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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wrath of the Swarm" data-source="post: 1491473" data-attributes="member: 16402">He's given us his position already, and he seems to feel that "extreme" violence reduces the quality of a film, or lowers it to a different level altogether compared to films that don't possess it.  More to the point, he's not presenting this position as his own personal standard, but implies instead that this is an "objective" view that will hold across an entire culture.That's merely annoying.  His approval of Passion combined with this attitude is what's offensive.Kill Bill doesn't use violence as a way to compensate for poor plot development or flat characters.  It's an inherent part of the movie's theme.  It is a coherent, consistent story presented as a whole.  Perhaps some people feel the theme itself lacks value, and that's fine, but the quality of the filmmaking has nothing to do with that.  Others will be blinded by the violence and fail to notice the subtle meanings in the movie.  That's fine too, and they can disapprove as they like.  Shakespeare contains plenty of violence and sexual content intended to excite the peanut gallery, and he wasn't even considered a great dramatist until after his death.  Are his works trashy, or great works of genius?  Neither.  They're trashy, great works of genius.I'd bet we could sit down together, analyze Kill Bill, and come up with interesting ideas that were intentionally buried in its events.  We could debate why stylistic choices were made, what messages were being sent, what the director was thinking.  But the movie lacks hidden obsessions and unconscious messages - Tarantino clearly thought about what he was doing and was aware of why he chose as he did.It's common knowledge among sociologists that people's beliefs about their beliefs often bear little resemblance to what they actually believe, and people rarely think enough about the differences between what they claim to think and how they actually act to notice this themselves.  I don't think Kai Lord has thought at all about why he disapproves of the violence in Kill Bill while considering Passion a great movie despite its (IMO unnecessarily extreme) violence.I wouldn't consider Kill Bill a classic in any sense, but it was a cleverly-made piece of cinema, and I don't appreciate people trashing it mindlessly.</blockquote>

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