MUBI

To me the most striking thing about Quentin Tarantino is his sheer audacity. He is utterly unafraid to make films that reflect his vision and passions. If anyone else likes it, bonus, but Tarantino makes the films he wants to see. Each of his films are complete departures from their predecessors and Kill Bill Vol. 2 is no exception.

The first Kill Bill was a non-stop assault of mayhem and violence, part blaxploitation film and mostly derived Asian kung fu / samurai cinema. The stroke of genius in Volume 2 is that he has completely abandoned the first film’s style and turned the sequel into a spaghetti western. Anyone who has seen Segio Leone classics like The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West knows that spaghetti westerns (called so because they were filmed in Italy) are morally ambiguous, highly stylized, and very deliberately paced.

Quentin does not hide his influences. Whereas Vol. 1 had a crazed mash of musical gems, Vol. 2 is dominated by some lesser known works of Leone’s favorite composer, Ennio Morricone. Time is given for character development, but also to study the contrast between close ups of faces (specifically David Carradine and Michael Madsen) and landscapes, just as Leone did. Tarantino has set a bit of a higher bar because Vol. 1 was superior to its influence, but Vol. 2 cannot hope to be better than the Leone masterpieces. It is, however, worthy of being considered in the same class.

Specifically, Kill Bill Vol. 2 reminds me of Once Upon a Time in the West. Both film attempt to define the role of women in society. In the earlier film, Claudia Cardinal’s Jill McBain breaks out of Leoni’s usual view of passive women to aggressively use her intelligence and sexuality to avenge the murder of her family. That was 1969. In 2004, Uma Thurman’s Bride is a full-fledged warrior who need not hire gunmen to take revenge for her. It’s interesting to note that both films come to the same conclusion – a woman’s highest purpose is to be a mother (of a community or a child.) I also see a bit of Henry Fonda’s cold, but charming malice in David Carradine’s engaging read on Bill. That these similarities are deliberate I believe is proven by an exact camera move replica. As the assassin’s enter the church, the camera cranes up in a way very reminiscent of the Leoni shot of Jill entering the developing town.

There are still touches of the Asian influence left. The training sequence with Gordon Lui as a harsh samurai master struck a cord with me. Shortly after seeing Vol. 1, I decided to check out a Shaw Bros. Kung Fu festival playing at a local art-house. I chose wisely. It was 36th Chamber of Shaolin, an extremely fun film about training to be a samurai master and staring Gordon Liu as the student.