Pulp Fiction - 1994
"Fourth time's a charm." - No One Ever
And YET...for this reviewer (who sometimes processes things at a snail's pace), the fourth time through the sea change-signalling Pulp Fiction was just that. A charm. A light of understanding. Eureka!
See, I spent the first viewing of this film utterly confused. I didn't get how dead people in one scene ended up alive and well in later ones. I found the Zed sequences perverse and contemptible in ways that disturbed me. I thought it was too long. And, oh yeah, I was OBSESSED with the non-revelation surrounding the glowing briefcase. I watched it because everyone else TOLD me to, not because I really wanted to all that much.
On the second run through I fared better. By then, I had enough Godard and Truffaut under my belt to parse the time-changing elements of the story. I was warming to Tarantino's particular brand of high and low-blending attributes as a filmic polymath. The gratuitous violence. The loads of "hang out" moments with inimitable dialogue. Endlessly quotable line deliveries. The grand casts. The remarkable soundtracks and more. But the ending and the "point" still alluded me. I still gave too much thought to the briefcase, which may or may not have been a MacGuffin, and I couldn't quite weave a tapestry through the whole affair.
By the credits on the third viewing I was willing to acknowledge that this was clearly a masterpiece by some kind of wild genius. But what continued to plague me was that I never could find "a take." Thousands of people have written about Pulp Fiction but I couldn't find anything unique to ME. The film seemed essentially like a series of interconnected segments with not much resolution for us the viewers, or the characters themselves.
So, when I set about to make my list for the top 10 films of the 1990's, Pulp Fiction remained a significant hurtle. It vies for supremacy in just about every major list you could find ANYwhere. But was it a movie that I myself could say I truly loved? Without a unique spin, I thought I'd be answering in the negative. Then, on a last minute whim, I pressed play for a fourth time...
At long last I found a running theme, which I will succinctly state as this: "The morality of scoundrels." I'm sure I'm nowhere near the first to see this. But the film breaks down into three main episodes (film screen cards, another QT touch), and if you look closely, each contains a moral test for the protagonist of that episode. Briefly, the first is the testing of hit man Vincent's loyalty to mob boss Marcellus Wallace in the face of undeniable chemistry with Wallace' wife, the jaw-dropping Mia. The second scene involves Butch trying to skip town after he didn't throw a fight he was supposed to for the aforementioned boss, but through some crazy plot machinations, ends up with the decision to return and save a now sworn enemy. And the third...well that's just Jules "trying to be the shepherd," baby. A long-time hitman with the acumen to take out any wannabe robbers contends with his perception of the hand of God at work in the world.
Along the way, these tales spin and corkscrew and loop around each other like the best coasters in the world. And each of these men make horrible moral choices throughout, whether to preserve themselves or get ahead. That's why I called it the ethics of scoundrels, not saints. Yet they each get their shot at redemption. Indeed, that seems to be a thread winding through all of Tarantino's great work. This one just might be the granddaddy of them all.
(But I still say Tarantino casting himself as Jimmy was a horrible idea...)
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