The Definitive 90's Film

Rating: 10/10 (26 November 2005)

Most movies, like most novels and musical compositions, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But a gifted, creative director/writer such as Quentin Tarantino can convolute time and come out with a new kind of animal. And look what James Joyce and the stream of consciousness writers such as William Faulkner did with time in their works. Another great movie "Momentum" did it all backwards, starting at the end and ending at the beginning and it worked like magic. When I first rented "Pulp Fiction" when it was first released on VHS I watched it late at night and fell asleep right after the Jack Rabbit Slim sequence. When I awoke the story was back on the hit scene with Vincent and Jules still talking about quarter pounders and Big Macs. I thought the tape had rewound itself and so turned off the player. I didn't finish the movie until a few months later. Then I realized Tarantino was merely playing with time. In lesser hands "Pulp Fiction" would be too episodic, but Tarantino makes it all work. In the end we have a happy closing knowing that tragedy lies ahead because we have already seen that part in the middle.
Vincent and Jules have to be the most garrulous hit men ever to appear in the cinema. They are debating the difference between oral sex and giving a lady a foot massage on their way to a kill. Jules, the spiritually misguided soul, continues to rattle on until eventually told to shut up when they arrive at the cleaners. With Tarantino at the controls all this seems to fit in when the final play is made. This element could have easily degenerated into prattle.
Although there are many other levels of interpretation, I see this film as mainly a farce filled with dark humor and pathos, not just a farce on gangster movies in general but on our brave new world, centered on urban decay, corruption, exploitation, and perversion, filled with raw sex, drugs, and violence. The relationship between Butch and his woman points to another direction of love, compassion, and fulfillment. Note also that Butch goes back to help the man who was out to kill him because his morals wouldn't let him leave Marsellus to the rapists just as they wouldn't let him throw a fight. The watch is symbolic of eternal values that rise above the glitter and garishness of the ephemeral. Going back for the watch could have cost Butch his life but it and the values it represents were more important to him. In the end these values win out. Even Vincent has moments of compassion and tenderness, especially when with Mia. Jules almost goes full circle, but the viewer is left with a feeling that he is not totally sincere in his awakening following his brief encounter with death. Butch and his woman seem to be the only two who are able to get completely free from sin city.
Each decade has movies that define the era. Think of "Rebel Without A Cause" for the 1950's or "Casablanca" for the 1940's. For me "Pulp Fiction" defines the 90's. All the things that were wrong for America are touched on by Tarantino, yet he provides the means of escape to what America should be. The world of the 90's was almost like a cheap book, or a book of pulp fiction as such a work was called once upon a time, showing the underbelly of urban life but with a way out. There is an exit. Sartre's "No Exit" doesn't work here. Redemption is possible, hopefully a more lasting redemption than the one Jules claims to have discovered. All he really has is a suitcase with contents that glitter when opened. Butch has the watch with eternal values.
Tarantino wisely uses surf music from the 60's to highlight the gritty life of beach bums, now street bums, who think of themselves as warlords and urban supermen...but, hey, it's all pulp fiction in the end.