Pulp fiction, where are the classics?

"Pulp Fiction" integrates various film genres such as noir films and gangster films. Director Quentin Tarantino combines his favorite characters, plots, dialogues, props, and songs according to his own preferences. Waiting for the popular culture to melt down, this strange movie full of wonders was created. Starting from this film, independent films began to gain full recognition from mainstream films. "Pulp Fiction" cost 8 million U.S. dollars and won a global box office of 200 million U.S. dollars. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and received unanimous praise from film critics around the world. World Shinhwa and Mirame were fully acquired by Disney from independent production companies, officially entering the ranks of mainstream film production companies.

"Pulp novels" refer to novels with simple and popular content and binding. In 1935, the British Alan Lane founded the "Penguin" version of popular literature. This kind of book is often produced by mixing various discarded newspapers and books into pulp. With this title, Tarantino hints that his film is a blend of fragments from many other films and literary works. He made all serious stuff, violence, sex, politics, national wars, as easy to swallow as fast food. With Pulp Fiction, he established himself as a postmodern movie hero.

Several things that happened in "Pulp Fiction" were all related to the underworld. But these things themselves are unrelated, and there is no connection between each story. Pulp Fiction thoroughly glorifies or stylizes violence. It makes the audience realize that at this moment, you are watching the movie for entertainment. Tarantino turns violence into a joke, sex into a joke, politics into a joke, and history into a joke. Through a scene in which John Kufta and Uma Thurman twerk in a nightclub, Tarantino breezes through the history of American film, music, and dance, plus the treatment of film noir and hard-boiled novels. The indifferent attitude towards violence and evil, the character design and layout of gangster movies, the intense action of Hong Kong movies, and the confusion of miracles and reality in magical realism make the postmodern splicing of "Pulp Fiction" reach a carnival level. Tarantino himself said: "Every play I make is copied from here and there, copied here and there and then mixed together... I just plagiarize everywhere, and great artists always plagiarize." It's also fancy and full of meaning. The language of "Pulp Fiction" is also that of gangsters who casually talk about trivial issues. "Pulp Fiction" has more seemingly random collage, but it is actually a very skillful narrative structure, as well as the perspective of fate revealed in the smoothly sliding plot.

The treatment of violence in "Pulp Fiction" is one of the important reasons why the film can shine. Before committing the murder, Jules argued with someone about which hamburger was better and read a passage from the Bible; while Vincent and Jules were cleaning the car, they argued about who should clean the brains in the back seat of the car. Stylizing violence is not Tarantino's original creation. What makes Quentin Tarantino different from his predecessors is not that he is bold and direct. He deeply understands the characteristics of the era in which he lives and makes popular social trends Ingeniously combined with the reality of crime. Tarantino never talked about postmodernity, but he understood its essence. Quentin seems to want to tell us that life in the 20th century is developing rapidly, changing at a high speed, and is worthless. There is no reason or fairness in life or death. What the movie wants to tell is nothing more than trivial matters and jokes, and it is a "vulgar" book. novel".

The circular structure of the film can be described as exquisite. For ordinary viewers, this structural change always seems to be extraordinary and attracts everyone's attention at first glance. "The Usual Suspects" (The Usual Suspects) and " The success of films such as "Memento" comes from playing with narrative structure. For narrative films, a good story is as important as good storytelling. This year, films such as "Magnolia", "Babel" and "Crash" have all made great efforts in narrative techniques and film structure, and the structure itself is also the most important outstanding attribute of the above-mentioned films. Of course, only if the structure of the sleight-of-hand is tightly centered around serving the content of the film will it not become an empty flower stand. Unfortunately, there are also many films that are slick for the sake of sleight-of-hand.

For the film "Pulp Fiction", its disordered structure is more like a necessity than its plot - that is to say, if the plot arrangement of the film were replaced by other, such as sequential structures, it would not be the same. The narration will definitely make the film itself look bloated and lose its dramatic effect. Of course, this structure itself is just a container. The protagonists that make this film a classic are the dialogue lines, black humor elements and the story arrangement of strange events that happen to the characters in ordinary genre films.

The lines are the first contributor to the success of this film. The dialogues and personal monologues of the characters in the film take up a lot of time. These lines not only create vivid characters, but also are the main driving force for the development of the film's plot. Even the most casual dialogue in the film has its own specific meaning. They either pave the way for subsequent plots or have some kind of metaphor.

When the boxer did not lose the match as promised, but quickly killed his opponent in the boxing ring and returned home, his girlfriend was waiting anxiously. When she saw the boxer coming back, her girlfriend said, "I saw in the mirror "I really want to have a big round belly." The boxer leaned over and said, "You will have it." "If I had a round belly," the girlfriend continued, "I would wear a T-shirt two sizes too small." To show my belly." After a scene, the girlfriend then commented, "Unfortunately, what we think is beautiful is not the same thing."...

The above dialogue reflects the lines of the film. Exquisite, if you follow the routine of general genre films, when the boxer returns home, he should tell his girlfriend what he did and how he did it, retell the plot that the audience already knows, and then discuss the next plan. Tarantino arranged such a dialogue here, cleverly highlighting the relationship between the two, directly describing the boxer's girlfriend and further portraying the boxer's inner world. Such a dialogue setting is both unconventional and consistent with the overall style of genre characters rather than genre events that the film has always adhered to. All the characters that appear in the film are common in crime movies, including gangsters, powerful boxers, etc., but the events they experience are different from the settings of general genre films. Various black humorous plots and the film's exquisite lines make "Pulp Fiction" a film that never tells jokes but makes the audience laugh often.

For example, in the film, the boss’ girlfriend takes too many drugs, and Vincent sticks a needle into her heart at the drug dealer’s house to inject epinephrine. This is one of the more stomach-churning scenes in the film, but a University of Virginia study showed that viewers mostly laughed while watching it. This is of course due to Tarantino's careful arrangement. Prior to this episode, Vincent saw the drug dealer's wife, a woman covered in piercings, and had a conversation with her about piercings. When the needle was inserted later, the camera did not directly describe the process of the needle entering the chest, which relieved the tension of the audience to a certain extent, and the boss's girlfriend jumping up like an electric shock was funny enough, reminding me of the previous drug dealer's wife. Puncture, we will feel that she just punctured a needle in the chest.

This kind of unique black humor is also everywhere in the film, such as a boxer using a samurai sword, a gang boss being played by a rock shop owner, Vincent accidentally blasting Stoudemire and so on. And these seemingly bloody scenes are cleverly packaged and become more acceptable to people and even have comedic effects.

From the very beginning, the film seems to have been deliberately intended to become a topic of conversation. From the mysterious suitcase to Jules's every reference to the Bible, it seems that it has a profound meaning but is kept secret. For at least a year after the film was released, it became the center of public discussion about the film. After winning the Palme d'Or in Cannes, the film proved itself to be a classic and put Tarantino on the list of great masters.