If I don't write this post now, I'm going to forget everything about the movie I saw last Friday.

Kill Bill is an old movie. The first time I heard its name was in iPartment. As a kid I never imagined I'd wait more than ten years and end up seeing it in a theater. All I can say is that a slumping film market has still done right by some movie lovers.

After I saw Witness for the Prosecution in theaters, it suddenly hit me that in the current climate, re-releases of old movies are more worth following than new releases.

Since then I've seen the re-release of La La Land in theaters, and now Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. The Shawshank Redemption is showing right now too, and Avengers: Endgame is coming back at the end of September. (To be clear, I know Witness for the Prosecution and Kill Bill are both getting their first-ever release in mainland China. It's just that for movies you can already stream, I'm used to calling it a "re-release.")

OK, let's talk about Kill Bill. But before I start, I want to recommend that everyone buy movie tickets on Xianyu right now. A Kill Bill ticket costs 50 yuan on Maoyan. I paid only 28 on Xianyu, almost half price, which is great. Spider-Man: Brand New Day was selling for 120, and I got it on Xianyu for just 80.

Music

I've said before that one of the things I care about most when I see a movie in theaters now is the music, because it plays off the theater's equipment.

There's also a whole genre of musicals, like Anne Hathaway's Les Misérables, Hugh Jackman's The Greatest Showman, and La La Land, which I mentioned above. Musicals are naturally the best movies to see in a theater, because they're full of songs. The re-release I'm most looking forward to right now isn't Let the Bullets Fly or Interstellar. It's The Greatest Showman.

But outside of musicals, I'd never seen a movie in theaters that wasn't famous just for its music or just for its story, but was actually great at both.

And then along came Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

Kill Bill has the best soundtrack of any movie I've seen so far. From the opening song to the closing one, there isn't a single bad track and not a single wasted one. Every song fits what's on screen.

The opening song, "Bang Bang," for example, sounds old and dreamlike, with a lingering sorrow you can't quite put into words.

After the opening song ends and the protagonist lays eyes on her enemy, the harsh blare of "Ironside," so unlike the drawn-out song before it, puts you on high alert instantly.

There's also "Twisted Nerve," "Der Einsame Hirte," and the most iconic of all, "Battle Without Honor or Humanity." (Lucy Liu's aura in that scene...)

But if I had to pick a favorite, it's "The Grand Duel (Parte Prima)," which plays when Lucy Liu makes her entrance.

There's plenty more great music in the movie besides. The key thing I want to say is that this isn't a music movie, but when I'm caught up in the story, I can't ignore the music. Especially at the intermission after Part One, I felt so pumped I could have jumped out of my seat.

It was so good!

Every time I have a moment like that in a theater, I think: movies are just incredible.

So if you haven't seen Kill Bill, you can search for the Kill Bill soundtrack on QQ Music. It's an album you can just put on and listen to on any day.

A Drama?

Broadly speaking, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is a drama. The story centers on two main characters: the protagonist, the Bride, and Bill.

The whole story is simple too. The Bride, an assassin, gets pregnant with Bill's child and wants to leave that life behind, so she leaves the assassins' organization. When Bill finds her, he gathers his killers, massacres her wedding, and shoots her.

The story picks up after the Bride survives and starts telling her revenge. The backstory is revealed bit by bit later on. The whole thing is the Bride's revenge story. She tracks down every assassin who was at her wedding, takes revenge on them one by one, and finally on Bill. That's it.

The story is very simple, but the way director Quentin Tarantino tells it is incredibly complex.

First, the action choreographer is the legendary Yuen Woo-ping, and the movie is packed with fight scenes. You could easily call it an action movie.

But set the action label aside, and Kill Bill is the story of a bride taking revenge on her own. That's the theme of the whole movie, and a theme like that naturally gives off a Western vibe.

On top of that, there are tons of close-ups of faces and eyes, and of characters staring each other down. And the settings include a desert and a little wedding chapel, all of them deeply desolate.

So calling Kill Bill a Western doesn't seem wrong either.

But trying to sum up this movie with just three labels, drama, Western, and action, is way too simple. In Kill Bill I saw anime, Chinese martial arts, Japanese swordsmanship, the spirit of bushido, and much more.

What's really worth talking about, though, is Kill Bill's artsy side.

The whole movie is driven by one act of revenge after another, but under the great fights, its artistic streak still shines through. The director keeps using unusual shots or moments to say something.

Take the end of the first half, when the Bride and O-Ren Ishii have their final duel in the snow. Classic Japanese aesthetics hit you in the face, and the duel itself has an ethereal, Zen-like feel.

Then the end of the movie gave me something I half expected, and still loved.

I never thought the Bride would kill Bill the moment she found him. But I didn't expect the director to end the movie with a scene that's almost all talk.

Bill makes a comparison between Superman and Spider-Man. He says Superman wakes up every morning as Superman. He doesn't have to put on a mask and a costume the way Peter Parker does to become Spider-Man.

What does that mean? It reminds me of Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch. The point is that your nature is your destiny. You don't become a different person by changing your clothes.

But afterward, the Bride proves with her own words that she really did it to protect her child.

So if Bill believes being a killer is the Bride's nature, and that getting pregnant won't turn her into a mother, the Bride proves how absurd that theory is through her own actions and her revenge.

The best part is that this question, which runs through the whole movie, is finally settled with an injection of truth serum that makes you tell the truth 100% of the time. That's so dramatic.

There are lots of other philosophical moments in the movie, and I can't unpack them all. I've only seen it once, so all I can share is how it felt in the moment.

The Aesthetics of Violence

I've never seen Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Kill Bill is the first of his movies I've watched.

I'd heard about his "aesthetics of violence" a long time ago. I never knew whether it was a compliment or a criticism, and even after seeing Kill Bill, I still don't think I get what it means.

The movie is pretty violent. Revenge after revenge, hacking after hacking, with tons of spurting blood, beheadings, and severed limbs. But I honestly didn't feel any of that so-called beauty.

Maybe it's because I'm not that interested in those kinds of images or excited to see them. They're just decoration on top of the story. Even if the Bride didn't kill the Crazy 88 or whatever at the House of Blue Leaves, the story would still get to its final showdown. (A bit of an unfair take.)

What I enjoyed most about Kill Bill is still the way it tells its story, and the music.

The second part is about the Bride learning kung fu from Pai Mei.

I think Tarantino is really good at switching between styles. The movie has scenes in lots of different styles: the Bride seeking a sword in Japan, the wedding out West, and later Pai Mei. Along the way it moves through three countries, Japan, Mexico, and China, and there's even a Japanese anime sequence in the middle. Tarantino switches style beautifully for each setting. Japan feels very Japanese, the West feels very Western, and the Pai Mei part has that otherworldly, immortal-sage air while still feeling down to earth.

The Pai Mei section rounds out the Bride's character. In it, I felt that even though she's an assassin, she isn't an evil one. When she follows what her heart wants, she can set her pride aside and commit fully to learning, and she deeply respects what her master teaches her.

So, looking at it the other way, when the Bride finds out she's pregnant, what she truly wants deep down is to protect her child, and she acts on it right away.

If I had to sum her up, the Bride really does "follow your heart." She can let go of her past and follow what she truly wants.

Ugh, I'm tired. I'm burned out. That's it for now.