Tarantino's "Masterpiece" is Good, but Overrated

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2009)

This is it---the movie that turned Quentin Tarantino from a nobody independent film director to one of the titans of film, in a league with Griffith, DeMille, Fleming, Capra, Lean, Minnelli, Ford, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola and Scorsese, among a whole lot of other directors that are super-famous, but I don't know about because I know little about film as an art. The question: is "Pulp Fiction" a timeless masterpiece that should be put up upon a pedestal? My answer: no. It's a good movie, to be sure, and the main characters are, to an extent, well-developed, but Tarantino stuffs his film so full of peculiar hipsterism and allusions to obscure TV shows and movies that it nearly drowns out the plot. It also splits viewers to those "in the know" about whatever film or hipster references Tarantino is making, and those who haven't a clue, and either feel the film is eccentric or are chagrined to not be smart enough to get it. This movie has forced elitism in cinema to the mainstream, where arcane references and bold gimmicks (such as a distorted time-line) have been lauded as visionary. Previous mainstream great films were straightforward in their presentation of the story, but had such great plot and acting that they stood on their own without relying on gimmicks. Tarantino takes a decent plot and stuffs it with extraneous stuff and the critics buy into it. This truly is a film that cannot stand on the merits of its actors or plot alone.
One thing that will take a viewer off-guard---and which fans tout as an example of Tarantino's "genius"---are the long periods of weird and pointless dialogue punctuated with fast, flashy violence. Long dialogue seems like a trademark of Tarantino movies, and whether you like or hate his movies depends on how strong your attention span is. In this ADD world of ours, I'd think long, droning dialogue is a major no-no, but somehow Tarantino loves to include it as essential to his films. In some movies, like the "Death Proof" half of "Grindhouse," is can be a Bataan Death March form of torture to have to endure. In "Pulp Fiction," it can get boring, but is not too terrible. The scenes where Travolta and Jackson drone on about burgers in France, and where Thurman and Travolta discuss Thurman's audition for a TV show, it is irrelevant and boring, though I'm sure Tarantino fans will tell the unwashed among us that we "just don't get it." When Ving Rhames and Harvey Keitel speak, their words relevant, witty and interesting. Jackson's peculiar monologue before killing an enemy, which is a mishmash of Bible verses strung together in a rather incoherent, rambling manner, is fun to listen to, as Jackson says it with rage and passion, but ultimately is meaningless prattle that does little to further the plot until the last chapter of the movie. In all, "Pulp Fiction" is full of too much talk that accomplishes nothing to further the plot or convey anything revealing or meaningful about the characters.
The disposal of a linear plot line is sometimes relevant to a movie, particularly if it is used to emphasize something about a character or a particular scene. In "Pulp Fiction", the nonlinear plot is a device for emphasizing certain characters, whether Travolta's, Jackson's, or Willis's. In essence, "Pulp Fiction" is merely four mini-movies connected only by the thread of common characters (all of whom seem to be working for the crime lord played by Ving Rhames). Tarantino is to be commended, in this instance, for not following through with a straightforward plot and instead treating his film more as a character study. If you try to view this film as anything more than four separate character studies, you get a damned mess. The way this film was sold to the public, the nonlinear device's true purpose was not made clear, and first-time viewers will not understand Tarantino's vision on a first-time viewing. In spite of the apparent uniqueness of the nonlinear device, I wonder just how original it is.
The violence is gratuitous to an extent, but at least Tarantino explores its morality. The characters of Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson are the most important with regards to the exploration of the morality of a life of crime. They are truly three-dimensional characters who reevaluate their lives. The other characters seem one-dimensional and are less interesting by comparison. Other than the analysis of morality from the two characters mentioned, Tarantino uses violence as a means to shock the viewer. The "gimp scene" in the store basement and Uma Thurman's OD scene are simply shocking, with little to recommend to them other than they are violence for the sake of violence. I am not particularly intelligent enough to "get" cinema as an art-form, but it seems like violence as an art-form is becoming accepted in serious films, much to the detriment of anything substantive. It is a disturbing trend that Tarantino tries to justify as art. I wish "serious" movies would rely less on violence-for-violence's sake. It is not intellectually appealing, and is instead disturbing.
Other than being an interesting series of character studies, "Pulp Fiction" has little else going for it. This movies shows promise for Tarantino as a crafter of interesting stories, but at the same time it is too preoccupied with trying to be hip. It has spawned a series of inferior imitators that have lowered the quality of cinema as a whole. For this reason, "Pulp Fiction" has done more harm than good for American movie-making in general.