Pulp Fiction (1994)

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino 
Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer
Rated: R

There are a precious few movies floating out in the great big world of cinema in which an audience member can watch it and see that a shift in the entire medium has occurred. "Citizen Kane" is one of those movies, "A Streetcar Named Desire" is another. I think one can safely say that Quentin Tarantino's genre-defying "Pulp Fiction" can be added to that very short list. Once a humble video store clerk and now a household name, Tarantino defined what it meant to be a film in the 90's and reestablished the promising power of film as a genre with his groundbreaking, episodic crime thriller.

My father knows somebody who knows somebody who knew the now famed writer-director before he became the idol of every early-twenties man who has ever sat around at home in front of his TV with a bong and a pack of microwave burritos. Watching any piece by Tarantino, it is all too obvious that the man had a fondness for movies, but who would ever have thought that the zealous nerd would ever make good on his word of rocketing John Travolta back into stardom? I mean... John Travolta? Really? But hey, a man with a vision is hard to stop.

Intelligently talking about "Pulp Fiction" is probably very similar to what Tarantino felt when writing it. The first truly notably film of its kind, the piece is broken up into four small vignettes, obviously a descendant of Fellini. Unlike the Italian master, however, this film has its stories clearly divided between different characters and loosely tied together by one coherent message. Each of them are perfect in their own right, but viewed as one whole the entire story is a dizzying display of cinematic passion.

So let's begin at the beginning.

Story one: Vincent Vega, a Europhile hitman takes a crime lord's wife, Mia Wallis, on a platonic date to a cheesy, 50's diner. After a terrific evening spent with Buddy Holly, Marilyn Monroe and the rest of the gang, Mia inadvertently overdoses on heroine and Vincent must thrust a shot of adrenaline into her heart.

Story two: An aging boxer who has agreed to throw a match pulls a fast one on the gangsters who fixed the fight, but while attempting to flee Los Angeles he realizes his girlfriend has misplaced his late father's gold watch and must retrieve it. Along the way he finds himself a fly caught in BDSM spider's web.

Story three: Another Vega story, this time with his partner Jules Winnfield, who accidentally blow a man's brains out in the back of their car. In order to avoid the attention of the cops they stop at the house of a "friend" and must acquire the help of the Wolf to solve their predicament.

Story four: Honey Bunny and Pumpkin, a couple of two-bit robbers from who knows where attempt to hold up a restaurant, only to be thwarted by our two hit men. Jules lays down some heavy, Old Testament shit and the villains learn the error of their ways.

The film just defines "cool". Tarantino would earn an Oscar and set the bar impossibly high for himself with his razor-sharp, offbeat ear for dialogue. To this day, nearly twenty years after he penned his magnum opus, I don't believe that there is another person who writes the way that he does as well as he does, though many unfortunate souls have tried and failed. His success, I believe, lies in the way that he defines each character by the way they speak. There is no attempt at realism here, but rather an almost comic book definition of reality...or pulp definition, I suppose. Honey Bunny and Pumpkin have a fast, 1930's slapstick style approach to their speech (I believe Tarantino noted "His Girl Friday" as the inspiration). Vega has the rolling, lethargic witticisms of a stoner philosopher. Jules is Rapture meets hood. And Mia, my favorite, is the crystal clarity of all things you wish you couldn't say, put oh so eloquently. It is Tarantino's complete disregard of the fundamentals of movie-making that makes this so uniquely, supremely successful.

For all of the tenaciousness of the director, with his satisfying blend of camp, blood, twisted humor and reverence to the true greats of the cinema, it was his eye for actors that really makes this film a solid, watchable, re-watchable, re-re-watchable classic. Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and, yes, John Travolta head a fabulous cast of actors playing defined, hilarious, distinctive characters as expertly as one could ever hope. A film like this would have failed immediately and Tarantino would have been erased from our memories where they not truly great performances.

What a job to impart pure vision to a whole host of actors, some of which had never been a film of repute. I praise Tarantino not for his script (though it is disgustingly good) but for his connection to his actors, relaying what it was that he wanted to say, freeing his actors to explore and fight against convention and to simply have fun--speaking great words, but doing so in such a way that it didn't isolate the audience from the film. It is both watchable and very smart.

Watch the other big films of the 90's and early 2000's and I challenge you to defy the statement that "Pulp Fiction" dictated the way that movies would be made for years to come. "Crash", "Magnolia", "Amores Perros"--so many are all defined by the precedent that Tarantino set forth. He has not yet come close to trumping his greatest work, and I doubt he ever will, but that doesn't matter. He might have piqued early, but he has written himself into this blog in the same paragraph as Fellini, and I cringe to think of the director who would scoff at that.

4/4