Psychic disturbance and the power of 'Pulp Fiction'

By Jason Tedjasukmana

JAKARTA (JP): Imagine turning over a rock and finding that the weevils underneath are all wielding 9mm handguns. Such a sensation awaits viewers of Pulp Fiction, a long-awaited release that will rescue Jakartans from the summer movie malaise drowning the city.

Winner of the Palme D'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Pulp Fiction has caused just as much hoopla among American teenagers and senators alike since its stateside release last October.

Taking inspiration from the crime fiction stories of the 1930s and 40s, Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, True Romance) serves up one of the seamiest depictions of the Los Angeles underworld since Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.

Pulp Fiction, the second film both written and directed by Tarantino, is three stories intertwined into a hazy, cosmic whirl that approaches a drug-induced trip. The movie lures you deep into the twisted psyches of several small-time criminals that spring out of one of Hollywood's most fertile imaginations.

The film opens with Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth discussing their lunch-time revelation that crooks never think to knock off diners -- a cash-laden, low-risk alternative to the routine liquor store and gas station.

From there we're introduced to a couple more thugs with considerably larger firearms. Convinced that he's been double- crossed, crime boss Marsellus Wallace (played by Ving Rhames) sends Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) to retrieve his stolen briefcase, the contents of which are never revealed. The encounters that follow are something Tarantino likens to a work of fine art:

"I like the idea of working on a large canvas. I like the idea of playing with the rules that apply to novels and applying them to cinema because I think the translation can be very cinematic. One thing that certain novelists do that I really get a kick out of, like Larry McMurty or J.D. Salinger, is to have characters float in and out of all their books."

Superfly

At 32-years-old, Tarantino already appears to be a veteran in the gangster film genre. But where his much-acclaimed first film Reservoir Dogs owed more to the plodding pace of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and Jean Paul Melville's Bob le Flambeur, two ground-breaking classics of the 1950s, Pulp Fiction looks to the blaxpoitation flicks of the 1970s circa Cleopatra Jones and Superfly for gritty texture, abusive language and a funked-out soundtrack.

Tarantino brilliantly uses a melange of styles, stories and music to create an undefinable time period. Characters that look like they just stepped out of Saturday Night Fever (one of the many Travolta films that Tarantino admires) are endowed with, or cursed by, a nineties sensibility. Lead characters from one segment play supporting roles in others. Despite the mayhem, the scenarios converge to form a plausible story of tragic black comedy proportions.

Tarantino intensifies the film's already macabre atmosphere through unexplained insertions of unsavory characters and disturbing sequences that ferment in the viewers' imaginations (witness The Gimp, a muzzled human being allowed to live for sadomasochistic rituals; and Jody, a character played by Rosanna Arquette with more holes in her body than the Trevi Fountain).

Each crime committed, however, is not without it consequences, and the director goes to great lengths to steer clear of the standard Hollywood treatment. "Let's say you're being chased by the cops, and you yank somebody out of the car to get away, but maybe their seat belt gets stuck, or maybe they drive a stick and you don't. Its the messy little things that are actually funny." Tarantino adds, "I wanted to stay in that moment. I like not making it easy by cutting away."

Le Big Mac

Long takes and intense close-ups draw the viewer in to an uncomfortably close range, as if dropping the microscope down on the shallow end of the gene pool. In one scene, Vincent explains to his partner Jules the international cachet of the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, which the McDonalds in Paris have elevated to a more sophisticated Royale with Cheese. "They changed the name because they got the metric system over there," reasons Jules, clearly amused by this gem of French logic.

Working such insipid conversations into one bizarre situation after another, Tarantino creates a world that straddles reality and disbelief. The characters resemble the loser-next-door while also assuming larger than life personalities. Samuel Jackson (Jungle Fever, Die Hard with a Vengeance) deserves special mention for his riveting performance as Jules, a henchman possessed by the wrath of God. Looking badder than Shaft in his navy suit and nappy hair, Jules is partial to the fire and brimstone rhetoric of Ezekiel, from which he mercilessly recites before sending his victims on to the next life.

Tarantino's script of highly-stylized, off-kilter dialog carries the film briskly, though it consequently leaves the viewer distant from any recognizable reality. The detached feeling is reinforced by some fantastic sets, most notably the sprawling 50s-inspired eatery called Jack Rabbit Slim's. David Wasco, who also worked on Reservoir Dogs, designed the set, which can only be described as an Arnold's on acid. Tim Roth and Harvey Keitel also returned to work with Tarantino, whose ability to assemble such a powerful cast of actors (including Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken and Uma Thurman) is a testament to his new stature as one of Hollywood's hottest properties.

Ultimately, Tarantino elevates pop culture and a retro- fascination with the 70s to psychedelic heights, a trend much in vogue with today's Hollywood establishment (see, not literally, The Brady Bunch Movie, Addams Family, etc.) Joining the directorial ranks of such enormous young talents as Hal Hartley and Nick Gomez, Tarantino has undeniably injected new life into mainstream Hollywood and its factory of formulaic action thrillers. Call it a celebration of the mindless or the new wave of American cinema, Pulp Fiction has clearly staked out a territory of its own.