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Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino has been called the biggest fanboy of all time. If you are unfamiliar with the term, or if you have never been given a clear definition, a “fanboy” is the kind of person who stands in a movie theater line for seventeen hours in order to see Return of the King, and they come dressed up like a warrior-dwarf. They are not casual fans, but are rather so obsessed with a certain subject matter that they devote their every waking moment to its cause. They can usually be spotted at science fiction/fantasy conventions across the country, and they are generally very interesting people as long as you don’t mind talking about how many balrogs existed in the third age of Middle Earth, or other such utterly crucial information. If you’d like, they can even directly reference the passage from The Simarillion that provides this information and provide its page number. In Tarantino’s case, he is a fanboy of cult-movies. All cult-movies. You know: Gory exploitation films, low-budget (and non-Kurosawa) Samurai westerns, gangster pictures—the kind of movies that you rarely admit to liking when you’re talking about the cinematic craft, even though we all know that we enjoy them. As a writer/director, his films play like they came to the party dressed as Shaft/Zatoichi/spaghetti hybrids. They are quirky, blender-like experiences in which Tarantino tosses in as many ingredients as he can from all of the movies that he loves so much, and he glues them all together with a peculiar aesthetic style that seeps majestically out of every note on the soundtrack and every word spoken out of his actors’ mouths. His pictures play like wet towels being rung out of every drop of liquid, and once dry, they give us a clear picture of Tarantino’s creative, energetic mind. He’s a brilliant copycat, because he copies the elements he admires to stabilize his own, unique vision that pays homage to classic cult-films and allows us to appreciate them as the mythological experiences that they are. Tarantino is also a fan of the way people talk in the movies. He has seen Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Network, and just about every Robert Altman film, and he understands exactly why the dialogues in such films resonate. He explores the mythical qualities of movie conversation by always allowing his characters to engage in wordplay that celebrates the art of one-upping. When you watch a Tarantino film, you know that even when his characters have lost all of their ability to act, they will still talk, and their words will be all the movement required to push the action forward. You can also rest assured that no matter what characters are featured on screen, all unseen characters are still engaging in brilliant, revealing dialogues, and we want to get back to their conversations as soon as we possibly can, so as not to miss anything important. Tarantino is the only filmmaker alive who makes movies in which any given character could out-talk Groucho Marx, and that is intended as a compliment. He absolutely loves, adores, and cherishes the way film characters converse. Tarantino reminds me of another fanboy who made great movies: Sergio Leone. Leone loved American westerns and mob films, and throughout the course of his filmmaking career, he reinterpreted these genres in a way that took the established archetypes and romanticized them into larger-than-life cinematic forces. According to his interpretation, the Western was no longer merely a film genre; rather, it revealed itself as the unique American myth, creating archetypes and personas that played like modern-day fairy tales. Leone’s genius was to fabricate scenarios in ways that celebrated the Western’s purely cinematic traits: The climactic showdowns of the John Ford eras became compositions of close-ups, silent stares, and melodramatic music, and such elaboration revealed the storybook quality to the Western that allowed it to survive as the major American genre for decade after decade. Without Leone’s mythology, it would probably have been unclear why the Western was as enduring as it was; with his exaggerated films, their unique archetypes stood out clearly and warmly embraced us. Tarantino might very well be the American Leone; he is a director of bold gestures who constantly displays a passionate love for the cultures that he commemorates in his films. To date, he has four movies to his directorial credit (I count Kill Bill as one film; he has also written and co-directed a number of other films), and they are all love letters to iconic cult classics. Reservoir Dogs is a celebration of B-movie mob violence. Jackie Brown deals with heists and con-jobs. Kill Bill brilliantly rips off samurai and spaghetti westerns, and it is every bit as joyous and important as the best Leone films—the mythologizing becomes the myth. But Pulp Fiction is Tarantino’s masterpiece—his most pulsing, lively film that straddles the line between art and depravity by continuously pushing the boundaries of both good and bad taste with its constant, ingeniously written display of four-letter words, shootouts, back-stabbings (both literal and metaphorical), and egocentric philosophies. Tarantino brings these depraved elements together with style and dialogue that makes them work beyond the often limited confines of their archetypes. The very backbone of the film found in its explosive, daring conversations that constantly pushes the director’s vision forward. It is a crime film, more or less, that embraces the goriest and most improbable elements of its exploitive, B-grade inspirations, but it is not exploitive itself because it has an energy and self-awareness that transcends its sources. That’s not to say that Tarantino winks at the audience, but he perhaps realizes that the audience for such a send-up is winking at him. An example of such transcendence: The famous post-opening credits sequence, in which two hit men, played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, have a light-hearted conversation about whether or not foot massages are necessarily always erotic. They walk through an apartment building, bickering quietly with light dialogue, and only occasionally do they remind us of the kind of business they are in (“Marsellus threw him through a window for massaging his wife’s feet?”). They find the correct door, stand up straight, and mutter, “Time to get into character.” The scene that follows in the apartment is a terrifying exchange of words in which the two hit men torment some college students before eventually littering their bodies with bullets. The dialogue shifts from small talk to deadly mind-games: Everyone in the room knows why these hit men are present, and it is an unspoken understanding between them that no one in the room but Travolta and Jackson will be walking out alive. But like any good disciplining parent, Jackson explains exactly why he and Travolta are about to do what they eventually do, and the dialogue provides enough opportunity for the college students to consider their mistakes before shuffling off this mortal coil. By the time Jackson quotes thunderously from the book of Ezekiel about the Lord’s violent retribution, we have long left the realm of foot massages. How does this scene transcend its B-grade origins? Through dialogue that leaves signposts revealing Tarantino’s strategy. The crucial line is, “Let’s get into character,” before Travolta and Jackson walk through the door, because getting into character is exactly what the film is doing. What begins as a playful discussion shifts into a deadly mind game, and the dialogue is a clever technique that allows the audience to always stay ahead of the violent images and to get into the heads of Tarantino’s characters. Certainly B-level mob films have had strong characters before who also weave humor into violence (DePalma’s Scarface is essentially a big-budgeted splatter epic, and we always crack a smile when Pacino immortally declares, “Say hello to my little friend!”), but no other film so clearly leaves clever markers that allow us to see how its conventions function. Pulp Fiction continuously peers into the storytelling process with cleverly-written dialogue that reveals its hand but nevertheless pushes us along with growing fascination. Another example: Having established the dangers of acting inappropriately with the crime-boss Marcellus’s wife, Travolta is later horrified to find her passed out and dying from an overdose of drugs that she found in his jacket. Travolta races to his drug-dealer friend’s house, and the two have a rapid screaming match over what to do to save her life. The sequence would make a great little film by itself as the two men bicker over who will stick a syringe in the dying woman’s heart. It would have worked with just as much style and energy in any movie, but again, listen to the way Tarantino uses the dialogue to constantly keep us in suspense, instead of utilizing quick edits or an overblown soundtrack as most filmmakers would. Tarantino accomplishes the scene in only two or three long takes as the characters bounce back and forth, flipping manically through an instructional booklet (“Hold the syringe at an angle!”). Words, not action, drive this sequence, and therein rests the difference between Tarantino and his counterparts. All the action in Pulp Fiction, all of the intensity, is created solely by what the characters say. They are allowed to think, to reason, to make demands; as they do so, they generate more energy than any ten Michael Bay action sequence. Tarantino is confident enough to trust his characters to do all the work and to reveal all their motivations instead of leaving it to any editing techniques to tell us how to feel. Pulp Fiction is a film centered on its dialogue, and Tarantino is so confident in his ability to write great conversation that he allows it to be the force driving the continuity and themes. The film is often noted for its non-linear structure that basically tells four different stories with multiple characters and weaves them all together. Events happen to some characters early on that would make it impossible for them to appear later, but appear they do, and we have to put the pieces together and figure out just how all of this fits chronologically. Yet the film holds this potentially incoherent mix together, and it is the dialogue that works as glue. The sequence of events in the film is secondary to the revelations that the characters have through talking with one another, and it is in these conversations that the film maintains a linear, traditional narrative even as the literal continuity constantly shifts. Tarantino isn’t required to keep the film’s story in order, because the film’s permanence is found in its speech, and the dialogue itself provides the customary rising action, climax, and resolution. I said early on in this article that Tarantino mythologizes cult conventions in his films; all later discussion of Tarantino’s strategy in Pulp Fiction has led us to my inevitable conclusion: Pulp Fiction is a reflection of the power of movie dialogue, and it reveals the almost supernatural power that the best spoken words hold over us. Certainly the film’s speech is romanticized and over-the-top, but that’s Tarantino’s point: No one actually talks in real life like they do in the movies, and that’s one of the reasons why we go to the movies—to suspend our disbelief and accept exaggerated versions of reality. Characters talk and talk in this film, and when they are finished talking, they talk some more. They constantly philosophize, theologize, eroticize, and move us forward with their gritty and poetic ideas that reveal a smooth style that renders them almost omnipotent in the way that they constantly read and analyze one another. The film resonates as a series of discussions that celebrate their own styles. The characters are aware of their articulate authority and are fully prepared to milk that power to cast a spell over us. There are, of course, variations in the dialogue, and they expose the diverse conversations that movie characters exchange to maintain our interest. Some of the discourses (particularly Jackson’s in the early scenes) sound like sparse beat-poetry; others (Jackson in the last scene; also note the fluent threats rendered by Ving Rhames throughout and the frankly grotesque flashback with Christopher Walken) are eloquent soliloquies; still others, like the exchanges between Bruce Willis and his French fiancé (Maria de Medeiros), reveal the utter delight in simple banalities. All of these interactions serve to reveal the mythical quality of cinematic conversation: If Casablanca held us spellbound, Pulp Fiction reveals why such a film, with its beloved and unlikely dialogue, has achieved immortality. It is really quite uncanny the way Pulp Fiction fascinates us with its own self-actualized discourse. The only other piece of literature that I can think to compare it to is Walt Whitman’s masterful book of poetry Leaves of Grass, which famously began with the line, “I celebrate myself,” and then revealed in thousands of lines why such celebration was necessary. Pulp Fiction begins with, “Let’s get into character,” and it proceeds to divulge what that character is and why it is crucial not only to itself, but to understanding the way the best movie dialogue from any great film still works and is still quoted by the movie-going masses decade after decade. It is also possible to compare Pulp Fiction with director Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, which came out a few years later and is certainly another great non-linear film in which the past, the present, and the future constantly interact with one another. Looking at the two films reveals how layered stories can be told outside of conventional devices. Egoyan used mood and eerie images to hold his film together, and Tarantino uses speech. Both are excellent examples of nonlinear films done right, though Egoyan’s unique vision is far more haunting and universal as it deals with human loss and grief. Pulp Fiction, with its over-the-top violence and self-referential indulgences, is not as instantly accessible to the layman. They will know the film is clever, but they might also find it pretentious. And it is pretentious—brilliantly so. It is pretentious the way that all films are pretentious to believe that they can stir us with their style and craftsmanship, only Tarantino glorifies this cockiness instead of cleverly concealing it with humility and humble themes. It’s something only a director painfully aware of the slightest details of his most beloved genres would be confident enough to try. It is the ultimate act of a fanboy. Cast: A Miramax Films release. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Written by Tarantino and Roger Avary. Rated R, for graphic violence, language, prevalent drug use, and sexuality. Running time: 168 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: September 23, 1994. |
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