Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.05.2004, Qupperneq 19

19the reykjavík grapevine
KILL BILL : AN UNINTENDED APPRAISAL
OF THE CLINTON YEARS?
History has passed Quentin Tarantino by. In the 90´s, a decade he helped to define, the prevalent
mood was that all morality was abstract and nothing really mattered much. Both philosophy and art
turned inwards, their energy spent exploring themselves rather than the outside world. In this atmo-
sphere, movie buff Quentin reigned supreme. He patented a style wherein all his characters coolly
discuss pop culture, particularly movies, with a knowing nod to the audience that this
was after all just a film. His gangsters were not metaphors for communists as in the
McCarthy era or corrupt politicians as in the Watergate era; they were movie
gangsters pure and simple.
At the dawn of a new de-
cade and a new century, his-
tory returned with a vengeance.
People are again fighting and dy-
ing for one cause or another, world
leaders routinely use phrases such as
good and evil in their speeches, and
everyone has to make up their mind
which is which. Tarantino - whose
frame of reference seems limited to
the movie theatre, the comics store
and the record store - seems increas-
ingly irrelevant in such a world. He
might be the king of cool, but that
is no longer all that matters. He is,
however, still a master craftsman,
and the Kill Bill films show his sheer
artistry with the camera, dancing
between genres like the virtuouso he
is, master of style if not substance.
Perhaps one of the most impres-
sive things about Kill Bill Vols. 1
and 2 is how different they really
are from each other. Vol. 1 was an
over-the-top splatter fest, a one
woman army slaughtering an endless
succession of weak-willed men and
strong-willed women. It is
perhaps indicative that
Tarantino, child of the
90´s, chooses a feminine
hero, as he came of age
in a decade where men,
not belonging to any minority
with its own cause and culture, found
it increasingly difficult to find an
identity. Now they have again, for
good and for bad, found causes to
fight for. The second film shows us
a different, more vulnerable side to
the heroine. She no longer tackles
whole armies; one adversary at a time
is more than enough. And one has
rarely seen the main character in a
film in such dire straits as when the
bride is buried alive, in one of the
most suspenseful scenes in recent
memory.
The plot is as simple as can be: the
heroine horribly wronged, which
justifies her subsequent killing spree.
Tarantino´s morality is, as always,
vague. He seems to glorify man´s
killer instinct, those who don´t
possess it in suf- ficient
quantities being barely
worth killing. In the
films clumsiest scene,
he equates murderers with
Superman and the rest of us with
Clark Kent, the scenes weakness not
so much lying in it´s message (which
is, of course, kinda cool), but in the
fact that we wouldn´t believe that
particular character would actu-
ally read comic books. This is too
much Tarantino´s own voice we´re
hearing, comic book villains quoting
comic books fail to be believable,
even as comic book villains.
Kill Bill 2 is probably better than its
predecessor, which in turn was better
than Jackie Brown, which brings
us close to Tarantino in top form.
This is great cinema. But perhaps
the “who gives a fuck” stance of his
generation is partly to blame for the
world deteriorating to the state it’s
in today. The generation growing up
under Bush will no longer find the
outside world as easy to ignore.
by Valur Gunnarsson
Hverfisgata 54
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