Analysis: "Kill Bill"

Note: this analysis will NOT be mere speculation on whether or not Kill Bill is actually a movie within the Tarantinoverse, a la From Dusk Till Dawn. You can fry your brain with fridge logic over at TV Tropes, Cracked.com, and r/FanTheories. 

In my analysis of Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, I mentioned how he tends to gravitate towards tales of revenge, and how the type of revenge varies, from film to film. With Kill Bill, the revenge is two-tined, but both are a revenge of love. We'll begin chronologically, unlike Mr. Tarantino would do himself. The first is Bill's revenge on Beatrix herself, the Massacre at Two Pines. The second film reveals that she discovered she was pregnant while on a mission abroad for the DiVAS. She knew that the life of a super-assassin was not befitting of a mother, so she chose to go off-the-grid and start a new life underneath the not-so-subtle pseudonym of "Arlene Machiavelli." She moves to El Paso becomes engaged to a record store owner, Tommy Plympton and begins to work at the store, tricking him into thinking that her baby is, in fact, his, while it is truly Bill's child. As they plan their wedding, she meets Bill outside of the chapel, and he feigns happiness and wishes Beatrix good health in her new life with Tommy. This all conceals an elaborate lie; Bill has recruited the Deadly Vipers to come to EL Paso and kill each person in the chapel. They almost succeed, and Bill executes what is supposed to be Beatrix's death, accompanied by an evil monologue, and shoots her in the head, a move normally avoided by movie villains. In spite of the odds, Beatrix goes into a four-year coma and survives, and from here she goes and attempts to accomplish her eponymous goal. However, Bill's attempt to kill Beatrix is not unfounded. When Budd attempts to bury Beatrix alive, he describes it as revenge (there's that word again) for "breaking his brother's heart." Even when Bill talks to her, he reveals his deep seated frustration over the Bride leaving him. Despite his ties with fellow Deadly Viper Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), he never truly loved her, obviously he would have been more engaged after her disappearance. He loved Beatrix, and he thought that when she didn't return, she had been killed. He searched every corner of the globe for the person he thought killed her, and when he discovered she had been alive and well in El Paso, engaged to some bumpkin record store owner, he was infuriated. He wanted to kill her, and everyone else involved with her. While this is certainly evil, morally wrong, reprehensible, and overreaction at its crux, it's not entirely unsympathetic; if anything, it makes Bill much more interesting as villain. Who wants to see a villain who is nothing but evil? No one! The best villains are sympathetic, flawed, and, above all, human. Bill is like a modern Darth Vader: wronged by the death (or in his case, supposed death) of the woman they loved, so they became heartless men, or in Bill's case, more heartless. Now to the biggest revenge in the entire film: the Bride's quest to cull the DiVAS and put them all six feet in a hole. This is also a revenge of love, but of a different sort: paternal love. The first thing she did when she woke from her coma was feel her stomach for her daughter, and presumes her dead (much like Bill did when Beatrix went missing). She was horrified and cried heavily, stopping only when a truck driver tried to rape her, only for him to become deprived of tongue and life. When she kills him, she waits for the orderly pimp, the chill-inducing Buck, to return. She suspects him of being in cahoots with Bill, and, out of motherly vengeance, slams his head into a steel doorframe multiple times, killing him via hemorrhaging. She's like a fierce Mama Grizzly, as she'll do absolutely anything to avenge the death of her daughter; throughout the film, she scalps a Yakuza overlord, slices through a small army of bodyguards, kills Gogo Yubari by sticking a piece of wood with nails in it into the back of her head; plucks out eyeballs, (accidentally) kills Vernita Green in front of her own daughter (fuel for specualtion of Kill Bill: Volume III), among other techniques to get to Bill and avenge her daughter's death. When she discovers that her daughter is, in fact, alive and well, she is overjoyed, and shows reservations about killing Bill. She eventually does (Surprise!) with a special technique taught to her by the late Kung Fu yogi Pai Mei. In many ways, it's very similar to Bill's: she traveled the globe to find him, discovers he's leading a new life off the grid, and reacts with violence, albeit much calmer than Bill's violence. Don't let me be misunderstood, the two are very similar, both committing violent and deadly acts of revenge to avenge supposed losses, after trotting the globe, and are shocked to see the news lives each other are leading. It is, for lack of a better phrase, yin and yang, fire and ice, sugar and spice, Batman and the Joker. Above all, however, it is the story of people fighting and killing out of love. Really, there is another major revenge subplot: the yarn of O-Ren Ishii. I'm tempted to make that a separate article, as O-Ren is one of the most interesting characters and villains in modern cinema. Like Bill she is sympathetic, cunning, smart, and not afraid to get her hands bloody.

NOTE: Soon, hopefully within the next week, I will have written and finished my analysis of Goodfellas. Just so you remember that I write about non-Tarantino films too.