Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

"Ulp!" fiction

Movie opens with Tim Roth sitting in a diner telling Amanda Plummer the story of a man who walked into a bank. Hands a cellphone to a bank teller; voice tells teller man's daughter is held hostage and will die unless teller gives up money. Roth and Plummer then exchange endearments, pull out guns to announce a stickup. Blackout: guitar on soundtrack while titles in bright red and yellow crawl up the screen.

Welcome to the world of Pulp Fiction, one of the more memorable American films of 1994. Five were nominated for Best Picture Oscars last year: Four Weddings and a Funeral (lightweight); The Shawshank Redemption (pretentious); Quiz Show (plodding); Forrest Gump (simpleminded). Of the five Pulp stands out for being Not Nice, an aggressive, in-your-face ride through the fairly tangled mind of one Quentin Tarantino.

Pulp tells three interlinked stories: Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) are sent by their boss Marcellus (Ving Rhames) to retrieve a briefcase; Vincent later has to take Marcellus' wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out on a date while the boss is out of town; finally a boxer (Bruce Willis) is paid by Marcellus to throw a fight but instead wins and flees. 

Tarantino has this way of grabbing you by the collar sitting you on a chair opposite and declaring "it's like this: the second story ends first, the third is really the middle, the first ends the movie. The prologue is the beginning of the first story; after Jules and Vincent get the suitcase you think it's still the first but it's really the third; the second began when Jules and Vincent were outside the apartment door-- you follow?" You have to meet the film halfway, connect the gaps deliberately left in the plot-- it's Tarantino's way of demonstrating Godard's quip "a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, not necessarily in that order" (and in fact the movie's single finest scene is basically a less entrancing restaging of the dance sequence in Bande a part). 

Tarantino does help lubricate the effort with some choice lines: "What do you call a Quarter-pounder With Cheese in France? A Royale With Cheese." "Giving a woman a foot massage doesn't mean anything." "Would you want me to give you one?" "Fuck off." "Y'know my feet hurt, I could use a foot massage." 

Then there's Christopher Walken as a (what else?) Vietnam vet delivering a lengthy monologue about a gold watch stuck up his rectum throughout his years in a concentration camp. "And now," he informs his dead best friend's son looking wide-eyed up at him,  'I give this watch to you.'

Tarantino's real strength is his way with actors. There's Harvey Keitel's ultracool Mr. Wolf, an expert on messes, particularly corpses sitting in the back of your car with their head blown off (likely inspired by a similar character in Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita); there's Rosanna Arquette pierced within an inch of her life, watching eagerly as her boyfriend prepares to stab a woman in the chest with a cardiac needle; and there's the always excellent Peter Greene, reportedly strung out half the time on heroin-- watching him here you can believe the rumors. 

Bruce Willis pushes his John McClane persona into Twilight Zone territory;  Uma Thurman drives Travolta crazy first one way, then another-- perhaps her best moment comes when she tells a joke that's funny because it's lame: suddenly she's no longer a temptress but a girl awake way past her bedtime, and the unexpected vulnerability is so alluring Travolta can't resist blowing her a kiss. Travolta is good as Vincent Vega-- a killer and a not very smart one, but with enough frowzy charm you end up liking him anyway. 

What begins and ends the picture tho is Samuel Jackson. As Jules Winnfield, Jackson is a pleasure to watch as he politely asks to sample a burger ("A Royale With Cheese"); he eventually assumes the stance and cadence of an Old Testament prophet, spouting partly made-up passages from the Book of Ezekiel as he renders judgment on the hapless gang of briefcase thieves. He ultimately ends up where the TV show Kung Fu begins: a wanderer out in the world seeking fulfillment, an allusion to pop culture so ingeniously crafted you scratch your head and wonder if maybe it's more profound than it really is (it isn't, but-- made you scratch!). 

Pulp is a shallow film with brilliant surface and engagingly hip attitude; should it have won Best Picture? Why sure-- the movie needs to be recognized as the new status quo, the Oscars being all about celebrating stati quo as opposed to true innovation and artistry; that it sold tons of tickets for a modest cost ($200 million from an $8 million budget), never hurts. Pulp and the Best Picture Oscar deserve each other, the way a starving man deserves his burger.

First published in The Manila Chronicle 6.12.95