[article] Mindful violence: the visibility of power and inner life in Kill Bill

Here is a very interesting essay (4 pages plus notes) about Kill Bill published in the Jump Cut magazine. Hope it hasn’t been posted before.





Mindful violence: the visibility of power and inner life in Kill Bill by Aaron Anderson



An analysis of screen action and violence in Tarantino’s Kill Bill reveals the integral relation between screen fights, narrative structure, characterization, and moral themes.





" Much has been written about Quentin Tarantino’s familiarity with foreign action films. In fact, Tarantino’s love of low-budget action films and the violent imagery in them has become one of the more significant parts of his public personae as a director. For this reason, almost every review of Tarantino’s latest works, Kill Bill: Volume(s) 1 and 2, notes something about the long list of films from which he borrows, and numerous fan web-sites devote space to sometimes lengthy arguments over his exact inspirations for any given scene. Most of what has been written in this regard suggests that there is something unique—or at least personal—in Tarantino’s allegiance to violent imagery from pop culture. However, I argue that Tarantino’s deliberate use of borrowed imagery from Asian martial arts films is far from unique. And while this may surprise no one, the reason that I propose this might surprise many. I suggest that violent imagery—especially that connected to Asian martial arts—functions as one of the primary cinematic languages for character description and plot progression in modern action films."



Read the rest here :



<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc47.20 … index.html”>"Kill Bill's Mindful Violence" by Aaron Anderson</LINK_TEXT>

thanks a lot. gonna read it one of those days. maybe I’ll also use it for a scientific paper I have to do for university.

I have some other links to other excellent essays about Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs but since this link hasn’t got any comments, I thought nobody cares. I don’t know, I love analysis and essays but I guess don’t like to overanalyse movies… which is weird on a QT forum and the way people focuses on tiny details from his movies…