The Benefits of Piracy: Broadswords and Broads With Swords

      This blog should report that it has finally seen Kill Bill Volume 1 and Pirates of the Caribbean, thanks to someone who seems to enjoy pilfering material from this blog. ;-) Why report? Because when they were released it seemed everyone and their cousin was asking Dr. J his opinions on the films, but since Dr. J never gets to a cinema anymore, he never ends up seeing anything. (Cases in point: the last two films the Doctor saw in the theatres were Gosford Park and The Phantom Menace.) But now I can finally slake those questions.

      Kill Bill is a strange olio of a film. There are flashes of cinematic inspiration and cleverness, but such flashes are strictly visual. The script is extremely disappointing, and the movie's occasional visual cleverness serves to accentuate the script's deficiencies: it's as if Tarantino's appeal to style completely overrode the need to compose good dialogue or to develop interesting characters. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is a cipher, and despite the intensity of her reported suffering (which frankly seems dramatically excessive, as if Tarantino had to top Shakespeare's Lavinia), she's as sympathetic as corkboard. A little (and bizarre) monologue by the Bride to her toes is supposed to act as a kind of 'look how determined she is' speech, but its fundamental absurdity finally becomes tedious, as if the speech itself were just an opportunity for Tarantino to study Thurman's feet with longeur. Then there's the issue of violence. I'm not one of those namby-pamby viewers who is repulsed by the idea of film violence, and I understand perfectly that the violence in the fight scenes is supposed to be visually operatic. No problem. I have no qualms with the massive battle between the Bride and the Crazy 88 fighters, or with the domestic battle between the Bride and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox, whose part in the film is neglible). But the film tipped its hat of egregiousness in its treatment of Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), whose torture by the Bride veers into a kinda of cinematic sadism but is legitimated apparently because she is named Fatale and because she winces her eyes coolly to violence as major-domos are wont to do. Yes, we're supposed to know the The Bride is Death Incarnate, and so on and so forth. She is also, though, supposed to be a nemetic figure, a brutal justicer: but in this regard, The Bride becomes as much a monster of excess as Bill and his cronies, and thus loses (from me, anyway) a crucial dimension of sympathy. Filmically, it results in a tacit advocation of torture and revenge-run-amok. It's also worth positing that were it not for the promise of a second film in which Michael Madsen and David Carradine are eventually gonna get it, this film would seem rather blatantly misogynistic, despite putting a woman as the hero. But the logic here seems to be not to think about what actually happens on-screen: after all, we're supposed to believe a woman can be sitting with a sword next to her on an airplane? we're supposed to believe the 88 fighters don't just swarm her? that none of them have guns? and we're supposed to believe that it's coincidental that the camera focuses more on the female deaths than the anonymous (and less patently gruesome) male deaths? Hmmm....

      Bill at the outset asks The Bride, "Do you think me sadistic?" and one wonders if Bill is speaking for Tarantino, snickering smugly at us behind the camera. Bill delivers the line with a kind of indifferent panache that seems roughly akin to Tarantino's indifferent filmic panache. It's all clever shots, clever angles, clever stagings, and clever physical action: but such cleverness is a beard for the fact that the film is ultimately empty at its core. Watching the film is like listening to an extremely intelligent but self-absorbed undergraduate try to prove himself: I wind up sitting there thinking, well, it's very good that you know all of this stuff, but you're missing the obvious. The obvious here are the basics: a good script, developed characters (not caricatures), and an interesting story. My overall reaction to Kill Bill is one of ambivalence. I'm impressed by bits and pieces, by the visual style, by its encyclopedic sensibilities, by its general audacity. But the film is nothing more than indifferent panache. So maybe my overall ambivalence is just the reaction Kill Bill deserves and perhaps even seeks. Shrug. I admire the genius of the man that made Reservoir Dogs, but I also acknowledge the egomaniacal tendencies that ruptured Pulp Fiction.

      Pirates of the Caribbean was, on the whole, a good romp, but thankfully it doesn't pretend to be much more than that, and it at least has a sporty sense of humour, mostly in the form of Johnny Depp's scene-chewing performance as Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, it goes on too long, and yes it very often asks you to put your brain aside in favour of the blatantly silly, but that's to be expected. As a straight-up adventure story, though, it works, often in spite of itself (e.g., one wonders why Orlando Bloom's character didn't figure out sooner what needed to be done). Geoffrey Rush is a tad tiresome and Bloom is underwhelming, but never mind. It's basically a good, hearty yarn, and we don't have many of those these days that don't harbour cheeky self-pretensions. One unsettling thing: this blog doesn't know how to feel that Keira Knightley is quite hot. The blog is not sure if should deem itself a pervert or not (she's sooo young, too young).

      But there we are. Pirates is the better movie, but its ambitions are also considerably less than those of Kill Bill. Word to Tarantino: watch a few movies with heart: that might help Volume 2, and any of your future movies.

      And now I shut up. For a while, anyway.