The Movie: Kill Bill, Volume I

Spoiler Level: High

The Setup: The Bride (Uma Thurman) is hell-bent on a mission to kill the five assassins who ruined her life and nearly killed her and after acquiring a samurai sword from the legendary sword maker Hattori Hanso, The Bride sets off to take out perhaps her most powerful enemy, Japanese-Chinese-American gang leader O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). In an astonishingly and perhaps unprecedentedly violent sequence (perhaps the subject of another Great Scenes post one day), we have just watched The Bride hack her way through 88 members of O-Ren’s gang and with the remaining survivors screaming in pain in the background, The Bride makes her way onto O-Ren’s rooftop garden for a final showdown.

Why It’s Great: Like so much of Kill Bill, the showdown with O-Ren is a scene that both works in perfect harmony with the rest of the film and stands alone and apart from everything else that comes before and after it. Tarantino is almost taking us through a door into another movie when The Bride slides back the doorway to reveal the snow-covered gardens on the roof of the House of Blue Leaves (indeed the visual effect very much makes it appear as though she is walking into a movie screen).

At the 1:46 mark, Santa Esmerelda’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” takes over on the soundtrack, a curious musical choice considering that in its entirety, it’s a rather cheesy, Latin-tinted disco-pop hit. Tarantino though is able to see through the context of the song itself and pick out the admittedly dramatic instrumental break in the middle of the song and turn it into the perfect musical accompaniment to his Sergio Leone-esque moment of dramatic tension that serves as the climax of Volume I (and some would say, the climax of the entire two-part story).

The posturing and tension-building continues in almost unbearable fashion and at the 2:56 mark, a quick slash from The Bride hacks off a piece of O-Ren’s sheath and as the horn section fades in on the soundtrack, the look of terror crawls across O-Ren’s face as she realizes for the first time that she may not win this fight. It’s not until almost a minute later that the tension is finally broken and while the rest of the scene is far less about stylized tension and more about resolution and payoff, I believe that solid minute of anticipation is perhaps the high point of Quentin Tarantino’s career as a filmmaker. It’s a representation of everything he’s about as a filmmaker, a post-modern mash-up of genres (kung fu, spaghetti western, exploitation) set to a soundtrack that would be entirely out of place in any of those genres and somehow it not only all works together but it manages to create a sincere, nail-biting moment of emotional tension that rivals even those great showdown scenes that came before it (like the end of “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” discussed earlier here on The Great Scenes).

I’d also be remiss not to mention the performances of Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman, who are both the unquestionable stars of the entire Kill Bill saga (As a villain, David Carradine’s Bill doesn’t hold a candle to O-Ren). They both do a nice bit of acting in this scene that has a lot of emotion going on without a lot of words being spoken to spell it all out for us. These women were both friends and perhaps still feel a little of that friendship towards one another. At the same time, there is no denying the situation they are in. The Bride is there to kill O-Ren or die trying. Despite the fact that she has already dispatched with the first name on her “Death List”, there’s a real sense that in this epic tale of revenge, O-Ren is the first and biggest step on the road to vengeance for The Bride. Unlike the other foes we meet in Volume II, O-Ren is given a rich backstory and is shown as not just a pesky villain to be eliminated but a worthy anti-heroine in her own right. The meeting of these two characters couldn’t be preceded with any more anticipation and although the ending is satisfying, the anticipation is the real star of the show here.

Movie: Pulp Fiction (1994)

Spoiler Level: Low

The Setup: Almost none needed, as this scene is itself a setup for perhaps the most intense chapter of Quentin Tarantino‘s masterpiece, “The Gold Watch”. I only information first-time viewers would have going into this scene is that Butch, played here by child actor Chandler Lindauer, will grow up to be a boxer (Bruce Willis) who we see earlier in the film being told to throw a fight by gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames).

Why It’s Great: As a piece of a labyrinthine, interconnected plot, this scene serves just one function: to convince us that Butch’s gold watch really is important enough for him to risk his life over later in the film. Within the greater context of the movie, the watch is nothing more than a MacGuffin, an arbitrary object used to drive the plot of movie forward. The fact is, Tarantino could leave out this scene and we wouldn’t be confused about anything that’s going on in the entire ensuing chapter. But rather than just tell us that Butch’s gold watch is important to him, important enough for him to risk his life to retrieve it, Tarantino uses one simple, quick monologue to illustrate in graphic detail why Butch does what he does.

But of course, function is only part of the equation here. As with so many moments in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s primary aim here is to just simply write. The Tarantino of 1994 was a home run hitter and this scene, while serving a minor functional purpose, was a lob right over the plate for Tarantino, an opportunity for him to showcase his ability to suck you right into the screen where he can easily manipulate you with surprising twists, gruesome details and story elements that feel both fantastical and strangely realistic all at once.

It’s a scene that was almost certainly written specifically for Christopher Walken to perform, as Walken had at that point already delivered Tarantino’s most praised piece of dialog to date, the infamous “Sicilian scene” from True Romance (possibly the subject of a future Great Scenes post) and he’s the perfect choice to deliver this scene. Walken sets aside the intimidating hardness he had become known for at the time and draws upon his most sympathetic qualities as an actor. He shows a great deal of sensitivity, something we’re not really used to seeing from Walken, and he almost appears to be channeling Jimmy Stewart with his ‘awe shucks’ sincerity.

The dramatic pause at around the 3:16 mark is the moment when Tarantino truly has the audience reeled in. At that point, even the most cynical, objective film snob has suspended their disbelief and is entranced by Walken’s story. You can feel the audience leaning forward in their chairs at that moment waiting to see where Tarantino is taking them. It’s an opportunity that’s difficult to come by for any screenwriter or director and Tarantino certainly doesn’t waste the chance to take the audience somewhere completely unexpected.

I’ve got several ideas for this series in the pipeline, but the recent and tragic news about longtime Quentin Tarantino collaborator Sally Menke spurred me to highlight the brilliant work she did as an elite film editor.

It’s impossible to find one scene that best defines the results of their work relationship. They’ve given us perfection on screen, way more than once. My favorite film of all time is Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, which is its own clinic in effective editing techniques. It’s filled with flawless examples of these great scenes, many of which I’m sure I’ll write about here.

But in honor of Menke, I went with one from her and Tarantino’s most famous and controversial film, Pulp Fiction. I encourage you not to stop here and explore her work beyond this minute and a half of material, even if you’ve already seen most of her filmography. Most of it deserves repeat viewings and then some.

Sally Menke will be missed.

The Movie: Pulp Fiction

Spoiler level: HIGH

The Setup: Well into “The Gold Watch,” we find Butch (Bruce Willis) making a hasty trip back to his L.A. apartment where he make a quick grab for his titular accessory, right next to the kangaroo on the side table, before he and his girlfriend escape the city and Marcellus Wallace, the crime lord who will kill the boxer on sight for failing to throw a fixed boxing match.

When Butch finally makes it home, after a gorgeous steadicam long take getting there, he gets a little hungry and throws some pop tarts into the toaster before he makes his way back to the motel. As he turns on the toaster, he notices something that shouldn’t be there, a silenced machine gun on his kitchen counter. Struggling to put the pieces together, Butch picks up the gun to study it before he hears his toilet flush just a few feet away.

Brilliantly pushing in is Tarantino to a shot of Butch hearing the flush and aiming the gun in the bathroom’s direction, and then…out comes Vincent Vega (John Travolta), the hitman hired by Wallace to eliminate Butch, and the guy with whom Butch previously had a testy encounter at Wallace’s bar. The guys share a stare-down, Butch with the clear advantage, given the loaded oozy and all.

Once the toaster pops, BANG!!!!!!!! Butch’s reflexes give in to the tension, as he lets Vincent have it, sending the hitman back into the bathroom with a spray of bullets.

Why It’s Great: Just because. OK, I’ll elaborate. Nobody’s better at thickening a room with tension than Tarantino, and he can thank the late Sally Menke for it. This is a perfectly edited, crucial sequence in a milestone picture that would define 1990s cinema.

Consider the stakes. How could the possibly get any higher for this character, an antihero we suddenly find ourselves rooting for, given the rest of the field. He’s just as much of a crook as Wallace, Vega or the couple in the diner at the beginning and end of the film. He’s a crooked fighter who bets on his own fixed fight before literally killing his opening in the ring and making off with the loot and betraying his “employer.”

Butch inadvertently saved his own life and further put his enemy into a corner by walking into his apartment at the precise time he should have. A moment earlier or later would have meant his death. By sheer luck, he turns the tables. Butch says to himself after the scene, “They keep underestimating you, Butch,” but this was a result of fate, not control.

Whether or not Butch would have pulled that trigger without the presence of the toaster is as unknown as the contents inside the mysterious briefcase we see throughout the film. Butch and Vincent didn’t like each other, for whatever reason. Either of them just needed one excuse. Vince’s was Marcellus wanted him dead, and Butch’s was self defense. Both men got their wish, but Butch saw it through.

This may not even be the best scene in Pulp Fiction, but see if you don’t struggle to figure out which is. To re-use “milestone,” this scene reflects the innovative style for which this movie is so highly praised. The film’s non-linear storyline gained notoriety early on, and Tarantino and Menke deliver it seamlessly. By the end of the film, when we’ve jumped back in the timeline, we see Vincent alive and well earlier that day or week, and we’re back rooting for him as if he lives through the film. But no.

I’m reminded of Samuel L. Jackson’s quote in Jackie Brown when he says, “That, my friend, is a clear-cut case of him or me. And you best believe, it ain’t gon’ be me.” Butch and Ordell Robie think alike, I reckon.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

While reading through some of the 1983 reviews for Jim McBride’s Breathless, I was reassured to find that most critics at the time were just as baffled by what they saw as I am watching it today in 2010. Just stating the premise of the film is flabbergasting enough: it’s an American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic of the same name (well, technically Godard’s film is called A bout de souffle but it’s well known to American film buffs as Breathless). The classic French film is credited as one of the first pieces of true New Wave cinema and was notable because…well, it wasn’t really about anything.

That’s certainly oversimplifying things but in general, what made Breathless so revolutionary at the time was that unlike the vast majority of Hollywood studio films up to that point, it refused to adhere to typical conventions like using dialog to advance the plot and having clear protagonists and villains. It was also unconventional from a technical standpoint, with virtually no artificial lighting, handheld camerawork and improvised dialog. These were all things that changed the way people thought about film and its affects can be seen even in mainstream Hollywood studio films today.

But that’s the 1960 film. We’re here to talk about the 1983 film. A little research around the old internet will tell you that director Jim McBride considered Godard’s original film to be hugely inspirational to him as a young filmmaker and as a tribute to that classic, McBride wanted to create something that could recapture the experience he had watching the original film.

The inherent problem with trying to recapture the feeling you had when you saw something that reinvented filmmaking is that in order to truly recapture that feeling, you yourself would have to reinvent filmmaking. Half-Hearted Spoiler Alert: this film didn’t do that. Nor was McBride really trying to do that.

What he was really trying to do was to translate the characters and their relationship not only from French to English (and Paris to L.A.) but also from 1960 to 1983. I’d be wrong if I said they didn’t get anything right in this translation but there are a few really notable things that simply got lost in the translation.

In the original film, the male lead Michel is a street tough who models his personality after the coolest guy he can think of, Humphrey Bogart. His American equivalent Jesse (Richard Gere) is also a young ruffian only this time his role model is Jerry Lee Lewis. Here’s the problem with that swap: Jerry Lee Lewis is not a good stand-in for Humphrey Bogart. Anyone looks cool acting like Bogey. Most people look like idiots when they act like Jerry Lee Lewis. Maybe not all people, but Richard Gere sure as heck does.

His bizarre outbursts of dancing and rockabilly wailing are so off-putting, uncool and out of place that it makes it impossible for me as a viewer to root for this guy or even to enjoy watching him do anything. He’s unlikable in a way that makes him hard to watch.

Unfortunately, his female cohort, while easy on the eyes, is not much easier to watch in terms of her performance. French actress Valerie Kaprisky was plucked from obscurity to play Monica, Jesse’s love interest in the film (Michel’s love interest in the original film was an American girl, get it?). While her character is meant to be a brilliant young architect with a bright future ahead of her, Kaprisky looks like a newborn baby deer. Nearly every review at the time points out the constant clueless look on Kaprisky’s face and it’s no less painful 27 years later watching her fumble her way through the melodramatic dialog.

This isn’t a bad movie. There are some moments that really work, particularly the moments more focused on mood than story or dialog. McBride pulls off some masterfully great looking shots and managed to find all the most photogenic spots in Los Angeles and the surrounding hills. While the two main characters are both hard to take in large doses they each have their moments, particularly Gere who plays up Jesse’s immature, jealous rage with great effectiveness.

The New York Times review at the time suggested that it would be easier to view the film in a positive light had it not taken upon itself the comparison to Godard’s revolutionary masterpiece. I’m coming to this movie without any particular affinity for the original film. While I appreciate the influence that the French New Wave movement had on many of the films I love from the ’70s and onward, the original films themselves just don’t do it for me.

That said, I appreciate what Godard was trying to in his version of Breathless and it should be respected. While Godard’s film was effortless and revolutionary, this remake feels forced and unoriginal. It’s quirkiness and penchant for referencing other films may have been partially influential to guys like Quentin Tarantino (who calls it one of his favorite movies) but aside from that there certainly haven’t been many films made like it, and probably for good reason.

Next Up: The first of a trio of  films from 1983 based on the work of Stephen King, The Dead Zone.