Where Is Bill

Every one of Quentin’s films can be summed up as a quintessential “Quentin movie,” and Kill Bill is no exception: unrestrained, cathartic violence-as-aesthetics, a nonlinear narrative structure, a wildly freewheeling imagination, and an unending stream of chatter (the last of these is not so evident here—partly because of the subject matter, and partly, perhaps, because the two motor mouths Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are absent). On top of that, the director revels in the use of Eastern elements in this film: martial arts, scenery, even manga-style storytelling. Seamlessly woven into the plot, these elements fuse beauty and brutality into one. Aside from Quentin, it’s hard to imagine anyone else pulling off a film like this.

The most memorable sequence in the film is undoubtedly the extended showdown in which the protagonist takes on the Japanese mob—an action set piece that runs for nearly half the film. Quentin cleverly breaks it into three segments. The first starts with the heroine sneaking in, only to be sensed—but not located—by the sharp-eyed boss lady. At that moment, the heroine suddenly steps out and openly issues her challenge, then single-handedly wipes out all the henchmen around the boss (including a deadly little lolita wielding a meteor hammer, a walking contradiction of a character). Just as it looks like we’re finally approaching the ultimate confrontation, Quentin pulls off a miraculous twist. Lucy Liu’s character asks, “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?” and Uma Thurman’s Bride answers, “You know, for a second there… yeah, I kinda did.” These two lines feel more like Quentin mischievously teasing the audience, and on a first viewing, eight or nine out of ten people likely do think the film is just about to wrap up at this point.

But the real show is only just beginning. Accompanied by the roar of a swarm of motorcycles comes Gordon Liu (though his character wears a mask from start to finish, you don’t need the credits—you can recognize the master just from his eyes and brows), leading an army of henchmen. Like wave after wave crashing in, they push the heroine’s combat prowess to another peak. Quentin then switches the image to black and white to tone down the carnage; it’s a trick he uses time and again, and it never fails him. It does in fact soften the visceral discomfort for the audience: in black and white, the spraying liquid looks no different from water; if it were in color, such a gruesome sight would probably turn many stomachs. Even in this chaotic one-against-a-hundred brawl, Quentin still finds time to slip in a humorous interlude to ease the audience’s tension.

After the Bride charges up to the second floor, the camera moves behind a screen so the fight plays out like a shadow puppet show. She slices through henchmen like they’re watermelons, leaving only one opponent in front of her, a figure holding a long katana. For a moment, you might think we’ve reached the final duel at last.

But then the camera shifts, and we see that the person facing her is actually a terrified little kid too scared to even run properly. With her blade that cuts through iron like mud, she quickly chops the boy’s katana into a few pieces, but faced with his despairing little eyes, she—like the audience—just can’t bring herself to kill him. Half exasperated, half amused, she yanks the kid into her arms and smacks his backside several times with the flat of her sword, then tells him to go home to his mom. Before we even have time to fully laugh at the sight of him stumbling down the stairs, the Bride herself is suddenly kicked flying by Gordon Liu. The film glides seamlessly from a moment of relaxation back into high tension. What follows is another blood-soaked storm until the Bride finally floors everyone in sight and announces that whatever she’s cut off stays, and everyone else can clear out as far as they can. This segment, too, ends in a complete victory for her.

As the action scenes become ever more spectacular, anticipation for the final showdown naturally grows. With only about twenty minutes left in the running time, it’s clearly impossible for this installment to actually get to “killing Bill,” so all our hopes naturally shift to the duel between the two top masters. And unless you see it with your own eyes, it’s hard to imagine how the director will stage this climactic passage.

“The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way.” From wuxia novels to film and television, it’s always been extremely difficult to depict battles between supreme masters. At that level, what matters is not the moves, but the state of mind and the atmosphere. In the works of Jin Yong and Gu Long, the two great wuxia novelists, duels between masters are described in completely different ways. Jin Yong borrows from classical texts like the I Ching, naming elusive, traceless techniques that can be written but not performed. Gu Long, by contrast, has victory and defeat decided in formlessness itself, embodying “no move is the best move.” Whether Quentin truly grasps Eastern culture on a deep level—and whether he can express that through this scene—is enough to make one break out in a nervous sweat.

The audience is not disappointed. After the transition from the second to the third phase of the sequence, the setting suddenly shifts from the bustling hotel to a snow-blanketed outdoor courtyard, and in terms of mood, the scene instantly rises “two or three stories higher.” When the two women face off with their swords drawn, Quentin cleverly uses natural lighting to amplify the contrast in their auras. Behind the Bride is the hotel she has just walked out of, glowing with hot orange-yellow light that harmonizes with her outfit and forms a unified aura. Lucy Liu, in her kimono, stands against a backdrop of cold, dazzling snow. These two utterly different atmospheres become, as in wuxia novels, a kind of backdrop that augments their inner strength. The staging is clean and crisp; it doesn’t show, and cannot show, detailed moves, but instead lets the outcome speak for a process that cannot be described—just like every successful portrayal of a duel between masters.

And yet, the Bride still hasn’t found Bill. Through the fragmented narrative, we can glimpse the tangle of love and professional ties between her and Bill, but to kill Bill, she must first find him. Quentin never intended to tell the whole story in a single film; the success of the first volume makes us all the more eager to follow the Bride further along her road of vengeance. On the surface at least, she’s begun to seize the initiative. Whether she will keep pushing forward along this path of revenge, or lose herself in the jungle of vengeance while searching for Bill, is something we can only wait and see.