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April 16, 2004

License to Kill Bill

KILL BILL VOL. 2
[nota bene: The following review, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending, don't read on!]

[nota bene: No, really, I mean it: spoilers!]

So now we know why the first part begins with the fight between The Bride and Mrs. Bell.

Not a few reviewers, unbeguiled by Tarantino's penchant for shuffling narrative order, were put off by the scene in which The Bride takes out her old assassination colleague — the former Vernita Green — in front of Mrs. Bell's child (unintentionally).

Now, of course, having seen the conclusion of the KILL BILL saga, we realize that Tarantino chose to begin the film with the Green hit not only to start the film with a fantastic fight scene, but also to set up a thematic bookend to the saga's very last sequence — in which the Bride is reunited with her own child. One reviewer wrote that no filmmaker with a child could have written this scene. But, in fact, this opener (besides setting up a possible sequel sometime in the future) creates interesting tensions and connections — with the Bride's own maternal instincts fully realized in the last sequence.

If KILL BILL VOL. 1 is more of an Asian action film — with its sliding bamboo doors and high-wire swordplay — then VOL. 2, with its desert settings and reliance on Ennio Morricone's music, is more spaghetti Western. Similarly, if VOL. 1 is more PULP FICTION than VOL. 2 is JACKIE BROWN — the more mature, "darker," talky work. We can now see that the long battle in the House of Blue Leaves is the peak of the film's narrative arc. KILL BILL, as a two-film totality, builds to that mammoth sequence and then descends — into regret, sorrow, yearning, and private, grungy settings.

If VOL. 1 had the lively House of Blue Leaves, then VOL. 2 has the titty bar outside Barstow, California, where Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen) plays out his retirement as a bouncer. You almost feel sorry for Budd: The establishment is under-populated, his boss is mean to him, and when he's not bouncing drunks, Budd is unclogging the toilet. How did an international assassin fall so low? What happened to the wealth he must have accumulated as part of Bill's squad? What caused the falling-out between Budd and Bill?

The scene in which Budd's boss confronts him for being late is marvelous — you wonder if it's something that really happened to Tarantino at Video Archives back in the old days. The guy playing Budd's boss is Larry Bishop, by the way, who appeared in WILD IN THE STREET and a few key biker films of the late '60s. He's also the son of Joey Bishop. Blaxploitation character actor Sid Haig also appears in the Barstow titty-bar scene.

In any case, Budd, who's been in an alcoholic spiral for many years (Elle calls him a "bushwhacking scrub alky piece of shit"), seems re-energized by the threat of the Bride. As he gets out of his truck in front of the bar (there's a beautiful Steadicam shot of him from behind as he walks away from his truck) and later stands outside his dilapidated trailer, his senses seem alert, his mind seems to be churning. He likes the game.

"Do you find me sadistic?" That's the first line of VOL. 1 — and KILL BILL VOL. 2 is equally inflected with an S&M spirit. It's a series of power rituals between powerful antagonists. In this sense, the film's also very much in the spirit of cheap exploitation films — which set up antagonisms between good and bad people and invite the audience to indulge its baser instincts for revenge and justice.

In his ornate novel DARCONVILLE'S CAT, Alexander Theroux puts forth the thesis that the foundation of all literature is revenge. That's what links quality lit to pulp fiction, too. We enjoy stories in which wronged people get back at villains. In KILL BILL VOL. 2, we're totally on side of The Bride — yet at the same we feel sorry for Budd, get turned on by Elle Driver, and admire Bill's cool. (The minister in the chapel tries to tell The Bride that Rufus, the pianist in the corner, is "The Man," but, as Bill tells her a few minutes later, he is The Man. It's hard not to agree.)

If you happened to read the original one-film screenplay, there are several significant changes between that script's second half and KILL BILL VOL. 2. Two scenes are gone, and a third has been added — after that, however, the film is remarkably close to the online screenplay. Not making the transition is a sequence, an old Chapter Six titled "But Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?," in which Bill is (finally) introduced to us. In that scene he visits a gambling club run by one L. F. O'Boyle (listed on the IMDB right now as being played by LaTanya Richardson) and assassinates her. Also gone is some kind of fight between Bill and a black samurai — a quick shot of which appears in the early trailers for KILL BILL (back in the old days when they still said that "in 2003, Uma Thurman will KILL BILL").

The new Chapter Six is a retrospective look back at what has become the legendary "Massacre at Two Pines Chapel." The Bride — now calling herself Arlene, and enduring a wedding rehearsal in full regalia — is startled to find Bill sitting out on the front porch of the Chapel. Exiting through a front door reminiscent of the famous one in John Ford's THE SEARCHERS (as well as so many saloon doors in Leone's movies), she finds Bill outside on the porch playing a flute.

"How did you find me?" she asks — a snippet that now also appears at the end of the DVD version of KILL BILL VOL. 1, though which I really don't remember from the theatrical release version. Bill — a father figure of a man who is himself fatherless and always looking for father figures — reassures The Bride that he'll be "sweet" (in John Carradine's marvelously lispy and growly voice). When the Bride's groom, Tommy Oliphant (Chris Nelson, a real-life special-effects guy who resembles Chevy Chase), invites Bill to give away the bride, you get a hint of anticipatory menace from Carradine as he says, "That's asking a lot." (The pure understated force of the way he says it reminds me of Steve Buscemi as Tony Blundetto in THE SOPRANOS telling Tony Soprano in an early episode from this season, "You're crowding me.")

Also different from the script is the ending sequence. It is both compressed and has a new scene added (another star turn for Michael Parks, this time as Bill's Mexican-pimp father figure, Esteban). The climactic swordfight on the beach is now a more quiet confrontation in Bill's digs — scaled down, as I understand it, for budgetary reasons. (For the record, another change is that Elle Driver doesn't officially die; instead, she has her eye plucked out in what I found to be a really brilliant and funny improvement over the screenplay. In the script, Elle died in a misty blood spray borrowed from SANJURO and LADY SNOWBLOOD.)

Here's a short list of some of the other cultural references in KILL BILL VOL. 2:

THE VANISHING; "Final Escape," an episode from the next-to-last season of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, starring Edd Byrnes as a work-farm convict attempting a tricky escape; MR. MAJESTYK (the poster in Budd's trailer, and a movie written by Elmore Leonard, whom Tarantino adores); William Witney's Roy Rogers film THE GOLDEN STALLION; SHOGUN ASSASSIN, the film that mother and daughter watch near the end; THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT; THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE; JACKASS: THE MOVIE; OUT OF THE PAST; FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

The biggest cultural reference in the film is Superman — discussed during a long speech by Bill and not found in the online script. (Is the speech a lengthy reference to the Meg Ryan comedy ADDICTED TO LOVE, which also has a "Superman" speech, that one by Tchéky Karyo?). The essence of Bill's speech is that — unique to Superman — Clark Kent is the alias, unlike, say, Spider-Man, who's really Peter Parker, or Batman, who's really Bruce Wayne. Kent represents Superman's view of human beings, i.e., that we're all "weak, unsure, cowardly." This whole idea comes from the foreward to Jules Feiffer's book THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES. Feiffer writes on pages 18-19:

"The particular brilliance of Superman lay not only in the fact that he was the first of the super-heroes, but in the concept of his alter ego. What made Superman different from the legion of imitators to follow was not that when he took off his clothes he could beat up everybody — they all did that. What made Superman extraordinary was his point of origin. Clark Kent. Remember, Kent was not Superman's true identity as Bruce Wayne was the Batman's or (on radio) Lamont Cranston the Shadow's. Just the opposite. Clark Kent was the fiction … Superman only had to wake up in the morning to be Superman. In his case, Clark Kent was the put-on … Kent existed not for the purposes of the story but for the reader. He is Superman's opinion of the rest of us, a pointed caricature of what we, the non-criminal element, were really like."

Here is a short list of some of the little bits of KILL BILL VOL. 2 that I love, right now, followed by some personal observations and lingering questions:

• The sound effects in the burial sequence, ending with a pickup truck driving away.
  
• The Pai Mei story that Bill tells, which is like the watch story in PULP FICTION.
  
• The fact that "When Will I See You Again?" is Bill's favorite '50s song.
  
• The brilliant mimicry of Shaw Brothers kung-fu films in Robert Richardson's zoom-in on Pei Mai (Richardson also photographed NATURAL BORN KILLERS, with its wonderful rear-projection driving shots).
  
• That almost everything in KILL BILL, from casting to little references, happens twice (follow the trails of the rocks and the mouth wounds, for example).
  
• "Bimbo Bread," the brand name of the loaf that Bill is using to make his daughter a sandwich.
  
• And Caitlin Cates, a stunning woman who plays one of the Bride's new El Paso friends, Janeen in the background of those opening chapel scenes.

KILL BILL VOLS. 1 and 2, Volume 19

• So I never actually received my ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY pass to the special screening of KILL BILL VOL. 2 in my hometown. They must have found out that I'm a movie reviewer and given it to someone else. But, since I am a movie reviewer, I went anyway and got in. There were more film geeks there than I had seen in one place in years; a neutron bomb would have cleaned up the non-reproductive gene pool of Portland, Oregon.

  
  

• Things we know and don't know about KILL BILL VOL. 2: Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad code name is Snake Charmer; what is the book that Esteban is reading? It is by Jasmine Yuen; is there any symbolic importance to the fish symbolism in the film?
  
• I hate seeing celebrities I like or am interested in on TV (and I can barely stand to read interviews with them, unless they have proven themselves to be really, really insightful and intelligent). Knowing better, I still went ahead and watched Tarantino on the Jay Leno. Ugh.
  

• Tarantino appeared much more fascinating and "real" in a great profile of his friendship-obsession with Uma Thurman in the most recent ROLLING STONE (issue No. 947). Author Erik Hedegaard, in one of the best articles on KILL BILL VOL. 2. tracks something sort of new and original about the film — Thurman as muse. It's a key text in BILLiana.
  
• Daryl Hannah, whom I love, makes a few homages to BLADE RUNNER in KILL BILL VOL. 2, among them her flopping around on the floor after the eye-plucking. By trading in Budd's Hattori Hanzo sword, she also becomes a real "blade runner."
  
• This missive arrived in the e-mail in-tray the other day: "I'm the guitarist and co-writer of "The Chase", the 1:03 instrumental used on the KILL BILL VOL. 2 soundtrack. In 1970, keyboardist Alan Reeves, vocalist-bass player Phil Steele (used to be known as "Phil Trainer") and myself were part of an American-British rock band called "Clinic," based in Paris, France. We were fortunate enough to get some tracks in the film and soundtrack for ROAD TO SALINA, an Avco-Embassy film directed by Georges Lautner. It starred Mimsy Farmer, Robert Walker, Jr., and in one of her last film roles, Rita Hayworth. In SALINA "The Chase" was not used in a car chase scene per se — but a car was moving along quickly, kicking up dust. Around this time last year, I was contacted by the music publisher in France (I live in Massachusetts), asking if I'd approve if "The Chase" would be in KILL BILL — like I'm going to say no? When KILL BILL VOL. 1 came out, there was no "Chase" in it, and when I didn't hear anything more about it, I assumed Tarantino had passed on using it. Just recently I learned that it is indeed in the film, and I just bought the soundtrack CD a couple of days ago, and was pleased to see it on there. In the past few years, another band named "Clinic" has come on the scene, and since we didn't trademark the name, and they're better known, I assume that's why the track is credited to the writers names. We are of course thrilled to have a tune in a QT film, even if it's one we wrote a long time ago." My thanks to Mr. Philip J Brigham for providing this key intel on a perplexing mystery regarding KILL BILL VOL. 2. ROAD TO SALINA is something of a cult film. Here is what film director Guy Maddin wrote about it in THE VILLAGE VOICE: "The 96-minute ROAD TO SALINA features a Murderer's Row cast of Robert Walker Jr. (the skittish look-alike ghost of his own father, remembered from STRANGERS ON A TRAIN), Rita Hayworth (a confused ghost of herself wandering around in another woman's body, only the voice consistently recognizable from when she lived in GILDA), and mealy-faced über-Borgnine Ed Begley. Its groovy film vocabulary defining the era, this is a picture Spike Jonze might have studied compulsively. An orgy of zooms!! Brazen dubbing — even the cars seem to rumble out-of-sync in a foreign language!! Hardcore spaghetti-psychedelic score!! Free love, with your sister!! Rita Hayworth smokes a joint and boogaloos with Begley!! (Fred Astaire always said Hayworth was his best partner. Perhaps already suffering undiagnosed from the Alzheimer's that killed her, Hayworth is rumored to have preferred Begley.) A spectacular vintage car wreck of a movie." I can't wait to see it.
  
• The reviews of KILL BILL VOL. 2 are starting to come in. Among the first is David Denby's in THE NEW YORKER. He calls the film a "shapeless mess," and compares it unfavorably to Ang Lee's faux chick-flick CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. Suffice it to say here that he doesn't get the film. He has some insights, and the review is well-written and funny — if it is, in fact, possible to be funny without being humorous. What's disturbing is that Denby is wrong about a few things. He says the fight between The Bride and Elle Driver is hard to follow. It "resembles two flies buzzing around in a bottle. All you see in this boxed-in space is motion, not the acts themselves." This is simply not true, and I saw the film again last night. This fight scene is very clear and easy to follow — more so than 90 percent of the action or fight scenes in today's movies. Denby also objects to the scene between The Bride and Esteban: Tarantino "sets him up as a pimp presiding over a Mexican whorehouse, and the scene, which is unnecessary, goes nowhere; Parks is left stranded." In fact, the opposite is true. The scene offers an effective alternative to Bill's "overreacting" to the Bride's leaving him — a distant reference back to Lee Marvin in THE BIG HEAT. Also, "Buddıs humiliation at the hands of his boss" is "sheer padding," not grasping the sad contrast the scene makes with Budd's unspecified past. The ultimate in humorlessness comes when he chastises Tarantino for having The Bride watch SHOGUN ASSASSIN with her daughter: "a terrific movie, but hardly one for tots." I have a vision of Uma Thurman from PULP FICTION making a little square with her fingers.
  
• I have a thesis about KILL BILL and the TV series ALIAS that I'll explore next week when I review the new Jennifer Garner comedy.
  

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