Thursday, November 30, 2006

Kill Bill... an essay that I wrote in 11 mintues!

It is difficult for a person like me to pick and choose one movie over and above all the rest that I have seen in my entire life and say that ‘this was the best’. Perhaps it’s a difficult job for anybody, as it is for me. However, right now when I think of one movie that I really enjoyed watching the only name that I can think of is Quentin Torentino’s ‘Kill Bill’.

The movie is a relic we need to watch it to understand what the limits are that a director can reach up to in cinema. It is the height of creative imagination, something that normal human beings can only dream about. With the entire storyline based on a woman, Torentino definitely goes on to achieve what we would call the threshold of feminism and revolution. Uma Thurman, the protagonist does a near perfect job in bringing to life what the director only visualized and hoped for, be it her killing expressions, body language, or the fight sequences, Thurman masters the art of internalizing the character. The movie begins on a very serious note, but Torentino takes it to the realm of the unimaginable with Thurman like a devil slashing heads off, and blood oozing out like a fountain. All these details might seem gory but when you watch them, they are nothing but spectacular. The scenes are beautifully shot, and the technology used only ads to its perfection. I personally would suggest all movie buffs to watch the movie, if not for anything else but at least to understand what a spoof is all about and how a director can do it with so much style that the audience forgets all about the spoof and thinks about it as a classic piece of cinema.

6 comments:

Abhishek said...

VeryTrue.. All the female characters in Kill Bill are so much stronger than the male ones. Be it The Bride or O Ren Ishi or Elle Driver or even Vernita Green (although she has a very small role)or may be even Go-Go.
But I do not think it is a "spoof" in the true sense of the term, like say a "Scary Movie" or a "Austin Powers". I tend to think of it as "cross-referencing" or "hyper linking".There are so many elements taken from so many different genres, Hong Kong wire-fu, Japanese anime, Bruce Lee, 60's westerns, James Dean, plus the music.
It is more like Tarantino wanted it to refer all the types of cinema he had watched and liked. And most importantly he had the guts to say that he copied or was inspired. [Quite unlike our desi Tarantino, Sanjay Gupta :)]
Cross-referencing in Cinema is not new and though now it has become de-rigeur by some (especially in sequels), some really good examples are Goodfellas (Scorcese) and Ocean's Twelve (Soderberg).

Runa said...

hey abhishek,
fisrt things first thanks for all the input.
I think i should have made it clear that i am only referring to the movie as a spoof in terms of "realism" in cinema which the holywood cinema had taken to heart to epitomize, and how any good cinema was forced to be realistic for the benchmark they had created.
So I see Tarantino's efforts in Kill Bill as breaking the dichotomy of realism in cinema, and going more deeper into what Bresson calls "imaginative cinema" or cinema which breaks all bounds and still speaks for itself.
Hope I am a bit more clear now...
anyways would welcome your take on that.

Anonymous said...

i am glad the first comment,at least, helped u get the name of the director right...quite a, 'torrential', piece.

Runa said...

@timekiller

Did I say KB is his best...no I said this is one movie i can think of while I think about movies to write about.

No need to repeat yourself

Also I read and perceive it as a spoof on realism you might not...

learn to at the least comprehend others perspectives...

Anonymous said...

Hi you Movie critics,

Imaginative or cross referencing, the Movie itself was an absolute short fall of Ideas and collective delivery tactics. Kung Fu or Wire Fu - can be made realistic with appropriate support, Marital artists and a keen Eye for effective angle gearing - when shooting to make it as real as it is, I have been following various lines of the traditional martial arts, Kung Fu & others which are weapons orientated, animal forms with repeated training to induce a perfect balance of ability to push the physical, mental envelope to such degrees that a strong training background makes most of their daily grind seem like impossible stuff. So yes! Old school marital arts in a cross referencing movie can work, specially taking into consideration the leap in technology and graphics in the recent years. A Black & white number called the "Samurai" have seen it on T.V (SBS) Australia under some other name -- has been a cult favourite, because much like Kill Bill it explores the same scenario set in the wild west, while a Samurai rampages through the western towns taking on Cowboys. This movie is probably 50 years old, but SOOOO much better than Kill bill, maybe Tarantino got the Idea from somewhere after all!!!
ON the other hand PULP Fiction is Number 1 (for Many) - sharing the spot with SCAR FACE. In my books Scar Face takes the first spot and pulp ficiton is definately very close to it.

Anonymous said...

Hey ... if you ask me, this movie was a big letdown. and KB 2 was even worse, if thats possible. I mean, if its the blood and gore you crave, why not just watch hostel or cannibal holocaust? A stylised tribute? seems to me like a case of mental masturbation...for lack of a better word. If you take a closer look, most filmmakers go through this phase, their aim being to create that one pathbreaking film which defines them.

This is not a criticism of your taste in cinema, its just that i dont get why people think this particular celluloid experience is so fascinating. Maybe you can shed some light :-)