Credits

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Main casts: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, and David Carradine

Studio: Miramax Films, A Band Apart, Super Cool ManChu

Other casts: Michael Madsen, Julie Dryfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny Chiba, Chia Hui Liu, Michael Parks, Michael Bowen, Jun Kunimura, Kenji Ohba, Yuki Kazamatsuri

Crew and members: Lawrence Bender, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, Koko Maeda, Katsuji Morishita, Dede Nickerson, Kwame Parker, Erica Steinberg, E. Bennett Wwalsh, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Rovert Richardson, Sally Menke, Daniel Bradford, Hidefumi Hanatani, Minoru Nishida

Narrative

Beatrix Kiddo (AKA The Bride) was once a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad lead by her lover ‘Bill’ ran away from the team pregnant with Bill’s child. As a consequence of her action together with rage and anger of Bill, she lost her baby and all she had as family members during her wedding rehearsal. After the wedding chapel massacre, everyone from the squad thought Beatrix has died just like other people they slaughtered during the wedding rehearsal. Miracally, the bride wakes from a coma and carries out a series of utterly brutal and satisfactory revenge for her on the entire squad who had attended the ‘deadly wedding rehearsal’.

Themes

First part of the Kill Bill franchise (Kill Bill I) tells the story of a natural born killer seeking revenge on people she had worked for and with when she was still a part of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Beatrix’s final revenge ‘Bill’ as the storyline connection as well as cliffhanger, which leads audience through every sequence, had always kept anonymous and mysterious. This gradually pulled audience into the story by their curiosity of who Bill is or simply how he looks like and what kind of killer he is that is cold-blooded enough to kill his own lover and child in the beginning of the film. Unconventionally, Quentin Tarantino builds up the character Bill who is full of viciousness and power merely through portraying three main elements: body parts, voice and surrounding objects while not showing Bill’s face at all. (See snapshots below)

1. Body parts:

Beatrix being subordinate while Bill being dominant and showing his last sympathy

Bill’s hand gently touching and comforting Sofie

2. Close-up on objects:

Bill holding a samurai sword demonstrating his physical strength and martial arts ability

3. Quotation:

Bill: May I say one thing? You all beat the hell out of that woman, but you didn’t kill her. And I put a bullet in her head, but her heart just kept on beating. Now, you saw that yourself with your own beautiful blue eye. Did you not? We’ve done a lot of things to this lady. And if she ever wakes up, we’ll do a whole lot more. But one thing we won’t do is sneak into her room in the night like a filthy rat and kill her in her sleep. The reason we don’t do that thing is because that thing would lower us. Don’t you agree Miss Driver?

Quentine Tarantino created an environment with close-ups on details and supporting objects, diegetic sounds and the differences in the dominance of characters. From the snapshots above, we could easily spot iconic and indexical signs such as the samurai sword, which indicates Bill’s strength and martial arts ability together with the use of contrasting colours of black and white as well as cold colours, such a blue that assisted Quentine Tarantino during the encoding of certain personality into the character of Bill. When I was decoding the films, I felt a strong sense of cold-blooded personality and absolute dominance of Bill from the use of colours and framings that suggest tension. Dialogue is another method adopted in the construction of Bill, which directly communicates the motives, logic and characteristics of Bill to the audience. These methods all contribute to the success in portraying Bill as a mysterious, over-powering and hair-raising killer.

Mise-en-scene

Kill Bill I’s setting varies when the main character Beatrix travels around the world, mainly in USA and Japan. The film stretches across a four-year period. The changing emotions of Beatrix are cleverly directed with many flashbacks, sound effects and camera size and angles.

Editing

The editing style in Kill Bill series is in fact extremely fun and upbeat with many straight cuts, title theme, cross-cuts with multiple scenes in one frame and parallel cuts. As well as the editing techniques, the adoption of animation in Kill Bill I have made it a very special and dramatically moving action-packed film.

Diegesis and Sound

While visually adopting Japanese animation in the film, Kill Bill series had also adopted comic and manga like music and sounds throughout the whole film. Just like using the animation in the film, this specific type of diegetic and none-diegetic sound used in the film added more playfulness and dramatic effect to it, which made it a ground-breaking piece.

Genre and Codes

Just like many controversial films ever made, Kill Bill series mixed a wide and wild range of genres such as Kung Fu, action, thriller, crime, western etc. It is because such diversity that makes Kill Bill unexpectedly unorthodox and pioneering. Jumping among these genres give audience a passable viewing experience. The ongoing and surviving franchise of Kill Bill is the best evidence of such a success.