Kill Quentin

Greetings to those arriving from Look Closer; be sure to check out my recent post on The Washington Post's recent article about so-called Christian filmmaking.

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Ross has picked up the Tarantino thread over at The American Scene, and not surprisingly, he's not too kind to Tarantino's most recent film. But as with his response to A History of Violence, I think he's being dismissive of the movie precisely because of the thing that makes it interesting – its ability to simultaneously work spectacularly within genre trappings and elevate those trappings beyond their typically shallow usage, reminding us why those tropes work so well to begin with.

Here’s what the article he links to in the comments section says about Kill Bill:

“Because of the violence which is presented without any apparent moral comment, because of the adolescent embarrassment about adult sexuality in his films, Tarantino—who was born in 1962 and is thus of the first generation of directors to have been raised on cable television and video recordings, with their promise of endless repetition—has become, in the minds of many, the poster boy for a generation of Americans—mostly male—whose moral response to violence has been alarmingly dulled by too much popular entertainment.”

The argument, essentially, is that Tarantino is a skillful technician of grisly mayhem, but little beyond that. Yet all of his films take the artifice of genre – noirish crime stories, kung fu films, gangster movies and comic books – and then dazzle us not only with their masterful evocations of their pulp roots, but with their ability to use those roots to examine distinctly human insecurities.

Kill Bill is the slickest film he’s made, and the one most nestled in genre artifice, but, when taken as a whole (he wrote it and shot it with the intention of it being seen in one piece; it’s unfair to judge the first without the second), it’s a quite stunning portrayal of the a woman coming to grips with a life full of difficult choices who hopes to redeem herself through her daughter. And thus we get nearly miraculous scenes like the hotel room where the Bride is attacked by a rival female assassin just as she finds out she’s pregnant: it’s an ingenious way to use genre to heighten and highlight the emotional impact of coming to understand that you’re about to bring new life into the world. We get the cunning, wickedly intelligent Bill delicately cutting meats and vegetables to make a sandwich for his young daughter – a clever way to transpose the killer’s skill with a blade into something sweet and elegant that muddles the line between ruthless killer and doting father. These are people: superheroes too, perhaps, but genuine, feeling people.

And then, of course, there’s Tarantino’s completely thrilling treatment of violence. Some call it amoral or nihilistic, and I won’t argue that point either way, but it is most certainly two things – technically brilliant filmmaking that, on the most surface level, is utterly exhilarating stuff from a master stylist who takes lowbrow comic book hijinks to spectacular new heights. But more than that, it’s an eloquent reversal of so much heavy handed moralism that comes with many violent message films. In Kill Bill especially, Tarantino reminds us that violence can be striking not just for its brutality, but for its sheer, visual beauty.

Morally, I may object to this (I find all real life violence repugnant, even when I think it's necessary), but I find Tarantino’s presentation so flawless that I cannot reject it either (the Pinter discussions are relevant here).

As for Ridley Scott, that's another discussion entirely.