Task 3. Film Study:
Pulp Fiction
Pulp fiction is a film that intertwines four different stories of crime and violence in Los Angeles, California. It uses a non-linear, circular narrative to portray the stories, making it extremely unique, not only for a film of its time, but a film of all times. Pulp fiction changed how the entire world saw independent films. The popularity and profit that the movie gathered proved that an independent film could be both highly profitable – and high quality.
The film starts with a couple making the decision to rob the restaurant being robbed they are eating at, and then shifts from one storyline to the next before finishing off the movie with the conclusion to the restaurant hold up. There are seven official ‘episodes’ within the entire film making up the three storylines, titled as so:
- “Prologue – The Diner” (i)
- Prelude to “Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”
- “Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”
- Prelude to “The Gold Watch” (a – flashback, b – present)
- “The Gold Watch”
- “The Bonnie Situation”
- “Epilogue – The Diner” (ii)
Chronologically if these seven episodes were ordered to time, within each storyline, it would be shown as 4a, 2, 6, 1, 7, 3, 4b, and 5.
The plots of each storyline are as follows:
- Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, two Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque thieves decide to rob the coffee shop they are dining in.
- Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield are hitmen working for Marcellus Wallace, who is the mob kingpin of Los Angeles. They’re sent to rescue a briefcase for him and proceed to run into some trouble whilst doing so.
- Vincent Vega is ordered to take care of Marcellus’s wife, Mia whilst her husband is away for business.
- Butch Coolidge is a free fighting boxer who was paid by Marcellus Wallace to throw the next fight, but he ends up accidentally killing his opponent instead, when trying to escape town he gets hunted down by Marcellus rescuing his dead father’s lucky gold watch.
The main conflicts presented in this film can be found within each separate storyline. The main one being the intertwining lives of each of the characters and the resulting consequences of their choices and actions. While there isn’t one singular central conflict in the film, we can argue that the central conflict happens to revolve around the character, Jules Winnfield’s moral transformation and his search for meaning, which was caused by the events that happened to him in the movie.
We can see that one common theme of the conflicts that occurred was that they were caused by Vincent Vegas lack of concern of the consequences of his actions. In the first storyline, while he is in the bathroom, pumpkin and honey bunny rob the restaurant he and Jules happen to be dining in. He exits the bathroom as Jules is handling the situation, and due to his lack of trust in Jules, aims his gun at Honey Bunny, resulting in her almost losing shooting at Jules. Luckily Jules handles it well and gets out of the situation safely, but we can learn from this that Vincent doesn’t trust in anyone other than himself, which reflects on his cynicism and scepticism during Jules’s religious awakening during the second storyline.
Even when Vincent accidentally unloads his gun while pointing it at Marvin, resulting in Marvin’s head being blown off all over them in the car, he refuses to accept that he messed up, defending himself regardless of the fact that his dangerous mistake could have easily blown their covers. This contrasts with the third storyline, with him leaving deadly heroin in his jacket pocket, resulting in Mia, Marcellus’s wife overdosing and him having to save her by injecting an adrenaline shot into her heart. Eventually, his carelessness catches up to him, when he goes to the bathroom in Butch’s house in the final storyline shown in the film, leaving his gun on the kitchen counter, which ends up being his demise.
Pulp fiction consist of the themes of violence and redemption, and karma. This is presented especially in the scene when Jules and Vincent miss getting shot. Jules makes the decision to retire from Marcellus’s crew and ends up facing a redemption, and on the other hand Vincent chooses to carry on, resulting in his demise.
All the characters have some amount of development, whether it is negative or positive they all have significant changes occurring to them during the course of the movie. One example is Butch’s character, where he makes the decision to go against Marcellus and win the fight that he had made a deal to throw, making lots of money and putting a target on him and his wife’s backs. After he has an encounter with Marcellus, resulting in both of them being kidnapped and Marcellus being raped by white supremacists, he manages to escape, but Marcellus is still tied up being tortured. After a few agonising seconds he grabs a baseball bat and runs back to save Marcellus – which is against his general nature as we have seen previously, he has no regards for other people’s lives – however he makes the decision to save someone who was once his friend, showing his character development, and allowing him and his wife to live out the rest of their lives in peace and quiet.
The cinematography in pulp fiction is very unique in the way that it employs the use of certain shots in order to draw the audience’s attention to specific details of the plot. For example, the use of low angle shots in order to create a sense of dominance and power for specific characters – such as the scene when Butch sees Marcellus after he double crosses him by not throwing the fight after he made a deal with him that he would. The scene starts with a low angle-long shot of the zebra crossing, employing a sense of tension and immersion in the audience, and we see Marcellus make eye contact with Butch, and the camera zooms in on their expressions, allowing us to get a glimpse of the betrayal, anger, and fear in their expressions. The soundtrack that Pulp Fiction uses is a creation of its time and shows the influence that the time period had on the movie. A lot of the songs used debuted for the movie specifically, and quickly rose on the charts due to the fame of the film itself.
One of the main things I noticed in pulp fiction was that a lot of the film coincided with Christianity – which was of cultural and historical significance during the time period that the film was made. The character of Marcellus can be seen as an allegory for Satan, the devil himself. This is shown by the way he is head of the ‘underworld’ in Los Angeles. He tempts the other characters, his underlings, with tales and promises of power and wealth, which is seen in the scene where he bribes Butch in order to get him to throw his fight. Additionally, the code for the safe which Vincent and Jules worked so hard and killed so many people to get, was 666, allowing speculation for the contents of the safe to be Marcellus’s own soul. There is an ongoing theory that Marcellus sold his soul to the devil for his own empire, and the movie itself supports this, as he consistently wears a bandage on his neck, which is where his soul is theorised to have been taken out from.
Other Christian motifs are seen in the way that Jules uses the quote from Ezekiel 25:17 before he kills someone. ‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides By the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will Shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children And I will strike down upon thee With great vengeance and furious anger Those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers And you will know my name is the Lord When I lay my vengeance upon thee’. This coincides with the historical and cultural significance of taking god’s name in vain to excuse awful behaviour. Eventually Jules grows past this and admits his wrong doings in the final scene of the movie, where he lets Honey bunny and Pumpkin go free. He used to emulate Marcellus by copying his behaviour of controlling the path of life and death. In this he could be seen as an allegory of lucifer, who betrayed God.
In this shot we see Mia Wallace overdosing on heroin, Vincent Vega has taken her to one of his friends’ houses in order to save her life. This shot shows them as they are prepping to give Mia an adrenaline shot into her heart in order to stop her from dying.
One of the main aspects in this shot is the importance of the props. Two board games that can be seen in the foreground are ‘operation’ and ‘game of life’. This foreshadows what they are about to do to her, and that they are playing life and death, with her life, and their lives if she doesn’t live through this, in fates hands. The significance of ‘game of life’ can also foreshadow how she will live through this moment.
The line of action I added to this shot displays the chaotic energy that happened in this moment. All the props in this shot, including the people are on a downwards slope from the top right corner, showing the angle that Mia is between life and death.
The colours used in this shot is reminiscent of the underworld, and hell, due to the warm fiery colours, and knowing that Mia had a hand in very many deaths due to her turning a blind eye to the many crimes her husband and the people around her were committing, we can make the deduction that she is definitely going to hell.
Additionally, if we allow the theory that Marcellus is a reincarnation of Satan himself, the audience can definitely assume that this line between life and death Mia is balancing on in this scene, will open the gates of the underworld in this particular moment.
In conclusion, pulp fiction is a masterpiece of a movie, and has a lot of hidden meanings that many people will miss in the first viewing. The non-linear narrative structure allows for confusion, but it’s resolved at the very ending, and adds for a hint of mystery, drawing the viewers in to the plot, and causing many to get pulled into and attached to the many characters and the storyline.