Kill Bill: Vol 1 Directed by Quentin Tarantino - Essay Example

1. The film that I choose for all my film analyses is Kill Bill: Vol directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine and Lucy Liu. The first scene which I am about to describe is the first five minutes of the film where you can hear “The Bride”, played by Uma Thurman, breathing heavily lying on the floor with a blood-spattered face. The first shot used here is a close-up shot on her face. The left side of her face is enveloped in a dark shadow while the right shows bruises in contrast to the white long veil that she wears on her head. With this close-up shot, the audience could notice that her eyes are looking towards the left or the shadowed side of her face. This reflects the confusion in her mind, the shrouded mystery of why this has happened to her which seems to be more poignant to her than all the physical suffering that she has endured. Also a sense of shame can be interpreted from her gaze to the left as she does not look directly to the audience. Just by the opening close-up shot on the Bride’s face, we can already sense that the whole movie will revolve around her tribulations and suffering, but more importantly, in her uncovering why this has happened to her. The following scene then shows a combination of a close-up shot and a tracking shot of an unknown person’s shoes walking left to right. These combinations of shots give an impending feeling to the audience yet at the same time, a mysterious aura because only the sleek leather shoes of the person is shown in the frame. The next scene goes back to the close-up shot on the Bride’s distorted face and the tip of the shoe seen earlier is now visible on the lower-right portion of the frame meaning this scene is a conjunction of the two previous scenes. At that precise moment, the Bride’s face tilts towards the right a little, exposing her face more than before and her eyes look towards the right as well. Her eyes convey the impression of fear on the person drawing near her. Her eyes also tell implicitly that the person who gave her the bruises and cuts on her face is the person is the person she is looking at right now. With the close-up shot, one could clearly see the trembling of her lips as the person in leather shoes moves in on her. She closes her eyes a little as if not wanting to see the person in front of her. The unknown person reaches out his hand holding a handkerchief to wipe the bleeding of the face of the Bride only for the Bride to look away and reject this person’s show of compassion. Particularly important in this scene is the four-letter word written on the lower part of the hankie held by the man- “Bill” which could not be comprehensible if not for the close-up shot of the director. Since these scenes are in black and white, they represent flashbacks yet at the same time, it is a foreshadowing of all the psychological and brutal events that will take place in film- all just to Kill Bill. 2. After all of the opening credits of Kill Bill, an establishing shot is made of a seemingly normal house with the heading “The city of PASADENA, CALIFORNIA”. The mis-en-scene is composed of a house in the background, the side walk in the midground. Moving slowly from left to right is the hood of a truck until it halts to a full stop with the inside of the whole truck covering the whole frame, and in the middle of course, is the Bride looking swell and intent on doing something. Noticeable is the hood coming from the bottom of the frame until it overlaps with the peaceful house at the background. Suggested in this movement is that there is looming danger and the once peaceful ambiance of the area will be overcome by the menacing actions of the Bride. The color of the dashboard, the seat covers, and the steering wheel of the truck all seem to be a mismatch of the motif of the clean and suburban lifestyle in the city of Pasadena California, showing that the Bride is a stranger to this place. Lastly, the frame that is formed just the behind the Bride by the car window contains the foyer of a house, a door, a few windows and some bushes. This suggests what the Bride’s point of view is at this precise moment. The scene cuts to a bungalow with green walls and a dark grey roof. The nearest object to the audience is the mailbox with a name written in script that’s barely legible. On the background is the house which seems quite symmetrical- two large windows on the left side, a large mantle on the right that is as big as the two windows on the left, and a dainty door in the middle. All of these elements symbolize balance and to some extent peace and tranquility. Important to notice is the midground, an open space lawn which contains a small plastic slide and other playthings scattered around. By deduction, one can conclude that a kid or kids live in the depicted house. The Bride starts walking slowly towards the house from the lower left side faced back, with apprehension and towards the door. The next frame shows a quick extreme close-up of the Bride’s finger pressing the doorbell. This is followed by a frame which contains various toys on the foreground, a pink monster truck, a green plastic shield or cover, a doll and a basket to name a few. On the background is the Bride waiting in front of the door, and looking around to see if someone’s home. She turns around and notices the toys spread out on the lawn. She recognizes that there might be children inside the house. The next scene now focuses on the Bride while the structure of the foyer forms a frame which has the Bride in the middle. The Bride is facing full front to the camera which suggests that the Bride is not ashamed of what she is about to do and that her intentions will be fully disclosed after this scene. Cut scene to the purple door opening, revealing an African American woman with kinky hair and blue sweater who looks startled to find what the Bride at her doorstep. A quick sharp focus and an extreme close-up to the fierce eyes of the Bride followed by a superimposed flash back of the agony she went through because of this woman shot with a high angle and, in a sudden, a cut scene of the Bride punching the woman’s face. At this instant, the peaceful overtones composed by the mis-en-scene abruptly changes into a hostile versus bout between the Bride and this black woman. Everything becomes fast-paced as the black woman is taken aback because of the hit she took. Now the focus of the scenes is the brawl between these two women and cut scenes become faster to exude hype between these two femme fatales. Punch after punch is thrown and at some point, the black woman throws the Bride to the wall with breaking a few framed paintings and a glass table top containing some reading materials. The Bride rolls over as if nothing happened and tries to block the axe kick that threatens to hit her. The focus of these frames convey that although the black woman seems to own the house, she doesn’t care about breaking everything in it as long as she defeats the Bride in this fist-fight. Their feud seems to be deep-seated and in this encounter, both of these women appear to have a great amount of agility, power and determination in beating each other, as well as mastery of martial art techniques for them to fight so well. At this point of the movie, one would know for sure that both of these women are no ordinary people for their skills say otherwise. It would be revealed later on that both of them used to be assassins and so the plot thickens. 3. The movement of a film is not merely based on the movement of the subjects in the frame, but rather a combination of the subject’s movement and the camera movement which represents the audience’s perspective. One could say that the overall movement of the film, Kill Bill, is significantly savage and vicious because of the many fight scenes that is liberally sprinkled all through out the movie, after all its title is Kill Bill. Nevertheless, a cycle of slow and fast movement is much more applicable to this movie especially when keeping in mind its theme of revenge. These cycles are very representative of a smarter kind of revenge where one waits for the right moment before striking with full force. Continuing from where we left of earlier, the rampage ensues between the Bride and still unknown black woman and their fighting goes on for quite some time, using some of the objects such as knives and book racks, found around them as weapons. At some point, a school bus stops in front of the house and in a respite, the black woman looks with a grimacing face, her eyes shivering, as if telling the Bride not to fight in front of her child. The movement of both females quickly slows down while they hide their knives behind their back. After the black woman has a short dialogue with her child along with the Bride, the black woman tells her child to go to her room. Some of the history between these two women is revealed in the subsequent dialogues and casual as it may seem, they go to the kitchen to have some coffee with a long and high shot of the home of the black woman, now known as Jeanie Bill, but then known as Vernita Green. Everything seems so slow again. Their discussion revolves around their intentions as of the moment and they start planning out when, where and how to continue their unfinished skirmish to which they both agree. After a few sarcastic moments of laughter and reminiscing, while fixing her daughter’s cereal, Vernita Green swiftly draws a gun from the cereal box and shoots the Bride in an unnoticed opportunity to kill her. She misses. And without thinking, the Bride drops her coffee mug and kicks it to Vernita to distract her- all shown in slow motion. With a slight of the hand, the Bride grabs a knife from her back and throws it to Vernita, squarely into the middle of her chest- shown in fast motion. It is often these kinds of effect which keeps the story line unpredictable and places the audience right smack at the edge of their seats. Read More