Reservoir Dogs may have been Quentin Tarantino’s emergence on the world stage, but it wasn’t until his subsequent film, Pulp Fiction, that he was able to take contemporary cinema by storm. Winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, the film went on to become a smash hit. Pulp Fiction has its own cultural legacy, something so few movies in cinema history can stake a claim to. In many ways, it feels like more than just a film.
Thankfully, it is also one of the most accessible modern classics that one can appreciate. Its endlessly tropey storylines are a joy to behold, from their sadistic degrees of violence to the near-constant humour. Much has been (deservedly) made of the film’s non-linear narrative, which snakes in and out of its characters’ lives. This multi-story narrative follows a boxer (Bruce Willis as Butch Coolidge), two hitmen (John Travolta as Vincent Vega and Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield), a crime boss (Ving Rhames as Marcellus Wallace), his beloved wife (Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace) and some of the most sadistic sons of bitches you’ll find in any movie, yet there isn’t a single complicated plot beat.
Of course, there are far more familiar faces and memorable characters present, but it would take an age to name-drop them all. Even bit-part roles and minor characters are memorable, regardless of whether they’re vicious sadists or bullet-fodder-in-the-making. Everybody is expendable and nothing is precious, aside from a love of pulp and genre fiction. Most of the film’s major characters begin as cardboard cut-outs, whether it’s Jules and Vincent’s cool, disaffected conversations, or Marcellus laying out Butch’s immediate future to him in a similarly detached monologue.
From the laid-back music that plays over these scenes to its trademark sense of humour, watching Pulp Fiction is akin to witnessing video game cutscenes come to life, as different characters spawn into this madcap world. That feeling of irreality crosses over to the film’s criminal elements, which are never far from these characters. Law enforcement might as well not exist in this world. Instead, the only form of justice available is due to cosmic, unknowable forces, which shake up these characters’ lives through divine acts of intervention, presumably to redeem their souls. If a character is free, like Marcellus, he will have that stripped from him in the most brutal of ways to underscore the fragility of social standings and life itself.
Butch, who has the least freedom of this ensemble, has his distant past and immediate future dictated to him by other men, but it’s only in seizing his destiny that his story truly begins. That’s why the film instantly cuts from him receiving his ancestors’ watch as a boy to him gearing up for a climactic boxing fight, one he has been told he must lose. Every moment in his life, from learning of his grandfather and father’s war days to his transition to adulthood and career, has led to this fateful moment. It’s rare that a hangout movie is so squarely focused on the theme of redemption. It’s more improbable still that it works, but Pulp Fiction is no ordinary film.
It presents a brutal yet merciful world, where the opportunity for salvation is just as assured as blood-spattered violence. It’s also a movie that likes to play tricks with its chronology, killing off a major character long before showing us their chance at redemption. Gradually, these cardboard cut-outs gain personality, where they’re not just having their future dictated to them or pontificating about worthless (though very amusing) subject matter.
Tarantino’s narrative trickery, particularly with regard to how its slow-paced third act plays out, leaves me left impressed on repeat viewings, but the snappy dialogue and gleeful crassness remain enjoyable. The performances are all stellar, aside from Tarantino’s, though his output is infinitely better here than whatever the hell he was attempting in Django Unchained. For all his vitriol towards Paul Dano, Owen Wilson and Mathew Lillard, Tarantino may very well be the worst actor in the Screen Actors Guild. But he is an excellent curator of acting talent, revitalising Travolta’s career through this film by casting him in an entirely new light.
The American director is also an expert curator of licensed music. Pulp Fiction’s score is just one of many facets of this pop culture classic that shouldn’t work on paper, and yet, from folk to surf rock to R&B, there isn’t a false note in this eclectic blend of genres. The film’s dialogue happily meanders for minutes at a time as its characters ruminate on weightless matters, while the narrative crisscrossing between different timelines and character arcs could have easily fallen flat on its face. Like the many cosmic forces that silently urge these characters to change their ways, something magical occurs, allowing this madcap experience of chilled-back conversations and intense violence to blossom into something so much greater than the sum of its parts.
