HOW “GREAT” IS IT?
IMDb Top 250: #5
AFI Top 100: #94
The Online Film Community’s Top 100: #11
Total Film Top 100: #3
BBC/British Channel 4 Poll: #4
“It is the most influential film of the decade … Its greatness comes from its marriage of vividly original characters with a series of vivid and half-fanciful events, and from the dialogue. The dialogue is the foundation of everything else.”
– Roger Ebert, who named it the second-best film of the decade behind Hoop Dreams.
“Relentless in its pace, Pulp Fiction is as exhausting as it is exhilarating. In between all the shootings, Mexican standoffs, and other violent confrontations exist opportunities to explore various facets of the human experience, including rebirth and redemption. With this film, every layer that you peel away leads to something deeper and richer. Tarantino makes pictures for movie-lovers.”
-James Berardinelli
“In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino creates a dizzying spectacle of life at its darkest, only to release us, with a wink, into the light.”
-Owen Glieberman
“The way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming.”
-Stanley Kauffmann
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Even after viewing it multiple times in the past, when one approaches Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece Pulp Fiction merely as a film it remains an engrossing, magnetic experience. Very little would suggest this project would work at all. The plot isn’t singular so much as it is a collection of intertwining short stories told non-chronologically, and on its face the dialogue meanders rather than advances the story. Yet it’s the spirit of Pulp Fiction that is so absorbing, and these qualities become strengths rather than weaknesses. Tarantino creates a universe so convincing that we’re willing to buy anything thrown at us. This is an ability he’s flaunted in later films as well. Kill Bill convinces us that a woman can punch her way out of a coffin buried several feet underground, and Inglourious Basterds convinces us that Hitler was actually assassinated by a group of vengeful American Jews.
Watching Pulp Fiction with a clean slate, it has a quality that few films do. With every scene, every line, and every new development, the audience is encouraged to challenge the film. It doesn’t lecture the audience, but instead engages them. They are always wondering why they are seeing what they’re seeing.
The film opens on Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer as Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, and they have a conversation about the pros and cons of robbing the restaurant in which they are sitting. Only it takes a while for the audience to figure the conversation out. The audience is asking questions far more than they are getting answers. Who are these two? What are they talking about? Are they going to rob the coffee shop? Wait! Opening titles!
Pulp Fiction has a tendency to drop you into the middle of a conversation with little or no context to set you up. After the Roth/Plummer prologue, we go to the now-famous hitmen played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. To call their conversation “mundane” wouldn’t do it justice. Over the course of several minutes they discuss Amsterdam hash bars, what they call a quarter-pounder in France, and the emotional meaning behind a good foot massage. Finally, they arrive at a strange apartment, take back a presumably stolen briefcase, and kill the residents inside.
To describe the plot any further would be ridiculous, long-winded and boring to read. In other words, everything the film itself is not. What made Pulp Fiction such a praise magnet in 1994 was its determination to provide something new amidst a film world that seemed to offer nothing but banal formula. Even 17 years later a good viewing of Pulp Fiction feels like a breath of fresh air, despite the fact it would inspire an entire new formula unto itself.
One of the main criticisms leveled against all Tarantino films, Pulp Fiction in particular, is that they are overly violent. In some cases, his films are accused of celebrating violence. Sometimes this is true (Kill Bill Vol. 1 comes to mind), but Pulp Fiction’s violence is only remembered because the film that it’s in is so effective. Even when there isn’t any violence onscreen, there’s a violent energy pumping through its veins that eventually infects the audience. The film is engrossing, and as a result it places you right in its environment. As far as pure violence is concerned, there really isn’t a whole lot, particularly by today’s standards. It’s more about what the film does to you rather than what it does to its characters.
There are a handful of deaths in Pulp Fiction, but as a film it’s more about who doesn’t die than who does. Much has been written and said about how each “chapter” ends with a character being saved from death rather than killed. This is a film entirely about individual redemption. Some people don’t last until the end, but those who do have been given a second chance at life. Most every character in Pulp Fiction begins as a scumbag, but they’re all given a chance to remove themselves from the Marcellus Wallace way of life. Some interpret the Wallace character as the devil. If this is true, then the entire film is all about the characters breaking free from his employ. If they don’t, they have condemned themselves to death. This is a theme that is articulated best by Samuel L. Jackson towards the end of the film.
I was merely three years old in 1994, the year Pulp Fiction fever took over the nation. I can only speculate as to the fervor it caused, but based on all the evidence the ascension of Quentin Tarantino to superstardom is almost beyond compare. Most of my knowledge of the era comes from an episode of Siskel and Ebert which is included on the fantastic Pulp Fiction DVD set. This episode is entitled “The Tarantino Generation,” and it features a lengthy discussion between the two hosts about the history and effects of Tarantino’s meteoric rise. Over the course of 15 minutes, Siskel and Ebert discuss the pros and cons of Pulp Fiction’s success and influence.
Quentin Tarantino is not just a filmmaker. From the beginning he’s been intent on being a superstar as well. He goes out of the way to make himself a public figure. He appeared on countless talk shows, made cameos on a handful scripted series, and even hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live. Gone was the stereotype of the reserved artist who avoided the media at every turn. He was Quentin freaking Tarantino, he was here to take over Hollywood, and screw you if you have a problem with it. Luckily, this over-saturation of the airwaves never had an effect on his filmmaking. He’s yet to make an unworthy product.
Pulp Fiction presented the world with a new kind of filmmaking, and it came right at a time when films seemed less willing to branch off. It was so new and so remarkable that it was able to transcend cinema itself. Every week a new Pulp Fiction spoof or reference seems to pop up somewhere on the television or Internet. Just recently, the once-great show House recently devoted an entire sequence to lovingly ripping Tarantino’s film. Community, a currently great show known for changing personalities (and genres) most every week, is airing a Pulp Fiction-themed episode later this season.
This is all further telling of the impact this film has had on popular culture as a whole. Pulp Fiction’s greatness can hardly be measured alongside other films, which merely seek to entertain. This does not necessarily mean it is better than every film ever made, but it is certainly one of the most prominent. The list of films that would not exist without Pulp Fiction is endless, for better or for worse. For every promising new filmmaker that got a career as a result of Tarantino, there are three or four that attempted to ape his style but could never get it right. Some are convinced they can write Tarantino-esque material simply by peppering their conversations with pop culture references and random food tangents like some god-awful game of Mad Libs. Some have even attempted to mimic Tarantino’s use of violence simply by employing more of it. Where Pulp Fiction is exciting, watchable and has something resembling a soul, many of its imitators can come off as merely offensive.
So now, to answer the general question this feature always asks: Is Pulp Fiction a great film? Absolutely. Is it one of the greatest films of all time? I’d say it’s likely. The problem is that its influence and legacy have become larger than the film itself. This can cloud any and all rational judgment. Pulp Fiction is undoubtedly a masterpiece and one of the most important films of all time. To a degree, how good it is as an individual film has almost become an irrelevant question. It’s more than a movie. It’s Pulp Fiction.
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