You know, it’s movies like this that make me realize how
much I need a “Top 10 Movies of All Time” list on this site.
What qualifies a movie for that list?
A spot-on script, top notch performances,
flair without being too flashy, no moment wasted, unending rewatchability, and
a smile on my face the whole way through.
My friends,
Pulp
Fiction delivers the goods, as securely as if Jules Winnfield himself were
the bagman.
I’m reviewing this movie now because I recently had the
opportunity to watch the movie with someone who’d never seen it before, and it
helped me to recapture a lot of what I love about
Pulp Fiction without simply resorting to Nostalgia Glasses that
allow me to effectively tune out the movie and revel in the reminiscence of the
dozens of times previous that I’d seen this film.
(I’m also reviewing it in the context of
being Quentin Tarantino’s second, and perhaps best, film, in the run-up to
December’s
Django Unchained.)
What, then, is
Pulp
Fiction about?
Many things,
really.
It’s a nonlinear narrative about
a group of Californians who lead lives dominated or surrounded by violence – Vincent
Vega and Jules Winnfield (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson), a pair of
hitmen; their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames); his wife Mia (Uma Thurman);
boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis); and Pumpkin & Honey Bunny (Tim Roth
and Amanda Plummer), the two robbers and lovers who frame the piece.
Pulp
Fiction is about these people and the meaningful – and often surprising –
ways their lives intersect, but it’s also about how these people are confronted
by opportunities to change their lives before the violence gets them, too.
In strange ways, it’s about the importance of
love, about divine intervention and the power of miracles, about how much pop
culture matters to us, and about following codes that make no earthly sense but
have a ring of the divine to them.
It’s about so many things that some critics have charged
Pulp Fiction with being about
nothing.
Perhaps they’re right – perhaps
Pulp Fiction is just the
Seinfeld of the movie world.
But for a multiplicity of reasons –
philosophical, aesthetic, existential, etc. – I refuse to believe that a movie
this sublime, this enjoyable, this... perfect could be an exercise in
nihilism.
What about
Pulp Fiction merits so much revisiting?
Much of the film’s strength comes from the stellar cast of
once-was and would-be-yet stars.
As one
of only three characters to appear in all three segments of the film (Marsellus
and Mia Wallace being the other two), John Travolta is a fantastic “leading man”
for an ensemble cast such as this.
His
role as the “comeback kid” in the behind-the-scenes mythos of the film takes a
backseat to his perfect fit as an accessibility point for the audience; he
shepherds us through the film, feeling dread when we’re supposed to feel dread,
breaking the tension when it needs it, and entering the film as a kind of
outsider who needs to relearn the game after a stint in Amsterdam.
And, boy, can he dance.
The impromptu dance sequence with Uma Thurman
is a real treat – for better or for worse the film’s most recognizable moment –
a spontaneous and exuberant indulgence in the film’s own pop sensibility.
The two dance for no other reason than Mia’s “I
wanna dance” logic, a perfect analogue for why I still watch this movie:
because I wanna.
Travolta’s counterpart is Samuel L. Jackson, the devout
Protestant to Travolta’s lapsed Catholic.
(There’s no specific invocation of religious denominations here, but I contend
that the whole movie comes down to miracles and how the characters respond to
them – the subject, perhaps, for another article on here.)
Jules Winnfield is a career-making role for
Jackson, establishing his trademark hybrid of the sacred and the profane with
the almost lyrical way in which he drops an F-bomb.
Yet Jackson is gifted enough to oscillate
between irreverent comedy (“I’m a mushroom-cloud layin’ motherf--ker, motherf--ker”)
and intense introspection (“I felt the touch of God”), making Jules perhaps the
most human of the film’s characters.
His
quiet monologue in the film’s concluding diner scene is almost chilling for its
earnestness; it ought to be difficult to believe that the same cheeseburger-gobbling
gangster from the first ten minutes has become a contemplative amateur
theologian, but Jackson makes that transition palpable and cues himself for the
well-deserved success he’s enjoyed in his career thus far.
Then there’s Bruce Willis, the star of the film’s middle
third.
It seems odd to say it, but I
always forget that he’s in this movie until I start watching it.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that the
Butch Coolidge section isn’t exclusively Tarantino’s script (co-written with
Roger Avary), or perhaps it’s that “The Gold Watch” is such a traumatic and
trippy piece that I psychologically block it out.
It’s not that I actively dislike “The Gold
Watch” – indeed, Willis does some great work here as the sympathetic boxer, and
the unforgettable Christopher Walken monologue that opens this chapter is equal
parts touching, spooky, and weird (meaning it’s yet another Christopher Walken performance).
But “The Gold Watch” veers so hard and fast
into disturbing territory that moviegoers likely won’t be prepared for where
the film takes them.
“The Gold Watch,” though, is often underrated because it’s
sandwiched between two classically Tarantino pieces – Travolta’s dance number
with Thurman and the infamous bloody car cleanup.
But as with
Inglourious Basterds, “The Gold Watch” is a segment where Tarantino
displays his impeccable gift for generating tension; danger is around every
corner in this portion of
Pulp Fiction,
with death or worse fates awaiting Butch and ensnaring those close to him.
The sensitive scenes with Maria de Medeiros
(as Butch’s naïve lover Fabienne) are haunted by her question, “We’re in a lot
of danger, aren’t we?”
Honey, you don’t
know the half of it; “The Gold Watch” is dogged by the sense of impending and unrelenting
doom.
It makes for uncomfortable viewing,
especially when you find out what Zed and Maynard are really up to, but
aesthetically it’s genius filmmaking as Tarantino pulls back on his trademark
peppy dialogue and lets the visual language – long takes and intimate close-ups
– do all the talking.
But lest you get the wrong idea,
Pulp Fiction really is a barrel of laughs.
(Or, if it’s not, I’ve just outed myself as
some kind of nut.)
It’s either genius or
bizarre filmmaking when Tarantino turns an exploding head into one of the most
riotous scenes in the film, allowing that trademark snappy dialogue to take
over as Travolta and Jackson degenerate into a shouting match.
The film is told out of chronological order,
which allows some of the more difficult bits to go down easier – as when a
deceased character returns to the film in scenes from before his death – and it
allows the film to reach a comfortable happy ending without sacrificing the
danger that still waits for violent men who continue to act violently.
Though
Inglourious
Basterds concluded with the not-so-subtle intimation that it was Tarantino’s
masterpiece, but I argue that
Pulp
Fiction retains that place in his oeuvre.
It’s quite simply a perfect film.
Pulp Fiction is
rated R “for strong graphic violence and drug use, pervasive strong language
and some sexuality.”
Where do we
begin?
This film is unflinching in its
depiction of shootings and their oh-so-bloody aftermath; profanity flows
liberally with almost 300 F-words and nearly every other indecent verbiage
included.
Drugs include alcohol,
tobacco, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, with numerous nicknames given.
Butch and Fabienne share an extremely
intimate but fully clothed rendezvous which runs for a very long time, and
there’s a scene of semi-graphic nonconsensual homosexual intercourse (everything
seen but the body parts in question) that might be the film’s most disturbing
scene of all.
Thanks for sticking with us all week, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving
with your near and dear ones!
Come back
here next week for our regularly-scheduled “Monday at the Movies,” as well as a
review of Denzel Washington in
Flight
for Wednesday.
The Debt (2011) –
The Debt barely got any play when it
came out under the radar last year, which is both a surprise and a shame,
because there’s enough A-list material here – done successfully, to boot – to entertain
most audiences. Parallel narratives reveal
what really happened when three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Sam
Worthington, and Marton Csokas) pursued a fugitive Nazi official (Jesper Christensen)
and how the experience affected them later in life. The older agents are portrayed by “big names”
– Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson – all of whom turn in their
usual exceptional work; Mirren and Wilkinson find themselves at moral odds over
the truth of their experience, with Wilkinson’s determination matching Mirren’s
internal and external scars. But it’s
Chastain who gives the best performance; granted, she gets the lion’s share of
the film as the younger Rachel, but her work in The Debt proves why she’s a rising star in Hollywood. She is tough and vulnerable, holding her own
against Christensen’s Dr. Vogel (who’s the smarmiest Nazi this side of Ralph
Fiennes in Schindler’s List) as a
proper action heroine while also allowing the audience to see just how
traumatic her encounter is. It’s an
interesting companion piece to Munich,
but director John Madden wisely avoids the preachy moralizing Spielberg
deployed in his 2005 Mossad movie (which, coincidentally, also co-starred
Hinds). It’s hard to believe this is the
same director behind Shakespeare in Love
and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,
since The Debt is more intense and
more severely compelling than those two (not to denigrate either, of course),
smartly playing on the relationship of past to present while brilliantly
leading the audience to several premature conclusions. In short, The
Debt is overwhelmingly underrated.
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
– After 12 Angry Men, I’ll follow
Henry Fonda into any movie, particularly with the expectation that he’ll be
playing a character of similar moral fiber (Juror #8 is, after all, one of
cinema’s best good guys) – even if I’m not the world’s biggest devotee of
westerns. The Ox-Bow Incident, regarded as a classic, stars Fonda as a
drifter suspected of rustling before he gets enfolded into a lynch mob in
pursuit of a trio of suspected murderers.
The “plausible doubt” element (familiar to us 12 Angry Men fans) is of course the central conceit of the film, as
is an interrogation of the validity of vigilante justice (familiar to us Batman
fans). My father rightly pointed out
that the film feels a bit like a Twilight
Zone episode, and I think he’s onto something; the film is sans the
supernatural, but it includes the morality play aspect and the simplistic
cinematography, as well as the cast of character actors in smaller roles. What’s disappointing is that the film feels a
bit like a 22-minute story stretched into 75 minutes, repetitive at times and unfulfilling
in others (as in a hasty subplot involving Fonda’s sweetheart). Perhaps worse, Fonda is criminally underused,
likely due to the size of the large supporting cast. It’s not that the movie is bad – it just isn’t
great. And it suffers by the unfair comparison to 12 Angry Men (which I contend is a
perfect film) that I held in my head the whole time I was watching The Ox-Bow Incident.
