Pulp Fiction

Reservoir Dogs announced Quentin Tarantino's arrival, but Pulp Fiction cemented his place as a quirky, idiosyncratic filmmaker whose presence was going to be felt in Hollywood for a while.

Pulp Fiction contains many recognizable elements and tropes from the crime and film noir genres - professional hitmen, crime bosses, murder gone wrong, etc. - but the presentation and layout are wholly original. The movie has its moments of shocking violence and sequences of almost unbearable tension, but the overall effect is comedic. Despite the ghastliness on display and the morally bankrupt characters who commit atrocities, the viewer can't help but laugh (as long as they aren't too squeamish).

Isn't this where we came in?

Three stories involving various Los Angeles lowlifes intersect over a handful of days to make up Pulp Fiction: hitmen Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) prepare for a job their boss Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) has ordered. Later, Vincent, on orders from Marcellus, takes Marcellus' wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out on a date to ensure "she doesn't get lonely" while the crime boss is away. Meanwhile, boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) readies for an upcoming fight in which he has promised Marcellus to take a dive

Those are the setups for the individual stories. Some characters appear in multiple stories or even all of them as the narrative jumps around the timeline. The movie starts somewhere in the middle, presses onward, flashes back several decades for one scene, and finally ends right where we started. 

Why the elliptical nature? I don't think Tarantino is doing it just for the sake of doing it. For one thing, by jumping around the timeline, Pulp Fiction is able to bring characters after we see them killed. It also keeps us off balance and guessing, wondering what's going to come next. Pulp Fiction is not a mystery movie or a suspense thriller because its unpredictability is used for shock value and humor. 

Events happen unexpectedly, and our response as the viewer is to laugh, cringe, or do both.

The nonlinear structure also allows for a more natural emotional progression. Life is not linear. Realizations, epiphanies, and lessons do not occur in some carefully constructed order. They occur at random, haphazardly, and without warning, and by jumping as he does, Tarantino is able to save his most profound, thoughtful sequence for last, after we've witnessed all the deaths, murders, overdoses, screwups, and crimes. 

As two characters, whose fates we already know, walk off to end the movie, we're left to ponder it all.

"Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character."

If Reservoir Dogs is a superlative example of the crime genre, then Pulp Fiction is a transcendence of the form. Tarantino plays with expectations, subverting, playing with, and diverting the expected arcs and narratives, so anyone watching for the first time is not going to know where everything is going until it gets there and not just because of the jumping timeline

Take Vincent Vega. Cool, confident, professional hitmen are a dime a dozen in the movies, but Vega is not one of them. He's a complete buffoon, strung out on heroin, talking too much at the wrong times, and screwing up in the worst possible ways. He acts tough and stylish, but he causes more problems than he solves. The difference between him and the hero of a slapstick comedy is his foibles and mistakes result in bloodshed, dead bodies, and overdoses.

Yet, despite the violence and blood, Pulp Fiction is a very funny movie, even in those gruesome moments. Part of that is because of how surreal and weird the scenarios are, but also because of Tarantino's dialogue. Vega's response to the consequences of an accidental gunshot might just be the funniest line of dialogue from the 1990s (and Jules' angry reaction to it is right up there).

"Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?"

Pulp Fiction is a visually stylish movie, but just as important as the visuals to a Tarantino film is the dialogue. These characters love to talk. They ramble, they gripe, they spar, they go on long rants about pop culture, they deliver obviously rehearsed and prepared monologues, and they are rarely if ever at a loss for words.

It's easy to call it indulgent, and to an extent, it probably is, but it's an entertaining indulgence. The dialogue is funny, witty, lyrical, and if it's not always driving the plot, it's usually revealing something important about the characters. For a movie without so much talking, there's relatively little exposition that exists strictly to explain things to the viewer.

The dialogue is also important to the movie's overall direction. Strange, awful, and grotesque things happen to people, but the way they talk about those things is hysterical. The characters have an attitude, and they're not afraid to express it, even in the most appalling and painful of circumstances.