Thoreau apparently wrote that "a man is rich in terms of the number of things he can afford to leave alone". The author of The Passionate Teacher, my latest foray into reading advice for teachers, uses this quote to argue that "a teacher is wise in terms of that part of the curriculum he or she conscientiously chooses not to cover". I haven’t made any conclusions yet about that theory, but I would like to apply Thoreau’s wisdom to the art of filmmaking in an effort to explain why Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill failed overall to entertain me.
Someone needed to stand up to this bratty director and force him to focus, to sacrifice some of his precious moments to the cutting room floor. It would’ve been no big deal really – his movies are usually constructed in such a way that he easily could have integrated those bits into the next one or the one after that. But he’s bull-headed, as my mother-in-law might say, and the best Miramax could do was to make him split his 4 hour ‘epic’ into two volumes, totally at the expense of the audience! Gee, if only Tarantino could’ve come up with another hour and a half he could’ve had his very own trilogy, like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings – ooooo, I bet he’s more than a little jealous! Maybe I better be careful what I wish for…
Not that there weren’t interesting visuals. I even went along with the name-that-reference game for a while (though admittedly I identified <10% of ‘em, since the whole movie is a string of references – maybe the Special Edition Deluxe DVD box set will feature a pop-up video option!) All this wasn’t enough to keep my mind engaged and I found it wandering behind the curtain to dwell on my aversion to the director’s personality. (Thankfully he didn’t give himself an extended cameo this round.) You know, the whole arms flying, mouth flapping, hyperactive ADD snobby trash elitist nightmare. Now Salon’s reviewer goes one better, claiming it’s actually a well-nurtured persona, and I admit I derive much satisfaction from reading his column – in my mind I can stand safely behind him as he eloquently makes his case and peek over his shoulder occasionally to point and jeer "Yeah, that’s right!" or "HA! that’s what I say!"
Since I mostly agree with Taylor’s assessment, let me add that I didn’t hate this movie (there are much worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon) and direct you to some compliments which begin on page 2 of the review. (For even more generous compliments and comparisons between Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 see Rotten Tomatoes.) But if I had my druthers, I’d pick a Jim Jarmusch genre re-mix (what a genius!) any day over Tarantino’s. Jarmusch wanted to make a b&w western, a samurai film, and a mafia/gangsta hybrid. He had the patience and discipline to work his ideas out in two completely separate and exquisitely beautiful films, Dead Man and Ghost Dog. Tarantino wanted to make a Sergio Leone western, a samurai epic, a martial arts action flick, an anime film, a film noir, maybe even a Jarmusch genre re-mix…but all we got was the messy and self-indulgent Kill Bill.