Pulp Fiction Essays (1912 words) - English-language Films

Pulp Fiction Introducing a film such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction takes much patience and significant artistry with words. Tarantino's work is an audacious, outrageous look at honor among lowlifes, told in a somewhat radical style overlapping a handful of separate stories. "Quentin Tarantino is the Jerry Lee Lewis of cinema, a pounding performer who doesn't care if he tears up the piano, as long as everybody is rocking" (R.Ebert). Introducing a film such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction takes much patience and significant artistry with words. Tarantino's work is an audacious, outrageous look at honor among lowlifes, told in a somewhat radical style overlapping a handful of separate stories. "Quentin Tarantino is the Jerry Lee Lewis of cinema, a pounding performer who doesn't care if he tears up the piano, as long as everybody is rocking" (R.Ebert). The title is perfect. Like those old pulp magazines named "Thrilling Wonder Stories" and "Official Detective", the film creates a world where there are no normal people and no ordinary days; where breathless prose clatters down fire escapes and leaps into the dumpster. Or at least there are no ordinary days for those who don't consider tactless and accidental murder to be part of their everyday agenda and occupation. The characters in this film separate societal normality from personal normality. For example, Jackson and Travolta are magnetic as a pair of hit-men who have philosophical debates on a regular basis. These characters continue to think that they're "just doing their job" and that there jobs are for the same purpose as any body else's job - to get paid and then to, in return, pay the bills. Societal norms push the audience to believe that these characters along with Ving Rhames, (Marsellus Wallace), are misfits and should be "taken care of". Tarantino starts us off with a dual definition of "pulp" one being "a soft, moist, shapeless, mass of matter" and two being "a book containing lurid subject matter, and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper". This introduces the audience to the presentation of the film. It's segmented structure is Tarantino's way of playing with the audience's perceptions. The entertainment throughout Pulp Fiction is scintillating, it captures the audience and forces them to piece the segments together in order to form one complete story. Hence the title containing the word "pulp" and the product being "rough" and somewhat "unfinished" to the viewer. This voluble, violent, pumped-up movie isn't for every taste, not for the squeamish, but it's got more vitality than almost any other film of 1994. The screenplay by Tarantino and Avary is so well written in a psoriatic yet potent way that you'll want to rub noses in it - the noses of all those zombie writers who take "screenwriting classes that teach them the formulas for writing "hit films". Pulp Fiction is constructed in such a nonlinear way that you could see it a dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next. It doubles back on itself telling several interlocking stories about characters who inhabit a world of crime and intrigue, triple-crosses and desperation. Vincent Vega (Travolta) and partner Jules Winnfield (Jackson) are a couple of mid-level hit-men who carry out assignments for a mob boss. We see them first on their way to a violent showdown discussing such mysteries as why in Paris they have a French word for Quarter Pounders. They're as innocent in their way as Huck and Jim, floating down the Mississippi and speculating on how foreigners can possibly understand each other. Vince's and Jule's careers are a series of assignments that they can't quite handle. Especially Travolta's character, not only does he kill people inadvertently ("The car hit a bump") but he doesn't know how to clean up after himself. Good thing the two of them know people like Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel) who specializes in messes; and has friends like Lance (Eric Stoltz) who owns a "big medical encyclopedia" for emergency situations. Uma Thurman can tell you about those medical procedures. Bruce Willis is compelling as a crooked boxer whose plan to take it on the lam hits a few detours. Butch Coolidge (Willis) is supposed to throw a fight but bails and looses Marsellus (Rhames) a lot of loot. Butch and his girly are to ditch town ASAP but first he needs to make a dangerous trip back to his apartment for a valuable family heirloom. The history of this heirloom is described through a flashback dream narrated by Christopher Walken, a Vietnam veteran. Walken's dialogue build to the movie's biggest laugh. The