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Pulp Fiction
//Arriving in the midst of formulaic Hollywood offerings, Pulp Fiction was the perfectly cultish, quirky antidote to such mind-numbing fluff dominating the cinema; refreshing, bold and striking, it spawned many imitators. Despite its heavy prevalence upon dialogue and disjointed web of events sewn together in a non-linear narrative, audiences flocked and remain enthralled by it to this very day. Peppered with great moments eaten up by actors working at the top of their game (Travolta, Willis and Thurman have never been better, and the film created the aura of greatness that currently surrounds Jackson) Pulp Fiction is primarily successful because of its witty writing, pop culture-surfing, gleeful amorality, cult tuneology and hyperkinetic energy, redefining the crime genre for the foreseeable future. Its compendium format draws upon Black Sabbath and twisty-turny crime literature, but also European movies, Amsterdam and Hollywood history. Indeed, Pulp Fiction operates in the hinterland between reality and movie reality. Into a cadre of movie archetypes — the assassin, the mob boss, the gangster's moll, the boxer who throws a fight — Tarantino injects a reality check that is as funny as it is refreshing. Whereas most crime flicks would breeze over the rendezvous between Vincent and Mia, here we actually get to go on the date— polite chit-chat, awkward silences, bad dancing — before it spirals off into a drugged-up disaster. Just as Resevoir Dogs is a heist film where you don't see the heist, Pulp Fiction never shows its main plot points or their resolution, opting instead to present the audience with detailed conversations about food and Deliverance-style rape. Moreover, after Vincent and Jules take back Marsellus' briefcase, rather than cutting to a cop on their trail, we stay with them and revel in their banal banter as they dispose of a corpse (the genius of Keitel's Wolf in this effort is a moot point — how much intelligence does it take to clean a car, then throw a rug over the back seat?)Although it is termed a crime film, its audacious story dynamics and daring array of characters would prove otherwise generally speaking, since the criminal aspect of the film is never drummed into the mind of the viewer; they're too busy being entertained. What makes the film so great is that it wouldn't work in a linearity, in criss-crossing the exposition, Tarantino forges hooks of expectation and curiosity that pay off one by one in satisfying ways with continuous scenes that interconnect a whole nexus of underworld activity. Its killer dialogue is where its cult worship began, but Pulp Fiction is an equally stimulating visual experience; from the eyeful of Jackrabbit Slims to the magical square Mia draws to underline Vincent's geekiness to Andrzej Sekula's glossy, wide angled image-crafting, the look of it is equally as imaginative without ever calling attention to itself, pop art as film. Unfathomably cool and protean, Pulp Fiction is a wondrous masterpiece of post-modern cinema.
