Letters to the Editor

• Down with 'Pulp Fiction'!

  [Read the article: "Grindhouse"]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Why 'Pulp Fiction' Is Not All That

  Basically the film is four vignettes cleverly strung together and framed with a mini-story (the restaurant robbery). The individual stories have no particular themes or purpose, they exist solely to entertain on a moment-by-moment basis, which yes, I understand is the film's upfront intention. The first story plays games with audience expectation and tonal juxtoposition, showing us a new side to assassins, making us laugh at their banal coversation and trivial day-to-day concerns, then throwing scalding water on us as they inhabit their amoral-killer roles, meting out life and death in a grandiose manner. (We later return to laughing at them, even viewing them as buffoons, and the sudden switches are exhilarating and strange.)

  The middle section of "Pulp Fiction" concerns a sort-of "date" between Travolta and Uma Thurman, where they seem to be acting out a twisted, funhouse representation of all-American pop-cultural romance: A diner, a milkshake, a dance, "let's go back to my place," and instead of sexual penetration we get needle-in-the-heart penetration, followed by post-coital chit-chat in the form of an inappropriate and childish joke. Tarantino dunks our heads in cold water, hot water, cold water, hot water.

  The Bruce Willis vignette is the least connected to the rest of the movie, but it follows the same pattern of sharp juxtopositions. One minute Willis is cuddling with his French girlfriend ("give me oral pleasure"), the next minute he's in his car cursing over his lost watch. One minute he's gunning down his assassin on the john, the next minute he's stumblng into somebody's S&M den. It's funny, surprising, and totally meaningless -- devoid of all interest in theme or morality.

  I found "Pulp Fiction" terrific up to this point. But the final vignette reveals everything that is wrong with Tarantino's sensibility. It's the place where, to quote William Blake, "you don't know what's enough until you know what's more than enough." Travolta shooting the young black informant in the head was played for laughs, but I personally found it unpleasant to be put in the position of giggling at somebody having his brains blown out, no matter how clownish it makes the Travolta character look, or how zany of a situation it generates. I didn't find the whole "we need help cleaning up this back-seat carnage" premise particularly funny, and at that point the sight gag of Travolta/Jackson in shorts and T-shirts wasn't enough payoff. Nor did I find Harvey Keitel's "cleaner" role very convincing or interesting, and Tarantino's character and performance only served to annoy me. The man can't act and he isn't funny unless he's playing himself (see his inspired cameo in "Sleep With Me" for comparison). This last vignette is also the point at which "Pulp Fiction"'s amorality and randomness take their toll. I wondered, after all that came before, Why this? How does this conclude the movie? The back-yard scenes are relatively inert and they rehash humor elements of previous scenes. The episode only serves to pad out the three-act structure of the film and explain the sequence of events that culminate in the restaurant standoff.

  I will gladly admit that "Pulp Fiction" is an inspired work full of amusing moments and situations, but why is anyone required to disregard its flaws or its lapses? This probably sounds more moralistic than I intend it to, but when I saw the film in the theater, I was a little bit disgusted that people were guffawing over somebody having his brains blown out. I was also far less impressed by the disjointed use of time. Tarantino handled it pretty well, but he's hardly the first to employ such tricks. I think average filmgoers tended to give Tarantino more credit for it than he deserved simply because they hadn't been exposed to much experimental or independent cinema ("Rashomon," "Hiroshima Mon Amour," "La Jetee," Jim Jarmusch, etc.).

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  Permalink Friday, April 6, 2007 11:34 PM