Without an image, we hear a woman panting. “Revenge is a dish best served cold”. Then it is the image’s turn and we see the woman in a bridal gown; we see the bride (Uma Thurman) bloodstained and wounded. A man approaches. He sits down. His name in a big size, has been stitched on his handkerchief: Bill. Bill (David Carradine) draws a gun. “Bill… it’s your baby” and a bullet is being shot to the bride’s skull. “The 4th film by Quentin Tarantino”. With such opening, the narrator is not after involving his audience with the story; he announces to him with a loud voice that he is watching a film (a film by Quentin Tarantino) and while he is rapidly “informing” the audience with the story, he illuminates the destination as well: revenge and killing Bill. The narrator puts the story out of the way. The story is there, the narrator tells it, but while he diminishes the part that can be the whole possession of such a film –that belongs to a genre, or is a popular or a B movie- he straightly goes to the basis of a story; and the basis of a story is Cinema. And now the basis of the story.
First the dooryard of a house in a suburb which in it, the existence of playing instruments for kids, seems natural. The housewife, who lives in the house on the other side of the street opens the door, while she is thinking that her child got home early. The arriving of the school bus and a child with her backpack, returns home. The narrator on the basis of such places and within the warp and woof of such daily routines, advances the events of the story and brings in the bride; he brings the bride in to an image of a family life. The narrator doesn’t care about setting up. After the bloodstained bride is being shot by Bill, we see her healthy and sprightful in pursuit of revenge, whereas her transition from one condition to another, her decision making to take revenge and the identity of the black woman who is the target of her revenge has been deleted. In this way the background place and the daily routine comes to the foreground and in combination with the bride’s past and her revenge, they become a vehicle for revealing her internal felling. It means that whatever is a part of external appearance can and must build an internal feeling and shed light on it. And that’s Cinema. Story has a secondary nature. The narrator, in search for a vehicle to reveal an internal feeling, builds a cost-effective story that its natural significance dues not to what it is, but to the expression capabilities that it offers to the narrator. “4 years old? you know, I had a little girl once, she’d be about 4 now” in the middle of a fight to the death between her mother and the bride; that is when Nikki must enters, via a school bus; a bus that enters the film in the background of a two-shot, which includes Nikki’s mother and the bride; it drops Nikki off and exits the film, with Nikki’s mother begging the bride with her eyes for her daughter. That is when Nikki must enters the film because she is a projection of the bride’s unborn slain daughter, as Nikki’s mother is a projection of the bride, and Nikki’s father is a projection of the bridegroom. And the narrator emphasizes on this sameness in dialogue too: “to get even, Even Stephen, I would have to kill you, go up to Nikki’s room, kill her, then wait for your husband the good doctor Bell to come home and kill him. That would be even Vernita” and now, how does the bride treat the projection of the future that she has had before herself? She puts her revenge higher than that, as the priority. “Just because I have no wish to murder you before the eyes of your daughter does not mean that parading her around in front of me is gonna inspire sympathy. You and I have unfinished business. And not a goddamn thing you’ve done in the subsequent four years, including getting knocked up, is gonna change that” the bride wants her opponent to be a warrior and pay the probable price for it. but what does the opponent do? To save her family, she begs the bride for her daughter, and when she faces the negative response, far from honor and cowardly, she draws a gun, and finally, she is being killed by the bride while she is humiliated. And this is the projection of her own future that the bride tramples perforce; and the bride humiliates a probable projection of herself in this future. After the bride leaves the house, the voice of a man is being heard who is talking about the characteristic of a warrior in the path of revenge, in Japanese! With no set up! A voice which its words and tone has kind of an ethic behind it and the narrator, while is marking it by Japanese language in a tangible way, illuminates the importance of revenge for the bride. “When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other that not only God exist, you’re doing his will” at first, the matter is not the right and wrong of the bride’s idea about revenge and the priority that she is giving to it. The matter is the projection of the life that she had before herself, and her counterpart in this projection –a housewife- who rejects the opportunity of being a warrior, in favor of preserving herself and the life she has, and on this path, she tramples the honor and the ethic, the ethic of a warrior. But the bride on the contrary. Nikki sees her beside the body of her mother “it was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I’m sorry. But you can take my word for it. Your mother had it coming” and this moment, seeing it through eyes, seeing through eyes a grown up woman talking to a minor kid with that small body in such way, affects in a strange way. And the last sentence, which the bride pulls down her voice and speaks softly like a few minutes ago: “when you grow up, if you still feel raw about it… I’ll be waiting” when she arrives at the last sentence, she pulls down her voice and speaks softly like a few minutes ago, that while she was mentioning getting knocked up, she pulled down her voice, as if for her it is in some way reverent, sacred. And now this moment and the articulation of the bride, articulating a war that is her being principled about the ethic, in front of a minor girl, the girl who is also a projection of her own daughter; the bride cautiously boasts about her ethic in front of Nikki. And because of the difference in height, the camera shows Nikki silent-firm-feeble, under the domination of the bride, but that is true until the moment in which the bride is leaving the house, which the camera is with Nikki and portrays this moment from behind her shoes; the only spot which they are against each other at the same height. So the same as the bride, the narrator gives Nikki an opportunity to be a warrior too.
For a second the bride is being intimidated. “there’s baseball diamond where I coach our little league about a mile from here. We meat there around 2.30 in the morning, dressed all in black, your hair in a black stocking. And we have us a knife fight. We won’t be bothered” it is as if Nikki’s mother is confident and she is ready to fight; she specifies everything firmly and with details and the camera stays on her uninterruptedly until the moment she points her finger up “now…” and the bride, who is apparently –alongside us- bedazzled by this indisputable display of power by Nikki’s mother, is being shocked and recoils involuntarily and Nikki’s mother laughs at the effect that the bride has taken from her speech “I have to make Nikki’s cereal” she goes to make the cereal and the bride, as if she wants to hide her involuntary recoil a few seconds ago, steps back and leans to the wall “weapon of choice? If you want to stick with your butcher knife that’s fine with me” as if she wants to display power in response to the display of power by Nikki’s mother; that she prefers her to come to the war with her full power so that her defeat would be indisputable; with that insidious smile of hers at the end of what she says; the moment in which, Nikki’s mother draws gun from cereal’s pocket. The narrator reveals the insecurity of the bride; in regard to the display of power by the opponent and death. The narrator is sharper and more face to face with himself to become captivated by conventional notions and lose the insecurity that is a part of the stimulus of narrating the story. After Nikki’s mother is being killed by the bride’s knife throwing, it is being cut to the bride’s throwing pose; frozen, wide-eyed and shocked. For a moment she stays that way and we stay that way. Then she straights her back, stands up and her open-mouthed and shocked face transforms in to a stony face; it transforms from the insecurity of the narrator in to the solidity of a warrior; a conventional cinematic warrior. More than being a warrior, the bride is longing to become a warrior.
The narrator goes back and from the point that he had left, follows up the rest of the story, but now this story is not the same anymore, as it would have been without this brief digression forward.
The reality in the world of Kill Bill is an exaggerated version of the Cinematic reality. It is a version that using the false interpretation of it, is prevalent in commercial cinema (from a family melodrama to an action-revenge). Cinematic reality is the faking of outside reality. An honest objective faking, committed to and dependent on the inside reality. This is the faking in it that makes art; from the beginning of the creation process to the end of it. Cinematic reality is an opportunity to encounter with an embodied (external) reality that by the imagination of the narrator has become internal and it reveals the quality of his encounter with the outside reality in order to challenge the constraints of the inside reality of ours and his, that has become desirable. Because we attach too soon and we get used to, and so we ignore a part of the outside reality in favor of the familiar inside reality of ours. The challenge that Art causes, can moves the constraints of the inside reality of ours that has become desirable and expanses it, because that has become desirable by our negligence, short-sightedness and weakness; A moving and enthusing challenge that nerves and soothes. Four qualities that can and must remain after watching a movie two or multiple times. But in the false interpretation of this faking, the narrator, impotent to encounter with the outside reality and bored of it, looking for an escape and perforce, runs away to the delusive reality of these false films. The prevalent reality in this false Cinema, is the origin of the world of Kill Bill. A notorious reality that the way of encounter, distinguishes a real audience from a false one. From the beginning, the narrator sheds light on the roots of the reality of the film’s world in his inside reality and he sets foot on the path of representing himself and stage by stage proceeds. Now that the authenticity for this version of cinematic reality is determined, it is possible to judge when and for what reason the adopted approach is successful and when and for what reason it is not.
Hattori Hanzo, the unknown famous retired sword-maker, under the cover of being the owner and the operator of a Japanese restaurant, in response to the bride that asks for a sword, does not say immediately “these are not for sale”; he takes the bride upstairs, where the numerous and has been made by him-swords, has been set carefully and in secret in order to be exhibited to “no one”, a showplace that in it, here and there, clotheslines and hanging clothes catches the eye, as if the person who has renounced sword-making because “I no longer make instruments of death” has no choice but to be proud of them in his solitude, he takes the bride upstairs so that after this “swords exhibition” he says he doesn’t make swords anymore; he doesn’t deprive himself of this opportunity to let the bride watches; without saying a word. And he himself watches the bride with a smile on his face. The bride, slowly and cautiously reaches her hand to take one of the swords but recoils and with a laughter of shame, she looks at Hanzo “-may I? –you may” such a curtsy and respect toward a sword? And the narrator for Hanzo’s answer, does not cut to the same shot that was showing Hanzo while he was watching the bride; by the same shot, the narrator exposes Hanzo in the vacant corner of the bride’s shot with a halfway dissolve. It is as if hanzo is infatuated and attentive to and mesmerized by the bride and it is only in this moment that he becomes self-conscious about his own presence. He is attentive to the bride and how much she values the swords; he is attentive to the bride who takes the sword with two hands, with utmost respect and caution. Either Hanzo’s action that before saying “no”, he takes the bride upstairs to exhibit the swords to her and the production design of the loft, also carving every single behavior of the bride and the manner of using the camera, light and the pattern of editing, each and every one of them has been focused on achieving a special feeling that transcend a samurai sword from a set-prop and distinguish the film from similar examples.
Revenge gives an opportunity to the bride to be a warrior not a housewife and to Hanzo, a sword-maker; not an owner and an operator of a restaurant. Also, they both has turned their bake on the past and abandoned it because one had been a killer, the other had been making killing instruments. But apparently the new life lacks something from the old life that Hanzo in his solitude, has set up this exhibition with no attendance. We know that the bride has found the opportunity to be a warrior without returning to her old life, but as she arrives at Hanzo’s, at first she pretends something else. She becomes a young American woman who has come to see Japan and doesn’t know Hanzo and for a few moments we become the audience of a show that in it, both sides are wearing masks but just the woman is aware of the primary identity of the man and in fact she is the one who has set up this show. In this show, the woman can bedazzle the man by her beauty, display coquetry like a child and the man would be the buyer of this coquetry. The woman can sit down and be the witness to a childlike fight between the two men whom we immediately become aware that accompany each other for long years. A fight which occurs by the narrator’s will. The narrator –alongside the bride- tend to watch childlike femininity of the woman, as well as the masculinity of the man and the masculine-childlike friendship. And the bride laughs; she laughs exaggeratedly. It’s like she is thrilled so much that she doesn’t know how to laugh. She is here and she is happy about this presence. Simultaneously she is both happy about her mask and about her companionship with her counterpart that the same as her has worn a mask and keeps his glory hidden. With masks, femininity remains and masculinity and childhood. When masks are fallen down a dish brocks and it is like femininity, masculinity and childhood go under the shadow. The bride becomes the “yellow-haired warrior” and Hanzo, the sword-maker. We arrive at the moment that the bride reveals why she expects Hanzo to give her a sword, not to sell her; that we understand Bill was his protégé. Hanzo perplexedly, moves a few steps and before he writes “Bill” by the tip of his finger in the steam that is on the glass, his attention is being drawn to the picture on the table. An old and black and white picture that is not clear why at this moment draws his attention. Is it a picture from his childhood? Or from someone else’s? Doesn’t matter. This moment is so full that makes it hard to describe the feeling that it provokes. Full of the passage of life and years that are passed, of the guilty conscience about the past, of the opportunity to retrieve the magnificence of the past. And this is Bill who provides this opportunity for both of them, which is the thing that gives him a dual function and quality. And in this way the film achieves an acme that is formed by the facilities of Cinema.
The dual quality of Bill is being intensified by the refrainment of showing him and the narrator in the moments leading up to the exhibition of him in the church in vol. 2, keeps us eager and anticipant and in this way makes this dual quality objective. Bill is a villain that his villainy gives the bride –and Hanzo- a chance to return to the magnificence of the past. The scent of this dual quality was one of the elements that was forming the flavor of the film in vol. 1. But in vol.2 the narrator points to it by words. Bill sets “having a job in a record store beside the husband” in direct opposition against “killing human beings around the world and being paid vast sums of money”; “did you really think your life in El Paso was going to work?”. But why must the narrator bring in a gun containing the “truth serum” to get the answer from the bride “No”? The narrator in vol. 1, by the portrayal of the bride’s future in Nikki’s mother, forms an imagination for us of the life she had ahead. But here in the chapel scene, before the exhibition of Bill, when for the first time he confronts us with the life she had ahead and introduces the husband and other formative members of this life to us, makes no effort to reveal the bride’s opinion of these people which if he had done it, there wouldn’t have been no need for the “truth serum” anymore. The narrator uses the made up reality of the film to bypass Cinema. In the current shape, this “truth serum” is more of an annoying disburdenment and this judgement, is also true about the husband and the friends of the bride. Look at the moment which the bride stands up to leave the chapel, which gives the impression that she stands up and leave because it is necessary so that the narrator can make her notice Bill who is sitting down outside and blows in his flute! This scene starts with a shot of the reverend and his mother which is then going to cut to a shot of a group of people which the bride is among them and then is the turn of the over the shoulder shot of the Rufus the black musician. With this approach in presentation, the chapel’s nave and the flow of occurrences finds centrality not the bride. So when the bride in the middle of the conversation with the reverend’s mother turns her back to her to tell her friends that she is going out and we, neither see any reactional shot from reverend’s mother nor anyone else, the chapel’s nave and the flow of occurrences in it suddenly is being abandoned; but not entirely. When the bride stands, her friends stands to justify her going out and again, we don’t see any reactional shot from anyone in response to this action of the bride and the explanation of her friends. What is the reason for this abandoning of the chapel’s nave and the flow of occurrences in it? if it hadn’t been abandoned from the beginning until the moment of the bride standing and then, that exclusive medium shot of her having the chapel’s nave and the flow of occurrences in it behind her back, then it would have been the Cinematic translation of leaving behind the chapel’s nave and the flow of occurrences in it. but what about now? In that exclusive medium shot in the moment of the bride going out, she is smiling; like she is happy. So she thinks her life in El Paso is going to work? Or she wants to think so? It’s not clear and the narrator intensifies the indetermination of these moments by not developing the husband and the bride’s friends and turns them in to a misfit patch that doesn’t find a specific place in the film. But all this, does not flaw the validity and the power of the film in developing the moments that comes after. The moments of our first encounter with Bill, with that clothing, voice and aged grandeur. Is the narrator so eager to show and watch Bill that he gets rid of the bride’s friends and husband? Or maybe he has affection for the bride’s group of friends and husband and does not consent to humiliate them? It’s not possible to make a judgement but a similar weakness is also visible in the scene of the encounter between the bride and Budd (Bill’s brother). The first problem is the sound of the dog barking. A dog which is not being seen and a sound which is not clear what had caused it and what stops it from continuation. Seems like it is only an excuse to draw Budd behind the window so that him being siting behind door with a gun would be rationalized. The second problem is the manner of the bride’s entry to the Budd’s trailer. When she runs in with the sword in that manner, does it mean that she doesn’t want to give Budd a chance to retaliate? Or she doesn’t want to give him a chance to run away lest he goes for a weapon other than a sword? If she presumes the possibility of the presence of a gun, why she is not armed herself with one? Using gun is not honorable? Then why she carries a gun as well as a sword in the encounter with Bill? Has she learned a lesson from “the stupidity in the encounter with Budd” and has made a change in her procedure? Then why right before committing this stupidity, when she takes off her mask and reveals her face, the narrator plays that “wicked” music which means “here she is, our hero!”? Is the narrator indeed so eager to show and watch the “invincible bride” ‘s fiasco against Budd, who Bill has no doubt about his death against the bride without his presence, that he gets rid of these moments? It’s not clear but vol.2 of Kill Bill with such tiny and large flaws, lags behind vol.1, but at the same time it has some things that because of them it is still possible to recognize the narrator of vol.1. As an example Budd, the “wrong brother” of Bill, who lives in a trailer and has a negligible job on account of cutting the relationship off with the brother and being mad at him, with a boss who humiliates him; but listens to Johnny Cash who sings “how many times have you heard someone say, if I had his money I could do things my way. But little they know that it’s so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind”. He is refusing of being passive and wants to own the situation he is in. At the same time when he opens the bag full of money in front of himself, in that unreserved way, he laughs merrily. He tells Bill that he has pawned the Hattori Hanzo sword, but later we realize that he has had it in his disposal all along and had not acquiesced in selling it to leave that situation of living. When Bill points out his imminent death against the bride he says “I don’t dodge guilt, and I don’t Jew out of paying my comeuppance […] that woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die”. He has a stimulus for glory and despite the situation he is in, he is not willing to give up on it. The matter of what is his fate going to be in the world of Kill Bill at the end and what factor is this fate due to is another discussion, but with such character qualities, he stands beside the bride and Hanzo.
At the end, the narrator is not determined in relation to glory. He leaves the bride in a situation similar to the initial situation: a mother, with her child alongside, who has given up the glory of the past. It’s not clear how is her stimulus for glory going to be satisfied. The stimulus that has been the subject of the narrator’s representation throughout the film. Apparently neither the narrator nor the bride has no answer for this question. She (the bride) is laying down there on the floor of the bathroom, crying and laughing, facing the sky repeating “thank you”, as if she is thanking God for B.B. (her child). Maybe because if she hadn’t been, life would have been even more unfruitful than this.
Magnificence has a concomitance with murder and guilt in the world of Kill Bill; why? Maybe because this magnificence inevitably ends up in humiliating the kind of people which the bride’s friends are, whom the narrator has affection for them. Such magnificence is not true and to tell the truth, the true magnificence is in freedom; freedom from the fragile magnificence of success –including the success of an artist- and freedom from the gifts of having a family; both. And here the freedom doesn’t mean to be deprived but it means not to belong.
And this is the true magnificence; a magnificence which is possible to invite all mankind to and humiliate every single one of them –and on top of them oneself- for being away from it.
