At the beginning, let's take a look at what mainstream review sites in the East and West have to say about Kill Bill i.
The film's freshness on Rotten Tomatoes is as high as 85 percent, why?
In the past we have seen a lot of movies about revenge, such as "Gladiator", "Old Boy", "Confession" and other films, these film reviews are generally around the theme of revenge under the multi-angle thinking of the product, for example, in the movie "Gladiator", the protagonist's revenge is a struggle for freedom and rights, is to represent the will of the majority of the people to take the initiative to fight, and not just for the individual's revenge intention to carry out action.
Many films often focus only on the surface of the theme of revenge, without going into a deeper discussion, so that the film itself is a soulless thing with only a glamorous appearance, lack of deeper thinking and analysis, and will also make the audience feel bored.
Back to the point.
In "Kill Bill i", we can feel a very strong sense of revenge, coupled with Quentin's clever integration of anime and video elements, resulting in a visual impact and the improvement of the multi-line narrative structure.
In the beginning of the subtitle, in fact, also laid the overall tone of this film, cold, violent, and even a little magical.
Subtitle title: Revenge is cold-blooded
It is said that it is about the process of revenge of the heroine, in fact, this is a very tricky and eccentric movie, which is actually about the past, the killers themselves. (The effect of the black-and-white film presented at the beginning actually plays the "cold-blooded" that the opening fragment wants to express, creating a confrontation between light and darkness, white and black through the high contrast between black and white, which is how color films cannot achieve.) ）
Another way of expressing confrontation is a symmetrical composition expressed in the process of revenge by the heroine. The confrontation between the two has formed a relative sense of conflict confrontation, and the daughter of Venita (left), a black killer who returned home on a school bus, is a weight in the short resolution of this conflict. Shaped like a balance, this form of conflict actually intensifies the tension of the film, causing it to begin to develop in the direction of emotion and love in the narrative structure.
The director gives us the right to god's perspective, so that we can have a relative understanding and familiarity with the two people's every move. At the same time, in the plot, the relationship between the two has changed from a confrontation at the beginning to an "invisible duel", which is largely due to the appearance of a black woman's daughter and the change of the entire pattern.
However, the confrontation between the two women has never disappeared, and an explanation must be made at the end.
Listening carefully to the dialogue between the two of them, it can be seen that the confrontation between the two began to change from invisible confrontation to obvious pattern confrontation, the content of the dialogue was cold-blooded, rational, and unquestionable and unquestionable, which aggravated the conflict between the two people to the maximum, only to wait until one of them broke this seemingly quiet environment, thus breaking this balance.
In the end, it was the killer Vinita who upset this apparent balance and then died tragically under the heroine's knife.
This is the first chapter on revenge, and at the same time the first killer that the heroine kills.
From this chapter, we can see a lot of things that Quentin wants to express, the most critical and important point is: cold-blooded, followed by violent aesthetics, chapter structure, multi-line narrative, etc., and if you look closely, you will feel that Quentin wants to express a very strong feeling, this feeling is very similar to fable stories, we can say that the story is about a woman's revenge, at the same time, we have also understood him as a legend - a legend about everyone.
Why do I say that?
In the prelude to the second killer, between chapters two and three, Quentin uses sound to transition the picture, which is what we often call a metaphorical montage.
Borrowing this passage to summarize the first chapter very subjectively, this narration is also the beginning of the second chapter of the story, setting the overall tone of the second story: blood, magic, rationality, cold blood, if more subjective, in fact, there is freedom.
Here we need to explain in detail why freedom is mentioned here: in the film "Born to Kill" (Quentin screenplay), there is a passage: My moment of purity is better than your dirty life.
The background of this sentence is also similar to the bridge between self-repression and self-release expressed in "Killing Bill i", in Quentin's subjective cognition, the pursuit of freedom depends on the process of releasing the original self (the original self, that is, the first thought that exists in the subconscious of the self), and at the same time, Quentin also manages this cognition as an art.
Similarly, when watching Quentin's other films, you can also feel this very strong atmosphere of self-release, the discussion of violence and human nature in the film "Falling Dogs", the emotional rendering of the protagonists who kill people without distinction in "King Kong is not bad", and the reprocessing of the violent elements of the Western in "Eight Wicked Men", all of which combine the exploration of human nature with the release of the original self, not only giving new life in the film genre, but also having a relatively rational control over the overall ideology of the story.
For example, the ring structure and story disruption and reorganization that appear in "Pulp Fiction" are all novel attempts at the film's narrative means, if it is only to elevate the violence in the film to the height of aesthetics, Quentin's work may not be called a god work, but because of the novelty of the structure, the film has a very complete performance in structure, form, ideology, and story integrity, so after watching Quentin's work, you will have deep thinking, and this thinking is long-lasting, not just " Violent fast food".
Back to the point.
The second killer, named Ishii, is the woman on the far right.
Before watching this film, I never knew that the original violent fragments could be expressed in such a way, in the recently released film "The Great Protector", the cruel and fast editing techniques of violence mentioned in "Killing Billi" were applied in it, creating a depressing, eccentric and absurd atmosphere, but on the whole, the discussion of human nature that "The Great Protector" wants to show lack of stamina, although it also explores the repression of human nature, but the discussion of "Kill Billi" is multi-faceted: such as human repression, The release of the original self, the influence of the past on the present (inner conflict), and the growth process of female heroes are explored and expressed from various perspectives.
Especially when expressed through the highly open medium of animation, its ideology becomes very graphic and figurative.
What is even more eye-catching is that it is estimated that this form of expression that integrates multinational cultural elements together, using the form of "fable" to tell a story, so that the story itself has a strong drama, the same kind of film, as well as "The Pianist of the Sea" and "Tin Drum", "The Great Gatsby", etc., through a narration or symbolic image to give the film a strong sense of religious ritual, so that its ideological legend is strong, different styles, But the thematic ideas are all exactly the same – based on the historical context of a major character to create a large scene and the shaping of multiple personalities of the individual.
For example, in the film "Tin Drum" and "The Great Gatsby", although it tells the story of a small person living in the big environment, the lens perspective is limited to the small person, but in fact, the real narrative core is the entire environment, through a single perspective of the lens display, metaphorically the social status quo and human nature irony of the big environment.
The samurai sword shown in the picture also has such a "big environment", which also provides an opportunity for the appearance of the killer Ishii O-lotus later.
In addition, a lot of background music quoted in the movie also has the effect of setting off the atmosphere, I have to say that director Quentin's sense of music is very good, and his music is particularly suitable, if his film is a pot of stir-frying, then his music is a spoon, the dish is noisy or not, or it depends on whether the spoon is used well.
The aesthetics of violence from God's perspective become more beautiful, a picture completely explains the relationship between the opposing parties, and the symmetrical composition plus the center of the characters not only creates a regular beauty, but also attaches a layer of movement to the protagonist in the middle, and this dynamic is the most delicate balance in the whole conflict.
In addition, the three conflicts of black and white, light and shadow, and fame and darkness have laid the ideological foundation for the following three fragments.
At the end of the film, Miyamoto Musashi is quoted as saying that revenge is not a straight road, but a forest, just like in a forest it is easy to get lost, lost, and unable to find where you came from.
The road of revenge is very easy to make people lose themselves, the heroine's road is also so difficult, many times, the road to revenge is not the road you want to take.
He has become a religious ritual in your mind that must be performed until death.
The analysis of this film is here, and then the analysis of "Kill Bill II" will be launched, and at the same time, a summary will be made of two works, and in the subsequent article, I will analyze the works of Quentin's director one by one, unveil the mystery of Quentin's violent aesthetics, let us enter Quentin, and slowly understand our innermost self.