|
The setting is late 1994. I was a high schooler muddling through my junior year and, as far as I was concerned, movies were okay. Nothing more. Maybe once in a while I would catch the occasional Stallone bloodletter, but otherwise I was too busy getting beaten up by jocks. Then one fine day I got wind of the weekend's blue- ribbon prestige release, something called Pulp Fiction. I had heard rumblings about it having won the big prize over at the Cannes Film Festival, but, to a guy who had never seen a subtitled movie, that was a lesser deal than which episode of Beavis and Butthead was on that night. To add insult to the injury, its nominal star was none other than John Travolta, at the time the epitome of uncool, an icon from the distant '70s gone flabby one after too many talking-baby comedy. Going to a Travolta movie back then was still something you didn't go bragging about, no matter how many trophies were on the movie's mantel. Still, I wanted to see it. The ads promised something different, and the promotion campaign had been intriguing enough to pique my interest -- after all, I didn't want to be the one person who had not seen it when the fellas were yakking about it Monday morning. So I plunked down my $4.50 for the ticket (boy, am I really dating myself here), sat down, and Pulp Fiction came on. To use a technical term, I was knocked off my ass. An opening act ending in freeze-frame before throbbing opening credits. Mundane conversations about cheeseburgers leading to casual murder. Moods swinging like pendulums in the middle of a scene. Hypodermic needles. Glowing suitcases. Gimps. Grace. Redemption. For somebody raised on Police Academy and Friday the 13th, everything was on an altogether otherworldly level. Its concentrated creative intensity nearly burned this greenhorn's eyes -- it was too much to absorb in one sitting. The overwhelming feeling I experienced during the screening was, I would later realize, my notions of cinema being forcibly, brutally enlarged. From one moment to the next, film to me went from an excuse to doodle around on Saturday nights to not simply an art form, but the art form. One of the most appealing aspects of Pulp Fiction was its rampant cinephilia. A voracious movie, thriving on its contextual references, it seemed to funnel every single movie into one jubilant package -- from Warner Bros. thrillers and European art film to kung-fu headbusters, and more. (According to tastemakers, this fearlessly eclectic quality keeps it from being "pure" cinema. Perhaps. But, to quote Andrew Sarris, film, like water, gets its taste from its impurities.) It was also the first time I realized movies don't just happen by turning a camera on and pointing it at something so that stuff sticks to the film. For instance, the traveling shot following Travolta and Uma Thurman as they saunter into a memorabilia-strewn diner was possibly the first time I noticed the orchestration of a camera movement. In one fell swoop, the presence of a director in a film was made dazzlingly visible to my virginal mind. I emerged from the theater feeling indescribably elated, as if I had been living in the dark all my life and the windows had just been smashed open. It was a feeling of freedom, because everything seemed possible. Here was a film that had first shown me the heights of which cinema is capable of, injecting the movie bug directly into my bloodstream.
I have seen Pulp Fiction several times over the years, and it has continually been my personal fountain of youth -- I
always come out of it feeling rejuvenated. If anything, I like it more now than I did when I first saw it, because now I am
able to combine fanboyish drool with critical analysis. It is far from the greatest film ever made, no doubt about that.
Personally, however, it is invaluable. It marked a turning point in my life, a time when doors were opened and I was
thrust violently into the world of movies. It was a shock only a truly groundbreaking film could provide, and to this day I
owe it my journalistic interests. Over the years, I have experienced this kind of shock with many other, far greater films:
Faust, The Rules of the Game, Vertigo, The Searchers, Ordet, Sansho the Bailiff, 8 1/2, Raging Bull. But with film,
like with sex, the first time always holds a special place in your heart.
|