Nu Comedy

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2006)

I don't think I've ever laughed so hard during a movie. The brilliant thing about Pulp Fiction, the reason it is so highly regarded, is because it isn't cheap comedy. It's black comedy. Personally, it took me about 2 or 3 seconds after the punchline to actually laugh. I had to think about it. I could picture people seeing it for the first time in 1994, a time when most moviegoers weren't used to as raw, violent and graphic movies as we see today. Not many films leading up to Tarantino's made use of free violence for no moral reason at all but just to laugh. This type of comedy generally makes us ask of Tarantino : "Can he do that? Is he allowed?"
A perfect example of this is when Jules and Vincent are coming back from a whack ordered by crime boss Marsellus Wallace. They've brought back with them their snitch Marvin. In the car, both hit men are having a lively (and utterly comical) discussion, as is typical of Tarantino characters. Then, Vincent turns around, gun still in hand from the job, and asks Marvin his opinion. All of a sudden, his gun goes off and blasts Marvin's head off. "Oh man, I just shot Marvin in the face," says Vincent, to which Jules replies "Man, I've seen some ****** up **** in my day but this is really ****** up!" There is no moral reason for this to have happened; it's just a hilarious lead up to the introduction of another hilarious character. Oh and by the way, I almost died of laughter, I'm not joking.
All the characters are so original yet so real. Just look at the dialogue. Most of it is unimportant to the plot of the stories in the movie, yet that's what makes Pulp Fiction... Pulp Fiction. The thing is, it's so damn funny. The very first scene we see with Vincent and Jules, a few minutes after the beginning, their dialogue seems quite irrelevant : they talk about the little differences between America and Europe. For example, what we know as a quarter pounder with cheese at McDonalds is called a "Royale with Cheese" in Paris. Oh, and they dip their fries in mayonnaise. At first glance, this dialogue is just killing time until something big happens, but with a skillful writer-director like Tarantino, no time is wasted. The said conversation keeps coming back and is useful to understand Jules and Vincent's relationship. This is not the only instance in which there are conversations like these; the whole movie is a goldmine of one-liners and witty conversations that seem irrelevant, but always come back
Tarantino green-lighted a movement in cinema that was to follow. Of course, the nineties and the eighties before them had their share of violent films : Scarface, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Natural Born Killers and many others. But never had there been a movie that poked fun of people getting killed. Tarantino allowed filmmakers to have fun. Movies like Platoon and Natural Born Killers used violence in an attempt to criticize the behavior. But Tarantino uses it as comedy. There's nothing wrong with that; we can handle it. Bringing his ideas to film, Tarantino touched a sweet spot in film audiences. Nowadays, there are plenty shoot-em-up movies, and we thank our pal Tarantino for it.