill Bill' came together and you may miss out on a lot of the fun. You'll complain of `excessive violence' when in fact every fight scene refers to the tradition of the movies and is about moviemaking -- not really, in the final analysis, about people being cruel to people but about loving movies. Both `Kill Bills' are quintessential movie lovers' movies. This means they're movies that are best not so much `served cold' (like revenge) as warmed over - watched over and over and over (the way a movie geek, or a kid, does) till the `what' isn't at issue any more and you just savor the `how.'
`Kill Bill 1 & 2' really ARE `about' something, though. As they don't hesitate to tell us, they're about revenge. That's why they both begin with `The Massacre at Twin Pines.' That's the motive, the time when The Bride AKA Black Mamba AKA Beatrice Kiddo (Uma Thurman) was horribly wronged, got shot by the man and mentor she once loved and had her new life with a man in El Paso ended. And that's why, in the last reel, she hunts down Bill -- and we find out why it all happened and what has to transpire before it's all going to be over. Both `Kill Bills' are dominated by the wronged one, the avenger, Tarantino's muse, Uma Thurman. And the credits in huge letters (credits being as important to Tarantino, the moviegeek, as back-stories) proclaim that the whole story of `The Bride' that's the movies' basis was penned by `Q & U,' Quentin and Uma. Like a lot of brilliant egomaniac movie directors - P.T. Anderson is another example - Tarantino is much more of a collaborator than some people realize and owes huge debts to his homeboys as well as to idols he revives and uses, if he can, in his movies (like Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah; earlier John Travolta, Pam Grier - the list goes on and on).
The new scenes that stand out in Vol. 2 are the ones where Budd (Michael Madsen) buries Beatrice alive; where she fights with Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah); and the one where she finally confronts Bill in Mexico.
The `how' is so important in Tarantino it can overwhelm the `what.' But the `what' is always there. And the `why' -- the complete back-story, so to speak -- is slowly unreeling, and that's the reason `Kill Bill' ends climactically. It's not till the end that all grievances are clear and all measures have been taken to set things right. Outcome does matter. And story matters. There's more to the geek than just technique.
But `Kill Bill 2' is as much about back-story as foreground action. After you watch it, you realize how back-stories make a movie work. Tarantino creates a world where everything's in order, because everything has an adequate explanation. Back-stories are like legends. They're glorifications of the characters and reasons for their actions - or like the comic book heroes Bill goes on about while Beatrice's truth serum is taking effect at the end of Volume 2. Critic J. Hoberman wrote about Bill: `He proves to be a master of long-winded b******t and the bamboo flute.' Indeed so, but listen to the b******t, because it's all part of Tarantino's personal back-story.
Both `Kill Bills' show us Tarantino isn't just about spectacle and allusion and jokey dialogue. He blends back-story and front-story like a master storyteller, b*********r and weaver of myth to create this intensified pop acid trip tale.
Some of us are gasping for air at the end of the Tokyo nightclub sequence in `Kill Bill 1'-- even as it flows out into the lovely snow-filled garden -- because we've had to go too long without any Tarantino dialogue. That doesn't' happen in `Kill Bill 2.' Even in the middle of a lightning hot battle like the one between Kiddo and Elle Driver in Budd's trailer, the two ladies take the time to stop in their tracks, look at the inscription on a Hattori Hanzo sword, and exchange taunts. Some of Carradine's dialogue may also leave you gasping for air, but the `Kill Bills" are so well put together you'll want to go back to them again and again - and like them more each time. Because Tarantino is a dish best served warmed over - and over and over.