Obsessions, Assassins, and Unconventional Angels
Fallen Angels (1995), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), and Saltburn (2023) may appear utterly disconnected at first glance, the style and feel of each film differing dramatically as a product of time and place. In spite of this, I invite you to look beyond their differences in the spacetime plane, and watch for the alignment of these films through intertwined motifs and dazzling wardrobes. So here I give you: Obsession, Assassins, and Unconventional Angels.
Fallen Angels (1995):
Filmed as if in a hallucination, Fallen Angels follows several characters, most prominently an assassin, his agent, and a woman with curly blonde hair as their paths tangle through bars, butcher shops, and the color-stricken streets of Hong Kong.
Wong Kar-wai bends light and color to his will to illustrate their search for love and meaning, while describing the great punishment bestowed upon these Earth-bound angels: loneliness.
Our first angel, the assassin, Wong Chi-Ming, is hardly biblical, he kills for a living and is constantly in flux between emptiness and fleeting connection.
His partner, The Agent, is deeply obsessed with him, digging through his trash, deeply violating his personal space, and stalking the spots he frequents. Her obsession is reflected in her glitzy outfits, the amalgamation of textures, patterns, colors, Eastern and Western influence dress her up dizzyingly in attractive ensembles the assassin never sees as they rarely cross paths face to face.
Wong dresses in contrasting simplicity to his infatuated admirer, and we hardly see him outside of his characteristic black and white outfit and pinstripe jacket. While we see her lust, desire, and fixation draped onto her character, the internal emptiness that stems from his immoral career is apparent in his lack of self-expression.
Blondie is another angel worth mentioning, her name known by women throughout Hong Kong for wrecking relationships and ruining weddings. She wears silk traditional wear paired with short skirts but her light hair and name, Blondie, show another stylistic mismatch between the influence of the West and East. She seems to crave love so she chases after the subjects of other people’s devotion, but, in the end Wong brings her to tears, and she’s alone again, mourning a loss that never was never hers to begin with.
Maybe Wong Kar-Wai created such characters to fully confront the human fear of being on your own, of open air, of the call of a still forest, the whisper of the abyss, the harsh laugh of fates and gods, and the worser thoughts that no such gods exist and you’re alone in the world. A raft with a white sail in the dark on a sea that truly never ends. Waving your surrender with no one to listen. Nowhere to go, not knowing where you’re going.
But he also seems to view loneliness as freedom. That connection is not directional, but only found by true wandering, releasing the obsessions that trap you, just as the Agent and Blondie do. When viewed as a reflection of desire, isolation isn’t something you need wings to escape from, it's paradoxical; in Fallen Angels the most connecting factor between people seems to be their loneliness and the magnetism of their subsequent longing.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
It’s indisputably understood that the outfits in Kill Bill: Vol.1 (2003) are fucking cool. I’m not really cultured or pretentious enough to discuss Tarantino in an analytically eloquent manner, but it’s fair to say angels appear in his work far differently than in Wong Kar-wai’s.
Rather than an angel fallen to Earth, The Bride, played by Uma Thurman, embodies a vengeful angel that drags herself up from hell after getting shot in the head by ex-employer/boyfriend Bill. Unlike Wong Kar-wai’s angels, she doesn’t wander the streets in melancholy, she cuts through them, out for blood, specifically the blood of O-ren Ishii, a contributor in her attempted assassination who’s centered in Tokyo.
Flying across the world just to get square with her opps might seem extreme, but The Bride’s obsession with revenge feels justified, the muder attempt costing her four years of her life in a coma and the loss of her unborn child. Obsession in her case doesn’t manifest in the same sense as the other films, thus her angel portrayal and attire isn’t lustful or languid, but loud and rich with color.
Rather than wings, Thurman wears the iconic Bruce Lee inspired yellow and black tracksuit and vengeance and justice overlap as she brandishes her katana upon her enemies. Her iconic yellow Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66 sneakers have recently taken the shoe market by storm, which incites discussion on the cyclical inspirations of style and fashion’s relationship to cinematic relevance.
The striking wardrobe of Kill Bill compliments its punchy action-style, each outfit designed for upgrade with a spray of blood. The bright red features bring dynamic style and opportunity for contrast to each costume. Such potential is demonstrated by the snow white kimono of the final boss of Vol. 1, Oren Ishii (Lucy Liu), which serves as a blank slate for the blood she’s fated to be painted with.
Tarantino’s creative vision and talented wardrobe team are a huge contributing factor to the allure of the movie more than 20 years later. His angels aren’t ethereal in the traditional sense, but possess far more interesting qualities that make them shine with more intensity than a halo could ever produce.
Saltburn (2023)
Saltburn is a very strange movie. While more modern than Kill Bill and Fallen Angels, similar themes emerge in the main character Oliver and his obsession with rich and popular Felix. His obsession turns incredibly sinister, love and admiration warping into manipulation and greed as the film progresses. As Oliver’s plaid button-downs and glasses transition into tuxedos and cuff links, his obsession engulfs him and he becomes intoxicated with love received from Felix’s family. His change in wardrobe reflects the socioeconomic divide between him and his filthy rich classmates, and when surrounded by people who “dress for dinner” at Saltburn his outfits are pushed to become more extravagant and calculated as his ambitions twist freakishly.
Felix is even more interesting to look at through this progression, with gold wings sprouting from his back at a Saltburn party. The signature of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun, Felix’s wings reflect his childishness and naivety, while Oliver’s harsh emotions act as the flame that burns him without Felix fully understanding their danger. Juxtaposing The Bride of Kill Bill who returned to life, in Saltburn we watch the violent demise of an angel, blinded by his own attractiveness and fortune, and resigned to the consequences of falling.
Final Words
The angels portrayed through Fallen Angels, Kill Bill, and Saltburn are lonely and lost, vengeful and angry, dripping trails of melted wax, as they blur between life and death. They aren’t innately kind and they don’t wear wings; they wear more complex garments reminiscent not of their biblical goodness, but of their eviction from the heavens, the subtleties of their personal style magnified on the screen. It’s special to see the continuum of these motifs across decades, cities, and languages, and how clothing assists in sensationalizing the films society can’t help to return to. We can understand so much about each other from what we wear; clothing is more than just price tags and accessorization to maximize “wow factor,” it’s a direct line of communication for our flaws, obsessions, and the punishing human desire to be understood.
