Kill Bill: Volume 1 It’s a film released more than twenty years ago. It was the 2003 And Quentin Tarantino had already become a champion of contemporary cinema with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. The following year it comes out Kill Bill: Volume 2 And Uma Thurman enters the collective imagination as the headhunter in the yellow suit than in life he has only one goal: to kill Bill. Nothing can stop her, the obstacles are painful but not insurmountable. His greatest fragility — the daughter who was taken away from her — also becomes its deepest strength.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
In his path of revenge, Beatrix Kiddo it progressively reveals itself also to itself: a woman who desires a normal life, but is capable of fighting with the katana forged by Hattori Hanzō. Kill Bill it’s a film that demands time, patience and courage. A unique work of art that unites image, script and music to enter the viewer’s intimacy. A world where violence and brutality coexist with irony and human fragilitythat secret space that exists within each of us.
A film that asks for time and presence
The full version of Kill Bill it almost lasts five hours. A time that today seems almost impossible to grant, as we are accustomed to short content, fragmented series and interrupted viewings. Yet it is precisely this duration that gives meaning to the work. Tarantino builds a ritual: not a film to consume, but an experience to go through. It is therefore not surprising than its full version, recently reported in theatershas registered almost 860 thousand euros in proceeds and about 82 thousand spectators in six days.
The revenge of the female body
At the center of the film is the female body, told not as an object but as a narrative force. The bloodstained Bride played by Uma Thurman undertakes a path of revenge and rebirth. Beatrix Kiddo was Bill’s pupil, lover and companionas well as mother of his daughter. The bond between the two is complex, made up of dependency, power and brokenness. More than attempted murder, what really triggers revenge is betrayal: Bill doesn’t accept its independence, its strength, its ability to escape control. In an open-card challenge, as is shown, he would have lost and therefore cheats on her. This fracture becomes the engine of history. Beatrix “awakens” from a long sleep and regains possession of her identity. Killing Bill becomes an obsession, but also the final test of his freedom. It’s a story of emancipation, power, identity and self-determination.
Uma Thurman (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)
Violence as catharsis
«Violence is part of this world and I am attracted to it». Quentin Tarantino has often been criticized for explicit depiction of violence in his filmsbut reducing it to a superficial celebration of violence would be a beginner’s mistake. Tarantino didn’t invent anything new. Already in the greek tragedy, as theorized by Aristotle, the representation of pain and violence had a precise function: to generate catharsis in the spectatora process of emotional purification through identification with the extreme passions staged.
Looking at the extreme passions of the characters on stage – fear, pain, guilt, revenge – the public does not experience them directly, but “downloads” them in a symbolic formfinding an inner balance. Tarantino found in his cinematic eye the world to trigger this process and reveal the complexity of the human soul. Kill Bill we still like it a lot because it doesn’t stay on the surface. It doesn’t offer us what we want, but what we don’t yet know we want.
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