Quentin Tarantino
Pulp Fiction

“HE WHO LIVES BY THE SWORD DIES BY THE GUN”

If I had to give a symbolic-psychic visualization of Pulp Fiction, I would describe it as three interlocking rings in such a manner that if we were to remove one, the other two would be unlinked. The structure of the film is based on this idea: everything is seemingly disconnected, yet everything is inevitably connected. The junction point of these circles is provided by the meeting of a divine element, which we could associate with the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," juxtaposed with a material earthly element that, shamelessly, we identify in the "ass."

Proverbs, sayings, sacred extracts from the series are particularly relevant for a cross-sectional reading of the film, in addition to the one mentioned at the beginning: what goes around comes around - a word to the wise is enough - do unto others as you would have others do unto you - there's none so deaf as those who will not hear - clothes don't make the man - the sins of the father fall upon the son, etc. etc. As well as a colorful Roman saying, "in culo ti entra, in testa no!" and ending with a volleyball maxim, Cadorna's law: the harder you hit, the harder it comes back... Adapt them to the film's situations, it’s a fun exercise.

The gangster movie setting serves as an odd screen to represent the eternal struggle between good and evil, where the message is dressed in fabric that everyone can relate to, reaffirming that salvation comes through repentance and that repentance is nothing more than an awareness of how the divine mechanism works, and that we are, whether we like it or not, actively part of it. Hence, understanding how the "law" works and respecting it. The mechanism is intended to give the exact time and takes all measures if something or someone deviates from it: "There is nothing greater than God's Love."

Many shots and close-ups are blessed by Russ Meyer and the exhilarating Italian B cinema of the '70s. Our dear sociopathic director has the quality of exorcising his problem by making the dialogues material, almost tangible. Tarantino, or whoever it is for him, with a single product like Pulp Fiction, has concentrated so much stuff that compared to it, nitroglycerin seems harmless as water (the "exterminating mushroom"). There are no fillers; every second of the film is alive, alive because it is shrouded in the constant presence of death, which is exorcised with the esoteric trick of editing, giving us hope for resurrection in the end, all filtered through a perfect soundtrack. The theme of death is confronted impersonally, where we spectators do not perceive fear but unconsciously acquire the light of the Eternal.

And off it goes, play! Fast, tight, sharp, explosive, the film is a sarabande, a carousel spinning at the speed of light. Goodness holds the redemption of Jules, it's been following him closely for a while, and since it's here, why not hit two birds with one stone? No expenses spared, the lavish show of forces to also involve Vincent in the celestial project is sumptuous and brings forth a luxurious arsenal. The Almighty and his entourage, just to try snatching him from the evil, bust the budget. There's nothing to be done, Mr. Vega is downright thick-headed, maybe he doesn't watch TV. He wholeheartedly embraces almost all the proverbs mentioned earlier, pick whichever you like best.

He is made a participant in the miracle where "the hand of God moved the bullets," an attempt is made to make him aware of the iniquity of murder by "accidentally" exploding a head in the car, he's involved in the highest human privilege of giving life when he resurrects Mia Wallace from the overdose. Acknowledging the failure, the celestial spheres, instead of delivering him to the demon and to close the circle, cruelly end Vincent's earthly experience for now with a rifle, coincidentally those rifles invoked by Jules and Vincent at the beginning of the film: "We should have some rifles for situations like this..." And our beloved, thick-headed Vincent, commenting earlier on Tony Rocky Horror's incident: "But one has to admit, when you play with fire you are going to get burnt," makes it clear he gave it his all. When he meets Butch's gaze, a moment before the burst of fire sends him to the Redeemer, it's clear that the friend's sermon reached his understanding, but too late: adios amigo.

I ask you: What, was there any doubt he wouldn't win the dance contest? You'd answer: As sure as hell, he'd win! We all suffered when John Travolta, dear Tony Manero, lovely Danny from Grease, and in this case Vincent Vega died, but Tarantino doesn't pull a full outrage and delivers him back to us alive at the end of the film. We went home thinking: "Thank goodness, John Travolta is alive!" Magic of Hollywood. Only "Zed is dead, baby," only Zed is dead...

Returning to Jules, we find that he is predestined when he lets us know his girlfriend is a vegetarian (here comes the "thou shalt not kill" again), he's already an unconscious preacher with that chant he repeats before killing, and a second after escaping the bullet barrage, the Light overwhelms him, dissolving the maya veil that obscured him. From that moment on, he knows, he has reunited with the Absolute, there's no going back: he will wander for eternity, becoming a vagabond.

The Most High covers everyone, including Butch, his emotional part filled with insecurities due to the absence of a father (the harmful fruits of our genealogical tree), is compensated by the presence of a French girlfriend. Even if these two seemingly have nothing to do with each other, her sweetness is the only medicine that can benefit Butch. Fabienne is the guardian angel, and to resolve Butch's standoff, through the forgetfulness of the gold watch, she triggers a showdown, and the ways of the Lord here intertwine swiftly and violently: the storehand was sent to collect the pending matters (Apocalypse Now). The decision to go back to save Marsellus exorcises the gold watch, operating as a proper psychomagical act (A. Jodorowsky), and the further final prize, which will definitively elevate Butch to adulthood, will be the paternal absolution of Marsellus Wallace after the basement inferno: "Do you want to know what's between us two, nothing, there's nothing between us two..." Also, not a trivial matter, resolving that Oedipal dispute. The boxer is no longer "soft balls." He climbs onto the motorcycle, oops sorry, the chopper, "Grace."

The presence of the "ass" is the glue of the movie, Jules: "It's not right that Marsellus throws Antoine into a messed-up greenhouse, messing up his way of speaking. If he did that to me or it paralyzes my ass, or I'd kill him..." "Why did you try to fuck Marsellus Wallace? But he doesn't like to be fucked except by his wife." "The only thing that should come out of your ass is no problem Jules, I'll take care of this bullshit, go back inside, secure the boys, and wait for the cavalry..." Marsellus Wallace with Butch: "You see, this business is full of unrealistic idiots who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns into vinegar, it is; or if you mean it gets better with age, it's not. It's a reality of life, in front of which your ass has to be realistic." "By the fifth your ass goes down, repeat." And after the underground zigzag: "We're not through, not by a long shot! I've got a medieval cure for your ass." And then the golden watch kept for years in that place by Captain Koons, Vincent Vega killed in the toilet while he was crapping, rebalancing sodomizations galore, etc. etc.; nothing is lacking.

As for Marsellus Wallace, the boss sentences and distributes the "ass" here, "ass" there, but inevitably finds himself brutally ass-raped, yet, we're impressed, he doesn't lose his composure: "You okay? No friend, never been so far from okay..."

Mia Wallace is the one who’s worse off. We note in her a total lack of feelings, she tries to pull herself up but is barren, cold as the south pole. Watch her again in the boxing gym when they torture that guy to know where Butch is. "She was in one of those that turned into nothing" (the pilot episode). Let's all say a sincere little prayer for her, thank you.

The taxi witch Esmeralda Villa Lobos, with her appearance, only confirms what women want from us, not money nor power, they want BLOOD!

Even if the apex of pure horror is reached by Jimmie-Tarantino when just mentioning a possibility of divorce annihilates even the most ruthless killer: "Don't you realize that if Bonnie comes back now and finds that body here, I'll have to face a divorce, no marriage counselor, no trial period, I'll have to face a divorce, and I don't wanna face divorce!"

To solve this unpleasant situation, none other than the master of deception: Wolf. Who then is the most interesting character in the film, not dressed in white this time, but in an evening suit, it’s the same. Who couldn’t resist ultimately reaffirming his eternal position: "I am I, and you are no damn thing!" Marquis del Grillo permitting... Mr. "lots of sugar, lots of cream" SOLVES PROBLEMS, what more could you want...

And it's also beautiful to savor those biblical and artistic pills scattered here and there by San Quentin: at the end of the film when the two fast-food robbers leave with their tails between their legs after the holy reprimand of the newfound Reverend Jules, don't they remind us, with their punishment, of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Masaccio's terrestrial paradise? When Butch lies down on the motel bed, exhausted after the sudden escape from the boxing match, it seems to see the dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna. Expressions and postures taken straight from Caravaggio (and here I won't give direct references, find them). Jesus Christ is lent as a pusher with his modern Mary "piercing" Magdalene to suggest to Vincent the creative act of giving life.

All movements, both of the protagonists and the camera, are superbly weighed by biomechanics; the "motu animalium" is personally caught when, at the beginning of the film, the two robbers brandish their revolvers and move their arms left and right several times tracing invisible lines of energy, stop! and Misirlou by Dick Dale starts, epos surfLosangelesian...

And Mia's hand movements when tasting the milkshake are sublime, accompanied by Vincent's note as he starts rambling about the milkshake costing 5 dollars when he had spent thousands without batting an eye to buy drugs from Lance, who is irresistible when he moves possessed in his caftan, lit up by Vincent's untimely night visit.

We visualize again Jules' movements when he wipes his bloodied hands at his friend's house, who insists he doesn't have "dead nigger storage" written on his door. They are refined, ethereal, almost invisible movements of someone touched by God's Hand, unlike Vincent, who is reprimanded for dirtying the immaculate towels of Jimmie with crude and clumsy movements, of someone unable to interact with the "Light."

Blood that continues stubbornly even symbolically to remain red like ketchup in America, while in Europe, the cradle of civilization, the fries "drown them in that yellow crap." As bright red is the blood in Vincent's syringe, "Death is lemon-yellow, make a bet." (Jean Rochefort from "The Hairdresser's Husband").

And then we couldn't lack sacrificial lambs, those three young guys who didn't have luck with that seemingly trivial briefcase number combination (seen in the film). Too strong a light, really unfortunate those three, even if the Oscar of misfortune goes to "no head" negro, speechless... Even if the "negro" embodies the laziness of the world: "Marvin what do you make of all this? Dude, I haven’t formed an opinion." and BAM! off goes the head. Then I'll leave you to the pastime of trying to figure out the occult meaning of Wolf's Acura license plate.

But when one comes into contact with the false Grail (the briefcase), everyone gets burned (remember Indiana Jones?). Only Jules, clad in a fresh divine Faraday cage, will not suffer the electrocution. The others all dead or damned, the master sodomized, and progenitor-robbers expelled from Eden. Quite a mess.

Lucky our Archangel, Captain "crusader" Koons, after many anal adventures, gets the true golden Grail watch that gives the exact time back in circulation (the rings-ring from the start). Never has Christopher Walken's androgynous face been more fitting.

In summary, Pulp Fiction for me is: 1) the band-aid on Marsellus Wallace's neck, 2) Jody's expression with all that crap on her face, a moment before Mia's adrenaline injection, and 3) Between Vincent and Jules: "Do you remember...Tony Rocky Horror? Yeah, I think so, the fat one." I wouldn’t call him fat, he has a weight problem, what can he do, he’s SAMOAN..." In this general discord, in this chaos, all knots have come to a head. And then that tapping with the fingers on the crippled person's head...

We must consider with a heavy heart the overturning of harmony that triggers the alarm bell: the waitress at the "garçon" recall approaches Tim Roth and says "garçon means boy..." and to a question by Jules on why a McDonald's product is called differently in Europe, one of those three unlucky youths answers: "Because of the metric system?" We are in Kali Yuga, the era of disorder acceleration, thieves will become kings and kings will become thieves.

And that's what I am pressed to say, beyond the considerations made and acknowledging that the film is from 1994, that the event known as Pulp Fiction, putting aside the artistic merits, highlights the beginning of the blanket application of extreme neoliberal theories of everyone against everyone else and the insolence of the plutocratic system, which was previously hidden and operated through hidden manipulations. An open attack started in the early 1990s aiming to destroy national and personal identity and pollute moral and civil values, which still today are visible to all, and Pulp Fiction was one of the manifestos of the direction towards the new world order. The film makes us all "comfortably numb."

Therefore, we note that despite the film's masked appearance of wanting to give a semblance of divine justice, on the contrary, the bullslayingvictory is not apparent, the victory of good over evil, instead, I note a clear intent to show the futility of the battle. In the film's neoliberal staging (everyone against everyone), the precursors of education to insensitivity emerge: the drift is served, but what can you do, "they" are just like that... The stateless globalist financial order manifests itself with the maxim, already quoted here, of the Marquis del Grillo: "We are us, and you are not a damn thing, and from now on, we’ll do whatever the hell we want, and you can't do a damn thing." ...we'll see.

"Courage, let's get into character," glides Jules after the (spectacular!) reasoning about foot massage. And what else are the protagonists of Pulp Fiction but damned outsiders, already catechized to evil, part of a real movie already written and immersed in a sodomic sauce voted for destruction and death, directed by puppeteers who only changed the religious dress adapting the inquisition to modern times but always preaching the same thing: "Do what we tell you to do, and don't do what we do."

My five stars go to us outsiders, and to all those assholes who consider us pain-in-the-ass outsiders, I answer: don't worry, hefty news is coming, nothing like Pulp Fiction.

Vincent: "Coincidences are always there." Jules: "You're wrong; this wasn't a coincidence."

"If my answers scare you, then you should cease asking scary questions."

And if you want to try to say something... say "something," but, for the love of God, be "CONCENTRATED."

There is still so much to say, but now that's enough, or we might as well rent.

Do you like oak? Oak is beautiful...