Timeless Style

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2018)

Pulp Fiction's mise en scene weaves uber-classical Big Hollywood set design with lackadaisical realism. Jack Rabbit Slim's, the retro diner with the $5 milkshakes, is an ode to the grandiose production quality of older films that treated the screen as a stage. Tarantino seems to purposefully date his film by basking in the old rules of cinema. Film noir, for example, makes an appearance when Butch is in the backseat of a taxi after unintentionally killing his boxing opponent. Everything from the smoking cigar in his teeth, to his stiffly squinted eyes, to the directionally shaded light, screams of the archetypal crime drama. Yet there are these deeply personal sequences in which the camera takes on an amatuer role. As Butch limps away from Wallace, we follow him through a handheld, shaky frame that seems to trip and fall each time one of them does. It harkens back to Tarantino's early original, My Best Friend's Birthday, in the way it is juvenile yet action-seeking. Nonetheless, it's interesting. And there's something about its craft that manages to drag you into a world that is totally over-the-top.
A large part of what is so captivating about this film is its sense of a closed frame. Tarantino is gratuitous with the facial close-up, drawing out sweat like a stroke of a paintbrush and allowing us intimate views of each character's scars (both literally and symbolically). While Butch converses with Wallace toward the beginning of the movie, we see him trapped in the frame behind the shoulder of a man who has been beat and will always recover, as indicated by the Band-Aid on the back of his head. This film is, after all, a character piece first and an action film second. Every character has to watch their back in some way, like Butch in his claustrophobic hotel room and the poor soul that Samuel L Jackson puts a startling end to.
Tarantino doesn't do anything particularly "new-age" with his directing, instead paying homage to the techniques of classic samurai films and the like. The moment the adrenaline needle plunges into Mia's heart with a pop, the camera jolts to her wide eyes and then cuts back to a neutral shot as she awakens in a frenzy. It's reminiscent of a sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho from 1960, following the simple pattern of an attack, the victim's facial surprise, and then the ensuing reaction. In this sense, Pulp Fiction achieves the perfect balance of extending on, but not copying, the greatest techniques in the history of cinema.
Yet, with the film's style made timeless by all these technical approaches, there are some uses of the medium that transform the viewing experience. As Butch dances stealthily back to his apartment to retrieve his father's precious watch, the camera floats inexplicably behind him, appearing to pass straight through a fence. It's an impossible view that gives us an omniscient perspective of the impending danger. Or consider the extreme low-angles we get from the trunk of Vincent Vega's car or during his cocaine purchase -- the frame is placed in a location that evokes the feeling of watching secretly from a hidden spot. We are seeing something we're not supposed to see. This angle isn't used in the typical context to give an actor ominous power, and this is how the film gets its unique tone from sort of shrugging off the savage nature of the character duo.
Pulp Fiction shows that Tarantino is best at creating situations. The camera is merely pointed where to look, occasionally hesitating on a mesmerizing visual element to enhance the aesthetic of the situation. It is unconventional in that it leans into the realist components of the lives of screen villains, and that is why its combination of classic tricks with personal style is ultimately cohesive. Although the film appears to be a product of the story, a consistent dedication to style is the key to Tarantino's creation of a captivating, fresh bit of cinema.