PULP FICTION B+
USA (154 mi) 1994 ‘Scope d: Quentin Tarantino
PULP FICTION remains Tarantino’s best film, immensely
popular, currently listed #5 on Highest
Rated IMDb viewer rankings and the place to start in evaluating his work,
awarded the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1994, over films like Kiarostami’s final
installment of his Earthquake Trilogy, THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES, Kielsowski’s
THREE COLORS: RED, Atom Egoyan’s EXOTICA, or Zhang Yimou’s TO LIVE, with Clint
Eastwood as the Cannes Jury President, and went on to win the Academy Award for
Best Original Screenplay, losing Best Picture to FORREST GUMP (1994) - - talk
about irony. While not sharing all the platitudes for Tarantino, finding
him something of an adolescent schlockmeister who’s often more interested in
provoking controversy and drawing attention to himself, since he remains
attracted to super heroes thrust into lurid melodramas not far removed from a
fantasy, comic book universe, creating endless dialogue about nothing in
particular that some go gaga about, but really, they seem more like undeveloped
sketches, especially since he tends to interrupt them midstream, jump into
another lengthy dialogue sequence before resuming the story later. That
he occasionally dips into realism is no substitute, however, for the real
thing, as he can’t stop himself from indulging in Hollywood kitsch pieces,
losing himself in his own childlike wonder and expanding his sequences as
violently or as grotesquely as he pleases, though in this film most of the
violence is offscreen. It’s unclear how serious he takes his
responsibilities, as down deep, he’s just a boy that wants to have fun at the
movies, constantly using movie references throughout his works as a way of
communicating with his audience. Seen as a whole, his films are not life
altering, do not make you see the world any differently, and are for the most
part a superficial alteration of reality. Despite supposed subversive
evidence to the contrary, Tarantino is not John Waters and instead adheres to
the Harvey Weinstein method of making Hollywood films.
Especially early in his career when he made relatively low
budget movies, he both revived actors stalled careers and discovered fresh
faces, while also becoming enamored with the idea of putting himself in his own
movies. While he’s hardly a groundbreaker, especially since he relishes a
sense of honoring and reviving the past, he’s developed a near cult following
that would beg to differ, including director Peter Bogdanovich who has called
him “the single most influential director of his generation.” Between his
quirky dialogue and his brilliant use of period music, he has articulated the
art of cool on the set, where his energized and often youth oriented filmmaking
is always distinguished by the creation of uniquely inventive sequences that
many would claim are among the best they’ve seen. Tarantino has also
maintained an avid interest in hard-boiled pulp novels, like Jim Thompson and
W. R. Burnett in particular, but also classic film noir, where it’s impossible
not to see evidence of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me
Deadly (1955) in the contents inside the briefcase Samuel L. Jackson
carries around the whole movie, or traces of 40’s and 50’s hit men, but instead
of faceless creatures hiding in the shadows barely uttering a word, he brings
them front and center as his leading star characters. As the title
suggests, this film is filled with chapter sequences, told out of time, but all
somehow pulled together by the end with the use of recurring characters.
Tarantino pulled John Travolta out of mothballs and teamed
him up with a relatively unknown at the time Samuel L. Jackson as a couple of
low level hit men who are occasionally hired to do some dirty work. Their
appeal lies in their hilarious comic repartee, an explicative-laced, running
dialogue between the two continually engaged in random conversation filled with
pop culture references, blending comedy with violence, where they rarely shut
up and instead talk their way through every situation. Basically, these
are a couple of smart asses with hair-trigger tempers carrying loaded guns and
a penchant for using them. Jackson comes off as the smarter of the two, a
guy who carries around a wallet with “Bad Mother Fucker” inscribed, but the
more reckless Travolta has a special charm about him that is perfectly exposed
in a series of lowbrow questions asked by Uma Thurman, the boss’s wife, who is
sizing him up before they go out on the town together Son
of a Preacher Man from Pulp Fiction YouTube (2:01), as ordered by his drug
dealing gangland boss, Ving Rhames, an enormous guy with a violent reputation
who is challenging Travolta’s loyalty by dangling his attractive wife at
him. Their scenes together may be the most memorable, especially when Uma
urges him to help win a twist dance contest and Travolta happily obliges Twist Contest Dance Scene
(Pulp Fiction) - YouTube (3:19). But Uma Thurman is the film noir,
dark-edged, femme fatale who does not appear out of place anywhere in Tarantino
films, as she perfectly fits his fantasy profile, laying the groundwork for her
tough-as-nails character in the upcoming KILL BILL Pt’s I and II (2003 – 04).
Characters are introduced, disappear, or are killed off and
later return as the film's narrative structure jumps back and forth throughout,
where there’s an extended sequence with Bruce Willis that doesn’t quite work
because he plays the exact same one-note macho character that we see in all his
other Hollywood films, playing a boxer ordered to take a dive by the same
gangland boss, Ving Rhames, but instead skips town after literally killing his
surprised opponent in the ring. Out of sheer bad fortune, he meets his
boss, the one guy he’s running away from, by accident on a city street, and the
scene descends into a completely different moral plane, where after a mano a
mano confrontation we enter a world of utter depravity, where Redneck
underground sadists sodomize and torture their victims before killing
them. This entire torture porn sequence grows endlessly more gruesome and
revoltingly hideous, but suggests there are layers of morality even among
thieves. At least when Travolta and Jackson return again, opening and
closing the film, they retain their unpredictable gift for gab, where their
time onscreen immediately uplifts the material, unexpectedly ending up in the
home of Tarantino himself who uses some questionable “nigger” humor.
Samuel L. Jackson uses the word naturally and effortlessly, but out of
Tarantino’s mouth it sounds repugnantly tasteless, even if he’s the guy writing
all of Jackson’s dialogue.
While he may have intended to extend black culture into a white world or character, Mark Twain already did that in Huckleberry Finn, circa 1884, and more than 100 years later it remains a controversial decision, but artistically it’s considered the accepted language of the historical era. Not so here, where Tarantino is unfortunately suggesting that in the 1990’s in America it’s acceptable for whites to use this word onscreen in a humorous context without offensive racial ramifications. This is an exasperatingly deluded choice, as it is now and will likely generations from now remain offensive, especially in a film layered in pop culture, where others will undoubtedly mimic or copy the same behavior and think it’s acceptable. Spike Lee called him on it, especially with its continued and prolific use in JACKIE BROWN (1997), “I’m not against the word, and some people speak that way, but Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made—an honorary black man? …I want Quentin to know that all African Americans do not think that word is trendy or slick.” So, like all Tarantino films, the writer/director tends to get carried away with his own self-indulgent crudeness, which as an artist he has every right to express, but this diminishes the maturity and overall impact of his work, where something meant to be sarcastically funny and ironic turns implosively on its ear, returning to that snarky, juvenile tone of the author. In PULP FICTION, for the most part, it all sounds so inventively new, where Tarantino brings all these forces together, accentuated by a brilliant soundtrack and cast, where in the eyes of some it is generation defining, where PULP FICTION brings to the culture of the 90’s what Easy Rider (1969) was to the counterculture of the 60’s.
