The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 41 Days to go: 30
Movie #399: Kill Bill, Vol. 1
Consider the roles of women in action films. More often than not, they are the victims, the abducted, the ones needing to be avenged. Or they are on the sidelines, there to humanize the hero or give him a moral center or simply be a token of all he has to live for. Even in films where this is not the overall case, it’s still present. And even with formidable women like Black Widow of The Avengers, her story lines are often lacking in depth or any serious exploration. That is not the case with Kill Bill.
Kill Bill is an extraordinary revenge picture, heavily stylized with flashes of inspiration sowed from various spheres of influence, in which women play huge, complex, fascinating roles. There is the main character of The Bride (Uma Thurman), who is on a deadly quest for vengeance, but there are also the women she is after: O-ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah). And if you count O-ren’s top lieutenants, Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) and Sophie (Julie Dreyfus), almost all the dominant characters are women. The only exceptions are Budd (Michael Madsen), who really doesn’t appear in earnest until Vol. 2, Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), who is a marginalized character at best (we know he has a past with Bill, but we don’t know what it is), and, of course, Bill (David Carradine), whose face is never seen in Vol. 1 and who has no more identity in this film than any other shadowy and mysterious villain. Bill might be the object of The Bride’s quest, but Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is a showcase for all the women around him.
The Bride is a phenomenal character, not only because she’s a deadly force, but because she’s also a mother, and instead of being a woman who is only dangerous because her child was attacked, The Bride was a killer beforehand. By that measure, her character is allowed to be maternal and merciless. When she confronts Vernita — a woman who is similarly lethal outside of her domestic and motherly appearance — The Bride (AKA Black Mamba — her real name won’t be revealed until Vol. 2) makes it clear she has no desire to traumatize Vernita’s daughter, but that doesn’t deter her from her mission. When the little girl does happen to see her mother killed, Black Mamba makes it clear: “You can take my word for it, your mother had it coming.” There’s no mistaking the rules that govern these woman — rules of payback and retribution that are devoid of emotion — and yet the love and care they express for their children is so strong, the juxtaposition of the two makes for more fully realized, rounded characters.
And just as some women are nurturers, others are not. Elle Driver is unfeeling and unsympathetic. She’s an adversary of Black Mamba’s, and not an overly respectful one. She hates Black Mamba, and she’s jealous of the affection Bill has for her. O-ren, too, has little time for mothering, instead choosing her path as a child to avenge her parents’ deaths, to become an assassin, and eventually to run a Japanese crime syndicate filled with assassins. O-ren is a leader and a business person — governed by emotion only when someone brings up her American or Chinese heritage as a negative, at which point she will “collect your fucking head.” But while O-ren is unsympathetic toward Black Mamba, and relishes sending her underlings to “tear the bitch apart,” there’s a definite underlying sense of past friendship between the two women. There’s a smirk shared between them when Black Mamba dispatches the first group only to hear the second wave coming. O-ren asks if Black Mamba really thought it would be that easy, and Black Mamba says she kind of did. And then they share the line, “Silly rabbit. Trix are for kids.” It’s playful, and it’s indicative of there being more than just animosity between them. Not that it changes the task at hand, but it lends greater shades to the characters, to who they were before the massacre. Perhaps that’s why O-ren gets a beautifully rendered Japanese animation origin story, chronicling her tragic past and rise to the top.
The final battle with O-ren (which actually occurs first, as we see when Black Mamba goes to see Vernita, because Tarantino likes nonlinear stories and because the fight against O-ren is more dramatic and impactful, narrative-wise) is also a beautiful scene, stylistically. Music cues go in and out, dropping off completely when the action is slow and contemplative, leaving the only sound a rhythmic thumping of a wooden water feature in the snow-covered garden of their battle. It’s so far removed from the frenetic and sort of artificial look of Vernita’s dollhouse home, or the garish display of Black Mamba’s recently acquired Pussy Wagon sitting out front.
Incidentally, the way she acquires that Pussy Wagon is fantastic, in that immediately after she wakes up from a coma she destroys a couple of rapists without blinking an eye (and also without the use of her legs). But Black Mamba is not invincible. Vernita catches her off-guard with the Kaboom! cereal. O-ren seriously wounds her with her twin katanas before finding out Black Mamba really is sporting a Hattori Hanzo sword. And Gogo very nearly chokes her to death with her mace chain. All of Black Mamba’s battles are devastating and destructive, in point of fact, but they are also incredibly evenly matched. This is not about a super soldier decimating everything in her path, but about a deadly woman going up against other deadly assassins and seeing who emerges victorious. It’s about a woman with nothing left to lose.
Of course, then Bill gut punches us all with his final line. “Is she aware her daughter is still alive?” She’ll find out soon enough, Bill.
Up next: The rest of the Death List Five.
Viable Option 