Pulp Fiction: How to Tell an Unremarkable Story
1994 was a magical year in the movie industry, a year full of great films, including The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump, Léon, True Lies, Masks, Legends of the Fall, Interview with the Vampire, Speed, The Lion King, etc. Both quality and quantity in 1994 surpassed other years. Even almost 30 years later, we can still see them as classics.
When Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) won the Palme d 'Or at Cannes and was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and best director, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Pulp Fiction must have something unique to win the prize, but even today, many audiences still need to learn what's good about Quentin's film.
Non-linear narrative and postmodernism
Start with Pulp Fiction's Oscar win for best original screenplay. The traditional film script is generally derived from the classic three-part structure of the stage play. The three parts can be summarized as "preparation," "conflict," and "resolution." The length of the three parts is usually 25% for the first and third parts and 50% for the second part.
Titanic, Avatar, Terminator, and other classic Hollywood films, which we are familiar with, generally adopt the most traditional three-part structure, and the storyline is also linear. However, Pulp Fiction is an exception. Director Quentin Tarantino tells the story circularly, which makes the ordinary story mysterious.
Quentin Tarantino
Pulp Fiction (1994) tells three primary stories: Vincent Vega & Marsellus Wallace's Wife, The Gold Watch, and The Bonnie Situation. Quentin and his creation of a non-linear narrative script dispel the traditional narrative structure, and he breaks the three main stories into 15 segments and mixes them through three essential items: Suitcase, drugs, and watch.
The timeline is scrambled so that all the stories can be narrated independently, giving each story a different meaning. This arranging the story makes it surprising and unpredictable about where the story will go and who will be the main character, because each person is the main character in their own story and becomes the background in others' stories.?
The main character and plot line of traditional three-act films does not exist in this film. Each character and story is a piece of the puzzle, and they put together a movie with a very typical post-modern style.
When two characters in different stories meet
The plot of the couple robbing a restaurant at the film's beginning is not like the traditional plot but is decided by the characters accidentally. After the prologue, the audience sees the fragmented scenes, narrative, and lines.
However, once the audience realizes that these "fragments" can be sorted, collaged, imagined, and reproduced according to their understanding, these fragmented scenes and lines that seem to be meaningless will be full of interest, allowing the audience to have infinite space for the association, and simple stories will become complicated and many pointless things will become meaningful.
Destiny and redemption
Although Pulp Fiction (1994) is full of unexpected anti-climax, Quentin still puts in a lot of fatalism and self-redemption, which deepens the film's mystery.?
Perhaps the most impressive scenes are Samuel L. Jackson's Jules reciting the Bible twice. The first time Jules repeated the Bible, a miracle happened, and he and Vincent survived getting shot. After that, he was even stronger in his faith, and by the time he recited the Bible again to two robbers in a restaurant, he sounded like a preacher. In the movie, he and his partner Vincent are the only two with a good ending.
If you want to watch Pulp Fiction online, it is now available to stream on Amazon after purchase or rent.
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