Back in December 2015, during the release of his violent western ensemble film, The Hateful Eight, writer-director Quentin Tarantino revealed that he has possibly two more films left in his filmography before retiring from making movies. Next month will see the release of his highly-anticipated ninth feature film, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, as movie stars in Hollywood 1969), which has, not surprisingly, been generating a lot of early positive buzz.
This year also marks a couple of anniversaries of some of his other previous works: 2009's Inglorious Basterds, his World War II extravaganza about Jewish soldiers and citizens plotting to kill Adolf Hitler; and 1994's Pulp Fiction. Both films, interestingly, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in their respective years. But the latter remains, perhaps, his best film.
As a quintessential example of postmodern filmmaking that helped shape 1990s film here on out (not to mention being a gamechanger for independent cinema as well), Tarantino's sophomoric effort (after 1992's Reservoir Dogs) is a bold, dynamic, engrossing, profane and graphic anthology of interconnected stories--one way or another--about criminals and lowlifes in Los Angeles; about violence, crime, drugs, and strange redemption. Just as Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane in 1941, Pulp Fiction also relies on a very nonlinear and unconventional structure, using various flashback devices, sharp dialogue, unexpected encounters, and ironic twists and turns in the process. (The film does open with a definition of "pulp" magazines, partially explaining the title.)
The original screenplay (by Tarantino and Roger Avery, who each won an Oscar), as well as framing and blocking, helped play a part in relaunching, establishing, and/or developing several movie star careers, including John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson (as hit men Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, who have philosophical debates regularly, and are looking for a stolen briefcase), Ving Rhames (as tough gang boss Marsellus Wallace), Uma Thurman (as Marsellus's wife Mia Wallace), Scorsese and Resevoir Dogs veteran Harvey Keitel (as cleaner Winston "the Wolf"), Bruce Willis (as boxer Butch Coolidge, with an heirloom gold watch passed down from his grandfather), Christopher Walken (as USAF veteran Captain Koons, who explains the surprising family legacy of the watch to a younger Butch), and Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer (as a pair of restaurant robbers, nicknamed "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny").
It's intriguing and amusing how Tarantino has developed a reputation for creating pastiche in his filmography, combining elements from classic films, songs, and popular culture, to create his own signature original work. In other words, some could call it, art imitating art. He even incorporates his own original "products" into his stories, like "Red Apple" cigarettes, "Big Kahuna" cheeseburgers, and (the ultimate amalgamation of 1950s retro culture) fast food stop "Jack Rabbit Slims".
And yet, for all of its deserved filmmaking quality and first-rate iconography, Pulp Fiction equally remains provocative and notorious for its graphic and profane nature, with scenes of characters snorting drugs, spewing f-bombs, and blasting gunshots out of nowhere. And then there's that appalling and horrible scene involving sodomy in a store basement. In his book, "Hollywood Worldviews," author Brian Godowa describes Pulp Fiction as a "celebration of underworld depravity."
At the same time, despite the fact that just about every character in this film, in all fairness, isn't necessarily a "good guy," it does appear that Pulp Fiction stands apart from its countless successors and imitators as a "fate- vs. non-fate-oriented" anthology with characters' misguided worldviews on spirituality and occasional allusions to the existence of God and even some unusual "awakenings" (or, as Vincent prefers, "freak occurrences"). Vincent does refer, at one point, to "a moral test of one's self," as an example, while Captain Koon's famous watch monologue alludes to the hope that certain children (like Butch) would not grow up to experience depravity in the world as many did during the first two World Wars.
Strange how a sense of redemption isn't out of reach for even the worst of characters. It's a pity that most of Tarantino's other film characters (like the Bride from Kill Bill and even many of the characters in Inglorious Basterds) seem to be vengeance-seeking characters going in the opposite direction.
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