Flat and Brainless

Rating: 1/10 (28 July 2012)

As a 13 year old just getting into cinema, this was the best film ever. How could I not be blown away by all the clever dialog, great characters, fantastic storyline, and gripping violence. It was just pure heaven. I saw this movie three times in the course of one year, and I still have such fond memories of watching it. It was around the time I got serious about cinema (about two years later) that I felt I needed to give this another go. I'd discovered the works of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Godard,etc, and felt a connection with film in ways I hadn't before, and I wanted to see if the movies I loved before still held up. I had every intention of loving "Pulp Fiction" just as much as I did back then, but I didn't. There was nothing there, no core. All the things I'd loved about it were gone. That clever dialog? Referential nonsense that gave no insight into who I was watching or attempted to expand the narrative. The great characters? Indistinctive cardboard cutouts that act as mouthpieces for Tarintino. Fantastic storyline? A pseudo throwback to film noir that can't decide whether it wants to take itself seriously or be intentionally stupid for the sake of irony. Gripping violence? It's violence that's harsh enough to put the average viewer in awe, safe enough as to not offend.
It's a dead film with no ideas. A common argument I hear in it's favor is that it's somehow objectively entertaining. Why? Because it has guys with guns and monologues about McDonalds? Sorry, but that's not entertainment in my mind. Entertainment is being engaged, having to think. A film like "Andrei Rublev" is entertaining because, while I watch it, it evokes thought and feeling, it has something I can sink my teeth into. I can still think about it, interpret it in different ways. "Pulp Fiction" is just shutting your brain off for two and half hours while a man with a God complex strokes his ego.
Basically, I can understand to some extent why it is so popular. It's very good at pleasing the masses, something Tarkovsky could never do. It's so perfectly designed to hook the average viewer in. But it's paper thin. This is exactly what I don't want in cinema