Pulp Fiction (1994)
Released by Miramax
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriters: Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino
Historical context
All across the country there are film geeks working in video stores who have an encyclopedic knowledge of movies that cuts across all genres, styles, and time periods. Most of them harbor an ambition to one day write a script that will open doors for them in Hollywood . Quentin Tarantino is one who actually accomplished this goal. He was, in fact, a video store clerk at the time he wrote True Romance, which would ultimately be directed by Tony Scott in 1993. Pulp Fiction was his second film as director, after Reservoir Dogs (1992). The success of Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, helped to solidify the dominance of Miramax among distributors of independent films. Tarantino’s work became one of the cornerstones of the wave of creativity that coursed through independent cinema during the 1990s, which was reminiscent in some ways of a similar creative surge in Hollywood films during the 1970s. One of the most salient attributes of Tarantino’s films, possibly because he learned about cinema in a video store rather than in a film school, is that he is influenced as much by drive-in potboilers, cheap genre pictures, and martial arts chopsocky flicks as by the established canon of cinematic masterpieces. His taste in movies seems to be truly eclectic.
Narrative context
Pulp Fiction does not unfold its narrative (or, more properly, its narratives) in a chronological fashion. How does this choice affect the viewer’s perception of the narratives?
The film consists of three separate narratives: Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife, The Gold Watch, and Jules, Vincent, Jimmie, and the Wolf (along with a prologue and epilogue involving “Pumpkin” and “Honey Bunny”). In what ways do these separate stories form a coherent whole? Or do they?
How does Tarantino use dialogue throughout the film? Why spend several minutes of screen time listening to a conversation about what a quarter-pounder with cheese is called in France?
Would you normally expect a pulp fiction story to be action-driven or character-driven? Which is this film?
How does the film make use of dark humor (“gallows humor”)?
What is the significance of Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase?
How does the film make use of irony?
Aesthetic context
In what ways does Tarantino make use of popular music on the soundtrack?
How does the film treat violence? How explicitly is it shown? Is this what you would expect from a film that invokes the spirit of “pulp fiction?”
How does the film use color?
Do you recall any particularly striking camera work?
In what ways does the film allude to other films?
Genre context
Is this a genre film?
How many different genre conventions/influences can you recall from the film?
What are your generic expectations of a film that calls itself Pulp Fiction?
Is this film an example of “camp?”
Rhetorical context
Is this film a pure entertainment, as you might expect from a film that invokes the spirit of “pulp fiction,” or does it have a rhetorical agenda?