Blogging the AFI’s top 100 films of all time: #95, ‘Pulp Fiction’
Because somebody's got to do it...
I’m blogging the AFI’s ‘Top 100 American Movies of All Time’ list, from 100 to 1. Last time we went riding with John Wayne and his other injun Searchers, and I pissed off a good few cowpokes in the process. Don’t diss The Duke, I guess.
Those of you who’ve been with me since the beginning, #100, Yankee Doodle Dandy, know that I have not always, um, looked forward to watching the next film on the list. But with #95, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, I made my favorite meal. I made a martini… and then I made another, and then, that’s right, another. Blame Mad Men. Then I nailed a coworker and crashed the car. Yee-haw! This is all just to say that watching this movie again, dear reader, would be an event.
The main question I took into my own personal screening was this: does it hold up?
Not only does Pulp Fiction hold up but, amazingly, the act of watching it is still a hell of an exciting experience (and this was at home, on my laptop).
Vincent and Jules arrive in style.
There’s still the jolt of seeing “something new,” when “Pumpkin” and “Honey Bunny” leap up in the Hawthorne Diner, and the shot freezes, but the dialogue runs over, stepping on the toes of Dick Dale’s “Miserlou.”
Actually, watching Pulp again made me wonder if something I’d been almost certain was a mistake, a gaff, wasn’t maybe intentional. When Honey Bunny jumps out of that booth the first time, she screams, “Any of you fucking pigs mooove and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of you!” I hear you, honey. Freeze city. But when we return to their booth at the end, not only does Pumpkin order more coffee in a slightly different way, Honey Bunny this time says, “Any of you fucking pigs mooove and I’ll execute every one of your motherfuckers.” One of these things is not like the other. Does my precision frighten you? It frightens me.
But Plup shows such a confident hand at the wheel that I found myself sorta willing to give its maker the benefit of the doubt on this. Mr. T was dealing with time, after all. Temporally speaking, everything here’s pretty mixed up. It’s a pig’s breakfast, as far as time goes. Maybe the difference in her lines is actually a statement about… (yeah okay, let’s just call it a gaff). A lot’s been said about Plup’s temporal space (Willis famously killing Travolta in his bathroom sparked but one obsessive debate). Tarantino’s not the first guy to scramble the goods, but few have done it with such ebullient pop. It’s worth noting that Travolta is surprised three freaking times when coming out of bathrooms in this movie. I guess the man’s blocked up.
Sometimes we repeat ourselves. 'Plup,' top. 'Reservoir Dogs,' bottom.
Having just seen Inglorious Basterds, I was struck now by Pulp Fiction’s precision. And Dogs was even more precise. I think Tarantino, fresh off the success of that, had just the right amount of confidence to make Pulp Fiction. Arrogance even. Lord knows the man’s no stranger to that emotion. In Dogs, and in Pulp, he’d found the perfect world, and characters, to express his obsessions. When Pulp first came out, Siskel & Ebert likened Tarantino not only to Orson Welles, but also David Mamet. QT’s arrival signaled, at the time, as distinct a voice in American movies as Mamet’s arrival, some years earlier, had in the American theater. All the pastiche arguments we’ve heard don’t change that. And their voices are not so far apart, really. About the only difference between Dogs and Glengarry Glen Ross, if you think about it, is that in one of them, the men point guns when they yell at each other.
A little sword play never hurt anyone.
Over the last decade, Tarantino’s distinct voice has remained pretty intact, as has Mamet’s, but what the new movies might lack (of both men) is that Pulpy precision. Basterds is as much a Tarantino flick as Pulp, but it lacks focus. Though I also think it puts front and center the limitations of his style. Q’s obsessions, and maybe his abilities, don’t extend to everything. He can’t take them everywhere. This is often the problem with artists in possession of a distinct style. Times change, but they don’t.
Beyond this movie’s function as a crash course in how the crazy dream of Los Angeles works (all the “pilot” talk; the cars; the burgers; the diners), Pulp Fiction is an actors’ paradise. Most everyone is fantastic (though I really wish Quentin himself had had enough sense to stay behind that lens). Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer are around for only about 20 minutes, but you could almost say, and you’d almost be right, that the movie belongs to them. But it doesn’t, not really, because it belongs to Sam Jackson. The movie’s ultimate arc, its greatest tale of redemption, belongs entirely to Jules, his character. Vincent doesn’t acknowledge Jules’ miracle (he literally halts the conversation and says, “To be continued”), and he dies later that day. I’d never realized just how good Jackson really is in Pulp before seeing it again. Back in ‘96, a whole lot of talk went around about Travolta. He won awards. He was back! He is great in this movie, don’t get me wrong. It’s a very refreshing performance. But he doesn’t hold a candle to Jackson.
The Final Judgement from the mighty ‘Closely Watched’ tower:
Top 100 of All Time? Really? Or somebody made a mistake? Should be in the top 50.
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The last time I sat through all of it was at a midnight movie at the Sunshine. I had the same feeling you did, I was totally riveted in every scene.
Even though I’d seen it 10-15 times before I got pissed enough to yell at the kids who were talking a few rows away.
I’d put it in the top 20 at least, and I imagine it’ll get there in an iteration or two of the list.
That’s funny. What the hell is wrong with audiences today? God, I sound so old. I wish I was a gazillionare so I could buy a theater and run movies for just me and my friends. Free popcorn.
In response to another comment. See in context »Sounds pretty good.
I’ll comment with my thoughts in a couple days. I love movies that have precision, and that tightness, that no matter how long it is, it stay together nicely.
Did you ever get a chance to check it out? What’d you think?
In response to another comment. See in context »My first time reading your AFI blogging. Great idea. Like you, I think “Pulp Fiction” holds up well. I saw the movie again two years ago because I was interviewing Dick Dale, whose “Miserlou” song anchors the movie. According to Dale, Tarantino was inspired to make the movie after hearing “Miserlou” a bunch of times. Dale gave him permission to use the song, which begat “Pulp Fiction.” What makes this more interesting is that Dale’s real name is Richard Mansour (he’s half-Lebanese), and “Miserlou” is based on an old Arab song that Dale heard growing up. “Miserlou” means “The Egyptian” in Turkish.
Thanks a lot, Jonathan. Glad to have you aboard. And that’s some great information you’ve got there. How cool is that!? Thanks for sharing.
In response to another comment. See in context »uh huh. so it’s ok to go around blowing the fuck out of people and slicing them up with samurai swords, as long as it’s done with a really slick stylish flair and tight, pithy dialogue.
When PF first came out i couldn’t stand it; however, when i get into one of my more nihilistic moods and ready for the meteor to come along and blow this planet into dust, i can really enjoy the hell out of it; especially Sam Jackson, Ving Rhames and (of course) Walken.
Well Andy, of course when we talk about Tarantino we’re talking about blood. I’m sure you’re familiar with all the arguments that swirled around R.D. and especially P.F. (particularly when the heavy girl is shot in the hip when Bruce Willis crashes the car). Tarantino said he wanted the audience to have to really feel her hurt. She screams and wails for a little while. I’m not saying I agree that rubbing our noses in it makes it okay, but I do think that there is something to be said about implicating the viewers in the violence, viscerally, as opposed to, say, turning the violence into nothing but a spectacle or a body count, a la your typical action movie and/or slasher film, and/or torture porn.
And yes, I do think that, as you put it, this violence is “okay” as long as it’s stylish – or more to the point, as long as the filmmaker is actually doing something interesting with the form, which is what Mr. T. did in P.F., if not necessarily in all his movies.
But “violence in cinema” is a subject worthy of its own article. Coming soon. Thanks.
In response to another comment. See in context »Hated it then. Bored by it now.
What do you like to watch instead?
In response to another comment. See in context »Thing is, Andy, you don’t need to actually sit down and watch a movie like this if you are put off by the violence. End of.
While I appreciate Pulp Fiction, I disagree with the assertion that it holds up well after all these years. In fact, upon watching the film a couple of years back – after not having seen it for several years – my initial reaction was that it felt dated, not timeless in the way other “classic” movies do. I’m not sure this is necessarily an indictment, a film is a product of its time, and if it reflects a particular cultural moment, what’s wrong with that, right?
Maybe the reason it doesn’t hold up so well for me (and I say “maybe” because frankly I haven’t given the subject all that much thought), is because despite the rush and energy and magic of those early Tarantino films, in the end, there isn’t that much depth to them besides the post-modernist angle – and in the end, po-mo and pastiche don’t quite mine the emotional depths that are generally required for people to connect to a work of art over long periods of time. Maybe that’s why looking back, I think my favorite Tarantino film ends up being Jackie Brown. Despite the fact that QT obviously had a boner for Pam Grier throughout the film, it seems that JB is the one film where, in my view, he was most emotionally invested in his protagonist.
Apparently the dialogue in the two diner scenes was deliberately made slightly different. Tarantino has said somewhere that he liked the idea that, just as we see the scene from a different perspective the second time, the people there would have different recollections of what actually happened.
That’s really interesting. I was wondering if it was something like that. Thanks for sharing!
In response to another comment. See in context »