Kill Bill, Revisited

The second time I watched Kill Bill, I paid much less attention to who was going to die.

I watched the movie changing its clothes.

Color becomes black and white. Live action becomes animation. A western walks into a martial-arts film. Music arrives from somewhere that ought not to fit and fits anyway. Quentin Tarantino treats cinema history less like a museum than a crowded cupboard whose contents may be combined for the pleasure of seeing what happens.

On first viewing, I followed the list.

On second viewing, I followed the grammar.

That change began because I watched the film with a friend who had studied photography. He kept noticing things I had treated as invisible: the temperature of a light, the shape of a frame, the way yellow carried across a scene. I became irritated with him for talking, then discovered that I was seeing a different film.

Style is often described as decoration, something added after the real content has been decided.

Kill Bill makes that distinction impossible.

A realistic version of the same violence would be difficult to watch. Here violence becomes choreography, color, rhythm and quotation. The filmmaking does not merely present the story; it tells us what category of experience the violence belongs to from moment to moment.

Cinema is always doing this, even when it pretends not to.

Music can make an act triumphant or horrifying. Editing can turn the same gesture into comedy or threat. A close-up can transform an object into destiny. There is no neutral camera patiently delivering content.

The Bride also changed for me on a second viewing. The first time I saw determination. Later I noticed reconstruction.

She wakes into a life other people have decided is finished. Her body has been violated, her future interrupted, her identity reduced to what was done to her. Revenge becomes not only punishment but authorship: she takes control of what happens next.

This does not make every act morally admirable.

It makes the energy understandable.

There is power in a character refusing the ending assigned to her.

I also noticed how often the film is funny, something memory had largely removed because the violence is easier to summarize. Humor creates distance. We are permitted to enjoy spectacle that would become unbearable under realistic rules.

That permission interests me more than the body count.

What are audiences allowed to enjoy, and what formal signals grant the permission?

The second viewing left me remembering transitions, colors and music more than individual deaths. That is probably the strongest defense of the film’s excess.

Its plot can be summarized quickly.

Its experience cannot.

Some films disappear into their stories.

Kill Bill keeps reminding you that somebody is behind the camera, delighted by what a camera can do.