20 Years of Quentin Tarantino’s Brilliantly Bloody Kill Bill: Vol 1
Defined by its killer soundtrack, striking visual design and engaging, unforgettable characters, acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s senior feature Kill Bill: Vol 1 made its breathtaking debut on October 10th, 2003 and has culminated in persistent acclaim and adoration since. An American love letter to the classic Japanese martial art and Jidaigeki (period) works, especially Toshiya Futija’s 1937 masterpiece Lady Snowblood, the film features the dazzling casting choice in the amazingly talented Uma Thurman as The Bride. Thurman’s role is a mysterious assassin who seeks revenge on her former group of assassins after they left her and her unborn child for dead during her wedding reception. The first installment in the two-part project, which Tarantino considers one whole film himself, sees The Bride travel to Tokyo to take down the viciously skilful yakuza.
As mentioned, Tarantino’s work took the film industry by storm after its October 2003 release. Thanks to its brilliantly executed plot and action-packed sequences with an overall blend of impassioned drama, it attracted countless critical acclaim and audience praise and grossed over $180 million worldwide having been made from a $30 million budget. This turn out makes it one of the director’s biggest successes and highest-grossing weekends. Furthermore, the first volume of Kill Bill rightfully holds an unmovable status in American film. It exists as a work that defines the Western take on the medium as combining thrills with drama and intense character examinations. Tarantino’s writing never misses, pacing the fight/kill scenes alongside the dialogue-driven ones that display character motivation and progression. It additionally offers witty quips to add a dark comedic tone to overall atmosphere of brutality and violence, showcasing the versatility that has helped cement Kill Bill: Vol 1 in the cinephile psyche.
It’s visual design demonstrates some stark and stylised iconography, from costuming to choreography. First of all, The Bride’s iconic yellow and black tracksuit borrowed artistic influences from Bruce Lee’s attire in the 1972 incomplete film Game of Death, written, directed and produced by the martial arts icon himself. Here, Tarantino pays further tribute to the martial art works that inspired his love for watching and creating cinema in every little detail in his own work that are artistically inspired by the efforts of those who defined the cinematic genre. From visual to audio quality, the infamous sound design of alerting sirens which are embedded into the score every time The Bride faces an opponent have become a pop and film culture phenomenon. This stylistic trademark has been replicated and immediately recognised in subsequent films that go on to pay tribute to the work Tarantino created as an act of appreciation himself.
Furthermore, Kill Bill: Vol 1 is also a bold and ambitious execution of Tarantino’s artistic staple of excessive and graphic violence that strays away from gory shock value seen in most modern horror. The feature makes use of buckets on buckets of blood as limbs are shredded off the body and torsos are slashed open by The Bride’s attentive sword work and passion for revenge. This is most evident in the brilliantly tense and climatic climax which sees The Bride take on the Crazy 88, an elite group of masterfully trained fighters against dreamy blue landscapes that illuminate the characters’ shadows during battle. Once we see the fight in the forefront, we are astounded and sometimes repulsed by how each severment of a limb triggers an ongoing spurt in blood. Each spurt immediately follows the other before in some sort of gruesome rhythm until the redness takes up the screen.
This quest for revenge mirrors a hidden desire audiences suppress and, in the case of Kill Bill’s unforgettable protagonist, a brutal and extreme display of ‘feminine rage’. This cinematic notion is structurally characterised as a strive to be heard and fulfilled on a woman’s part, executed by intense and “unfeminine” outbursts of repressed emotion from screaming to physical conflict. As a brilliant female lead dignified with a profound backstory and layered depiction as conveyed in a terrific performance, The Bride is introduced in the first installment as working under a more serene and controlled demeanour that covers her festering feminine rage. Despite a powerful taste for blood leading her every move, the character remains unflustered throughout the narrative, even when she’s engaging in prolonged violent combats and kills. This accentuates her layered characterisation because it offers a harmony between her rageful quest for vengeance and her collected sense.
The character reads as a thorough and detailed portrayal of how there is no force nastier and more persistent than a scorned woman, with audiences relishing in her journey of executing “an eye for an eye” (a more fitting analogy in the sequel). She lets nothing stand in her way of getting revenge and leaves a bloodbath in her wake with hardly a bat of an eye. Through this graphic rhythm of violence interjected into her emotional backstory, The Bride as a central woman in film challenges conventional tropes of a more “well-behaved” and approachable cinematic leading woman. It’s virtually impossible not to immediately align with Thurman’s character and support her. Audiences recognise, understand and resonate with her backstory, identifying the severe betrayal she was a victim of. The unapologetic aggression The Bride showcases in this film is something many women connect to, with many critics suggesting they come to fantasise about doing the same to those (possibly men) who have wronged and scorned them.
Two decades on, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is appreciated as a masterful visual work that encompasses compelling cinematography to showcase its unique character writing and stark violence. It’s thrilling from opening to conclusion with a perfect structural and tonal disposition between the emotive drama, dark comedy and explicit violence. Tarantino’s directing skills that convey thorough character development, memorable iconography and immersive action allow for both compelling expressiveness and decorative appeal, appeasing audience’s need for stimulation and entertainment. Such artistry and storytelling are cherished by cinema lovers, leading to Kill Bill: Volume 1’s everlasting status in film.