Ignore the Academy: this is the best picture of 1994

Rating: 10/10 (23 October 2005)

And the Oscar goes to...Forrest Gump? With all due respect, Gump may be a very good film, but both The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction were more deserving of winning Best Picture of 1994 (as well as some other awards). Now, the latter may have been too innovative, weird or extreme back then, but the French knew what they were doing when Pulp received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, beginning its route to being recognized as one of the most influential pictures of the '90s (alongside Fight Club, it's also my all-time favorite movie).
Whereas Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino's debut film, told one story by jumping back and forth in time (similarly to Stanley Kubrick's The Killing), his second masterpiece gets more ambitious, combining separate episodes in a non-linear way: it starts with two thieves (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) discussing new places to rob; then there are two gangsters, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) who fulfill various assignments for their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) while talking about foot massages and French cheeseburgers (a smart and funny detour from the stereotyped taciturn hit men we are used to); later, Vince has to take Marsellus' wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out for dinner, with shocking and hilarious results; and finally, there is also a boxer (Bruce Willis) who is trying to sever his ties with organized crime. And somehow all these events are connected, in unexpected, genuinely amusing ways.
The chronological structure might irritate some viewers, but fundamentally the plot is merely an instrument to allow the characters to interact. And what interaction: Tarantino's dialogue is sharp and exhilarating, showing that when you hand it to the right people even the most absurd subject is a pleasure to listen to. From Jackson quoting the Bible ("And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger...") to an awesome argument on how to get rid of a corpse (at which point the director himself, playing a minor role, delivers the priceless line: "Did you see a sign outside my house that said "Dead n**gger storage"?"), Pulp Fiction has one of the most quotable scripts of all time.
How ironic then, that the film's most iconic and talked-about scene is completely wordless: Travolta and Thurman dancing to Chuck Berry's You Never Can Tell. It's the one sequence everybody knows, even if they haven't seen the movie, and it is still a great scene, largely thanks to the perfect chemistry between the two stars, and the rest of the cast lives up to the task as well: Jackson in particular is at his raging best, and he's easily matched by Travolta (whose career was dangerously close to a shameful end before he was offered the part of Vince), while the QT veterans (Roth, Harvey Keitel) and newcomers (Willis and, in a surreal monologue, Christopher Walken) slip into their roles as if they were wearing tailored suits. As for Thurman, look no further than the restaurant conversation between Mia and Vince to understand why she was the first and only choice to play the lead in Kill Bill.
Witty, grotesque and brilliant (often at the same time), Pulp Fiction is a seminal '90s flick and without a doubt Tarantino's best work. There have been several rip-offs since then, but those are best ignored: nothing can match the sheer genius of the original, a film to watch, love and watch again.