Violence doesn’t need to be horrifying or disturbing, and at no point was I completely revulsed by the scene in the club. Stylistic the scene may have been, but it was no less violent than any of the other scenes.
The scene where the bride is attacked is just as cartoonish - and worse, because we see so little of it. The scene with the orderly, however, was pretty gruesome and was meant to evoke some kind of evisceral reaction from us. It worked.
So it’s just a matter of differing definitions of the term. To me, it was gory and violent and worked on both fronts.
I saw nuance in her acting that I don’t normally see in her work. This might be because the character was drawn more finely here than in other movies, in which she’s usually a one-dimensional trollop, or because she really is that good and was able to play up to the role rather than down to it, as in her other work.
I have to agree with the others. Speaking as an Evil Dead fan, the blood reached Sam Raimi, Absurd-O-Gore levels. Once it started spurting and everything, it was too over-the-top to get queasy about.
Also, the club scene was an homage (as was most of the movie, really) to the old kung fu movies in which scores of ninjas would attack our hero one at a time. I thought that was kind of nifty.
I agree completely, aasna. I’ve never really taken much notice of her before, but as a straight female, I was absolutely and completely captivated by her in that movie and it remains my strongest impression of the entire movie.
Iwould have found it MUCH more disturbing if it had been live action!
Even given that it was amped up by the surreal nature permitted by the animation. The more -normal- style that would have been achieved by live-action would have probably been awful!
Given the anguish and emotion Oren would have been feeling, we would have experienced a lot of that emotion too! But I’m also of the opinion that we felt the emotion on a different level, possibly a more emotional, but less empathic level, because of that surreal treatment.
As yes, the door smacking Buck’s skull was visceral revenge and was wonderful but possibly the most awful thing I’ve SEEN in a long time! But the violence taken against the Bride at her wedding was the worst off-screen violence I’ve seen since Reservoir Dogs. EEK!’
Yes, but, would that scene have made it to our screens if it was live action? I mean the bit where we find out that the guy who killed Oren’s parents (can’t remember his name right now) was a pedeophile, and the young Oren uses this as her means to revenge surely would not have made it the screen had it been live action.
It might have, Angua, but then the film would have received an NC-17, so they’d either release it unrated or cut the scene entirely, IMO. This was a great way to keep the scene in!
I have a feeling that the paedophilia segment could have looked really rather distastefull done in live action, and that the anime didn’t sanitise it per say, but avoided tricky legal issues.
It’s just that most issues are tempered somewhat when they’re expressed in cartoon form; this is why Wile E. Coyote’s getting hit on the head by an anvil is OK, but a schoolteacher’s getting hit on the head by an anvil might not be. We’re less squeamish when it comes to animation and therefore more tolerant of violence depicted by anime.
(That’s “you” as in "the public as viewed by the MPAA in the U.S.)
Actually, dan, I’m an ass. Just a few posts ago, I argued that cartoonifying the violence made it okay, and now, I managed to do a complete about-turn! You should’ve called me on it.
aasna makes a note to herself: Consistency, you fool!
actually, I think that bit was ‘ok’ simply because the animation distances us from the reality of what is happening (‘ok’ in as much as that sort of thing is part of the storytelling and therefore ‘nescessary’).
That said, the animation doesn’t actually show anything more than:
[spoiler] Oren sitting on the guy’s lap. He’s not naked, he’s wearing a loincloth, she then slices him up. Given that it was part of the story that was awful and horrific, I think it was actually treated with a great deal of sensitivity, it could have been a LOT harsher.
We didn’t see anything of Oren being abused by the Yakuza-boss, just the aftermath and her revenge. I prefer to imagine the course of events involved Oren taking revenge BEFORE being abused, so the scene was more acceptable to me that way. The revenge was for the deaths of her parents, not for the abuse, so it easn’t confused. The Boss’ pedophilia gave her access to him to enact the revenge, but this time she was in control and didn’t allow things to get out of hand as they had when she was the victim and her parents were killed. [/spoiler]
Back to the blood and gore issue: I felt there was a LOT of artistry in the enormous sprays of blood where only a small spot of red splashed onto heroine’s face. This was true during Oren’s revenge and during The Bride’s fight. Despite the fact that the blood should have drenched the heroine, given the force, quantity and direction of it. (does anyone else agree Oren was not so much a villain as a protagonist, and could be seen as a victim/hero within the context of the story? I felt very sorry for her at the end of the day. Vernita Green, however, was villainous).
Anyway, that is what made so much of the violence and gore stylistic rather than realistic. Great splotches of red (not ‘blood’ per se, because as has been pointed out, Tarantino used amazingly conscious hues of red from all over the palette to represent ‘blood’). that fell only where the artist’s brush intended them to fall
I didn’t see O-Ren as a protagonist, but I did see her as a victim. The fact that she’s exacted her revenge and now runs a lucrative crime syndicate more or less takes her out of the ‘victim’ running in my eyes. She strikes me as someone who was wronged most heinously when she had no control; therefore she now has utter control over everything and is never wronged again.
But was Oren a victim when she met the Yakuza boss or did she engineer the events to create that situation? Was she in control of the situation or did the events unravel such that she was able to take that revenge?
She’d just witnessed the brutal murder of her parents! Plus her mom was killed in bed while O-Ren was under it! I kind of think she was victimized there. That, more than anything, is what set her on her path in life. She was not in control then (except when she shot the hit men as they left), and she tried hard to never let control elude her again.
murder of her parents and the revenge she enacted on the yakuza boss?
I don’t deny she was a victim
[spoiler]…when her parents were killed, in fact that’s specifically my point.
DEFINITELY, she was a victim when her parents were killed, it completely traumatised her leaving scars far worse than any physical wound. BUT she pulled her life together instead of falling apart (In the real world many of us would have fallen apart. This being a revenge film, and all that jazz, she naturally has the strength of will to overcome this). When the opportunity presented itself to take the revenge she so richly deserved she was in control of the events that unfolded, despite her tender years. (Supposition).
Actually, I’m suggesting that the muder of her parents was VERY traumatic. Especially given Oren survived by ‘CHANCE’.
The katana that sliced through her dad’s head and then penetrated the matress missing Oren’s head by scant inches. This is a wonderful visual technique oft-used, and in this context it may have left her with a feeling of obligation. Perhaps she felt she survived that event, when chance could have killed her as unwittingly as the hitmen almost did (they didn’t know she was under the bed) She survived so that she could take revenge and then take control of that chaos that killed her parents (see also the actions she took to silence the dissenting underboss, and that her ‘crazy 88 killers’ are unified by her order and control. (?)
My point being that when Oren’s parents were murdered she was a victim, she was a ‘little girl’ (physically and mentally) and powerless to stop the events. Later when she met the yakuza boss again she was ‘all grown up’, mentally (my supposition, again) despite being only a few years older and therefore not physically grown-up. Most importantly she was now in control. She was no longer a victim and never would be again. [/spoiler]
how does that sound? Or am I completely off my rocker?
