The Eye of the Storm
Last night I finally got around to seeing Kill Bill Volume 2. It only took me so long because I wanted to see Volume 1 first (which I did, several weeks ago, on DVD). After the first part, which was as slickly-executed a comic-book action film as you might ever hope to see, I expected more of the same, only maybe not as good. A few reviews I had seen said that although the first part was well-done entertainment, the second was flabby and self-indulgent, that director Quentin Tarantino couldn’t sustain the crispness and energy over such an extended work.
While it’s true that Kill Bill Volume 1 is outstanding, Volume 2 is a masterpiece. It may be one of the 10 best films I’ve ever seen – I’m still digesting bits of it in my head and will need to own and watch the (inevitable) multi-disc collectors’ set many times before coming to any higher understanding of it. Where KB1 sets a low target and fills it with bullseyes, KB2 is a carnival funhouse viewed through a kaleidoscope – a maze of archetypes and clichés, vulgar philosophy, raw emotion and wurlitzerized bits of cinema history and pop culture in droll, knowing dialogue with itself and the audience, realized with a bravado worthy of Orson Welles.
The minotaur at the center of Tarantino’s labyrinth is the character Bill, played by David Carradine. Carradine’s performance and the chemistry between him and “the Bride” (Uma Thurman), anchor KB2 in a depth of humanity that can support the sometimes groaning weight of preposterous plot and artifice that surrounds it. Like his contemporaries Peter Fonda, Terrence Stamp and Malcom McDowell, Carradine has managed to update his persona from the 60s and 70s into something complex and terrifying, pungent with the aroma of callow hedonism fermented into a tincture of cruel decadence. His Bill is one of the cinema’s classic villains. He holds the screen effortlessly and his scenes with the equally excellent Thurman are electrifying.
With this relationship at its heart, KB1 and especially KB2 transcend the deliberate kitsch and meta-ironic reference-mongering that Tarantino uses to taunt and tease us. Indeed, it frees the director to indulge in all kinds of feints and gestures, delicious diversions, scenes and characters for their own sake, violence and action so gratuitous that they cross back over into becoming essential, and flattery of his cinephile audience through the playful deployment of every homage and reference in the Film Studies 101 syllabus.
The leisurely quality of Tarantino’s filmmaking in the Kill Bill films has been nearly lost to us in the age of opening weekends, focus groups and blockbusters-of-the-moment. What keeps Kill Bill moving through its shaggy-dog plot, flashbacks-within-flashbacks and deliberately-paced digressions is the sense of delight that Tarantino brings to every scene. He loves this stuff: the sublime, the ridiculous, the good, the bad and the ugly. Kill Bill 1 is foreplay. Kill Bill 2 is a passionate act of lovemaking, performed with technique and feeling for a good long time. After seeing it, I feel like I need a cigarette.
10:54:26 AM 
|
|
