I just watched... Pulp Fiction

A ballad of foot massages, metric systems and other stuff.

                Tarantino has always been in a bit of an odd spot for me. If were to spontaneously materialise a list of things that, by all means, I should have experienced because they seem right up my alley then Tarantino would be up on that list, alongside things like Platinum Games and Monty Python. But now, thanks to the perchance of fate I have been able to finally watch Pulp Fiction, which many claim is his magnum opus. Of course, I don’t know if I can agree or disagree with that considering the fact that I just mentioned that is the fact that I haven’t really seen his other movies, with the only other Tarantino movie I’ve seen being Inglorious Basterds, I can’t really pass judgement whether it is HIS magnum opus.

                But surely the gloss of my nascent eyes should be able to reflect on whether it is a magnum opus of the world? My response to that would be: I’m not sure. Superficially speaking, the biggest draw of the movie is the storytelling, how everything is presented in a smooth disconnected nature, yet connected in inference and retrospect. I personally like to call this form of storytelling the ‘bouncy storytelling’ because it’s not too indifferent from entering a bouncy castle, bouncing all over the place, bouncing till you lose your bearings and become unable to tell north from south and Star Wars from Star Trek… but yet you are still aware of the entrance and exit of the bouncy palace, which helps put things into perspective even as you spin around enough to start projectile vomiting into a kid’s face.

OM NOM Metric System

Pulp Fiction doesn’t play around with it quite so much or as crazily as many later stories have, and all the events and sections can be easily placed into a linear narrative. A linear and seemingly simplistic narrative- which doesn’t try to twist your mind with its ordering and chronology, but the segmented nature serves more of a stylistic purpose to aid the plot and up its motherfucking style quotient.

Each 'section' is divided with its own title.

Content-wise the story is actually rather simplistic, and if I were to put it into a sentence I’d say ‘there’s a whole lot going on while, while there is very little going on’ and that’s because the story doesn’t rest its laurels on, well, the plot but on the interactions between characters and their ‘small talk’. I suppose the movie could get an award for ‘Most Interesting Small-Talk’ since the topics characters talk about can vary from the erotic implications of a foot massage to the nature of awkward silences to the metric system. And while these discussions can be considered vaporous, since they don’t necessarily bear a great deal of significance for the plot, they still form the heart and soul of the movie to the extent that the movie would have been rather listless without them.

Apparently this scene is very famous. Apparently. 

But if we were to get down and dirty with the plot, it’s about two hitmen, a professional boxer, a crimelord and several other disconnected yet connected characters of varying degrees of significance. Several events take place which are disconnected yet connected and of varying degrees of significance. In fact it is more of a story ‘in events’ or a story ‘in stories’, since many of them can be taken independently as different unique stories just with the same characters.

Tarantino sure loves katanas. 

In all honesty I still find it hard to settle down on a concrete opinion on the movie, but ultimately it boils down to the fact that it nails down the one-two punch of making something good: fun and style. Being fun and stylish is a pretty great way to make it into people’s good books without having to try to construct an attempted complex plot, constants, variables, nuanced characters and so on, as the Devil May Cry series attests. A perfect degree on the style quotient can often be just the thing to make something bland and unexciting, something non-bland and exciting. The good news is that the characters are interesting in their own rights, and their amoral, questionable and often quirky mannerisms are enough for them to fly quite high without taking the style quotient into the mix, which helps propel them beyond the stratosphere. Another thing is that the movie leaves a handful of loose ends lying around, which helps keep it in your mind, figuring out possible answers and outcomes for some events.

After all, one of the secrets to being a good work is having those ‘factors’ that help it remain in the minds of those who experience it, for whatever reason. Does it stay, while they mull over the implications of the ending? Does it stay, while they try draw parallels to historical events? Does it stay, while they ponder the fates of the characters and the world? Many people seem to forget that leaving questions unanswered and not providing sufficient closure can often help a work, and the movie leaves its fair share of open questions and loose ends.

Another unrelated thing I find rather amusing is that the movie has one hell of a star cast… by today’s standards, since most of them weren’t particularly well off or famous back then. Still, the performances are pretty impressive and bring Tarantino’s rambling, off-beat style to life, with Samuel L. Jackson probably deserving all the fame it garnered him.

Today's Lesson: How to clean a gory car

                All in all, what do I really think about the film? I’m really not sure. I am in part disappointed that it didn’t quite blow my mind like a Michael Bay impression, as the world led me to believe, but a lot of the ‘flaws’ present would probably have to do with personal views. The movie does straddle the line of crass, and seems to come quite close to actually entering crass domain, but it miraculously manages to just keep itself from truly being crass. And this is likely because the crassness present fits into the style and setting, making the crassness seem smooth and not all-consuming and rough (compare it to Wolf of Wall Street for something that is just annoyingly crass, rough crass, boring crass and crass crass that is truly crass).

All in all again, I don’t really have anything cute or conclusive to put into this last line. But I beg the question, do I really have to have a last line? Can’t there be no last line, allowing you to see the bits and pieces and form my conclusion by reading the rest? Hmmm?