Count me in as another shithead defending the movie for its artistic value.
(By the way, this post contains what might be considered spoilers. Skip it if you don’t want anything ruined.)
I liked the movie. As far as Saturday evening action flicks go, it’s hard to top Kill Bill. But would it be considered a piece of art? I say “Yes.”
Maybe it just has to do with the mindset I was in when I saw the movie. I had just gotten out of an art class, and my art instructor was giving a lecture about Aristotle’s Poetics of Tragedy and how it applies to modern art. A big portion of the lecture was about the concept of “Logos” or “internal logic.” The way he put it, it made a lot of sense: There are certain things a director (or any artist) can do to draw the audience into a story, and certain things that make it unbelievable. Bad special effects are a classic example of (for lack of a better term) “bad logos.” By that, I mean anything that makes you aware that you are in the audience watching the movie, and not, in fact, in the action yourself. (My art teacher had a brilliant observation about the topic: “How sad is it that when we watch The Matrix, it’s easier for us to believe that Keanu Reeves can fly than it is for us to believe that that he can talk.”) The term “suspension of disbelief” is often used in this context, where my art instructor called it Logos.
I was keeping this idea of “distancing effects” in mind when I was watching the movie, and Tarantino definitely knows what he’s doing in that department. Think about it…yes, it’s full of senseless killings, and you don’t identify with most of the characters (especially the hordes of people getting killed) but you should ask yourself why…in the first segment of the movie, one person dies. But the way she dies makes you feel very sad, or at least a little uneasy about the way the movie is going. But then at the end of the movie, you’re seeing one person die every 4 seconds. And why don’t you feel the same compassion for all the people who are dying? Because Tarantino purposefully uses distancing effects to remove you from the characters and dehumanize them. Blood gushes from amputated limbs, and the Bride is able to take out 3 people with one stroke of her Samurai sword. There’s one scene in particular in which I was paying special attention to the use of distancing effects: During the “blue room fight” all you see are the silhouettes of the fighters. You don’t feel any compassion for the characters whatsoever. But that’s what Tarantino wants you to feel: They’re distanced from the audience, and they’ve been completely dehumanized and objectified. Then there are a few seconds when a light shines in and the Bride gets a look at the faces of her enemies, and she just stands there for a few seconds, seemingly contemplating what she’s doing and questioning whether or not she should be killing everybody. Then it goes dark again and she keeps fighting.
Okay, maybe I’m reading too much into the movie. Maybe Quentin Tarantino just likes anime and wants to see people get their heads cut off. (By the way, the first decapitation scene is one of the funniest movie moments I’ve seen in a long time.) Either way, you can call me a shithead, because I liked the movie.
Ahem back on topic, though, I think it’s stupid to complain about the content of a movie that’s rated R. Especially the South Park movie…what the hell is going through your head if you see the South Park movie (Clearly titled “Bigger, Longer & Uncut”) and expect it to be anything other than South Park?
