Pulp Fiction is a controversial film, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, in 1994. It has almost everything you could wish for in a movie; drama, hilarity, intensity, action, thrills, fun, intelligence, romance, intimacy, over-the-top bravado, vulgarity, sweetness, humor, and soul-searching. The film is very raw and brutal, but has a unique sense of style that keeps the viewers entertained. It will build its way up gradually to an incredibly intense scene, before dropping down to a relatively calm, only to build back up again a few scenes later. This goes on throughout the entire course of the film, pummeling the viewer from one scenario to another.
In Pulp Fiction we see how Vincent (John Travolta) and the dealer are bringing Mia (Uma Thurman) back to life, after she had an overdose. In a medium shot the dealer explains to Vincent what to do. While the dealer is counting to three, the camera zooms into even tighter close ups of Vincent and Mia's face, the needle where the adrenaline is dribbling off, and the dealer and his pierced girlfriend's face. This effect is used to show how nervous the dealer is, how much his pierced girlfriend enjoys this spectacle, and how afraid Vincent is. The spectator is able to identify with all these emotions.
According to the feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey, one of the most important pleasures of the classical narrative is identification. This is send to occur when the spectator narcissistically identifies with an idealized figure on screen, typically a male hero whose actions determine the narrative, in a process that recapitulates the discovery of the image of oneself in the mirror phase. For the scene just discussed, the idealized figure is Vincent, whom the spectators personally identifies with.
Then, to even increase the tension of this extraordinary scene, the camera zooms into the place where the needle has to push in, while there is no noise at all. As Vincent pushes the needle down, the camera shows Mia's opening eyes in a close up shot, while the diegetic sound of the needle stabbed in her heart makes us believe that we have seen the crucial moment. The graphic violence of how the needle is pushed into her heart is again elliptical. In a medium shot we then see Mia screaming.
Nevertheless, Quentin Tarantino's films show plenty of violence. In Pulp Fiction there is for example a homosexual rape, the hit-men killing their victims, and a man having his head accidentally shot off in a car.
Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” is one of my favorite movies of all-time, it is about gangsters as well as everyday people struggling to get out of the dire situation they are in. In the final scene Ringo, a common criminal, is robbing a Diner. Jules just happens to be in this Diner, and Jules is one of the meanest gangsters in the city. Ringo and Jules have a confrontation in the Diner and eventually Jules is holding Ringo at gunpoint. Instead of killing him, he tries to convey a message to Ringo. In this message he uses logos, pathos and ethos to explain to Ringo that he is trying to transform from an evil man into a righteous one.
the scene. Moving to the different shot types used in this ending scene, the recovery
Though not a specified film genre within the list of twenty-three, violence can be seen within each and everyone. It can be seen within the very first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), to the escalation of the 1970s within the hands of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, just to...
The second scene of the film opens up to Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield drivi...
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey asserts the fact that in mainstream films, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. That is to say, the woman is both an object of desire and a spectacle for the male voyeuristic gaze. The male's function is active; he advances the story and controls the gaze onto the women. Interestingly, the spectator identifies with the male through camera technique and style. In an effort to reproduce the so-called natural conditions of human perception, male point-of-view shots are often used along with deep focus. In addition, camera movements are usually determined by the actions of the male protagonist. Consequently, the gaze is dominated by the active male while the passive female exists to support desire within the film. In an attempt to change this structure, Mulvey stresses the importance of challenging the "look." One way this is accomplished, is in the film Reassemblage, where the look of the camera is free from male perspective and dominated more by passionate detachment. In doing this, the filmmaker, Trinh Minh-Ha attempts to destroy the satisfaction and pleasure derived from images of women in film, by highlighting the ways Hollywood depends on voyeuristic and fetishi...
Stone's film is extreme in every way. Extreme in its violence. Extreme in its visual imagery, flashing hyper-speed bits of reality which don't quite register in one's mind. Extreme in its sit-com presentation of an abusive family as the ordinary stuff of entertainment. Extreme in its depiction of mass-murderers revered as icons of popular culture. Extreme in the banality with which the killers approach their crime.
Camera work assists with establishing Nolan's style by giving the audience a deeper understanding of the films. Nolan's close up shots show emotion on faces, which shows the audience conflicted characters, such as Borden when Angier is drowning. Close ups also help with Nolan's tendency to place the audience directly in the mindset of characters, especially using point of view shots.
Aside from its acting, the other major influence which Mean Streets had upon American film-makers was through it's use of a rock n' roll soundtrack (almost perfectly integrated with the images), and in its depiction of a new kind of screen violence. Unexpected, volatile, explosive and wholly senseless, yet, for all that, undeniably cinematic violence. The way in which Scorsese blends these two - the rock and roll and the violence - shows that he understood instinctively, better than anyone else until then, that cinema (or at least this kind of cinema, the kinetic, visceral kind) and rock n' roll are both expressions of revolutionary instincts, and that they are as inherently destructive as they are creative. This simple device - brutal outbreaks of violence combined with an upbeat soundtrack - has been taken up by both the mainstream cinema at large and by many individual `auteurs', all of whom are in Scorsese's debt - Stone and Tarantino coming at once to mind.
There are movies that make you laugh, that make you cry, that blow you away with jaw-dropping, ever-so-satisfying action sequences. And there is Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, an homage to the old Pulp Magazines and crime novels popular in the 1950s. Known for their incredibly dense and complex dialogue and excessive violence, Tarantino adds his trademark nonlinear chronology and thorough character development to create a movie that celebrates the fact that chance governs all of our lives. The film consists of multiple stories that tell of the criminals, gangsters and outliers of Los Angeles, the underbelly of society. It follows Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield as they embark on their mission to recovering a briefcase that
I would also like to address the levels of appeal that Moyer points out in the film. Within each kind of scene, violent acts are often accompanied by sex or humor. Not only can this be used to bring a higher level of acceptance to the viewer, but it also brings a level of gratification or appeal to the scene.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey states that, “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.” (Mulvey 40). A woman’s role in the narrative is bound to her sexuality or the way she
The part when the knife was used in the shower was shot from different angles by the cameraman to get the effect of the knife slashing as if the audience was the ones getting slashed. The close-up of the water coming
video camera, of a young teenage girl. The narration reveals that she wants her father dead. The image portrayed around her is constructed as an evil, unaffectionate youth. The next scene is of a high angle shot, with a voice-over narration. The voice-over goes to explain that this is Lester Burnham’s speaking and he is already dead and the following is a construction of the relevant events. This scene holds relevance for two reasons. First it constructs an image that the young teenager in the previous scene is the killer. And as we will learn by the end of the film this image is not all that it appeared to be. This is a reoccurring theme throughout the film, that these are constructed images, and to notice that there is more to the story then what appears on the surface. The high angle spanning shot of Lester’s street also holds significance for the spectator. This opening shot is quite similar to that of Alfred Hitchcock’s opening scene in Psycho. The similar themes is the spectators being the voyeurs. In each we are looking into the private sphere of the character. However, in American Beauty our voyeuristic nature is not shameful.
In conclusion it is clear that Tarantino’s film is postmodern, and Jameson’s insightful essay stands in relation to Pulp Fiction much in the same way as a prophecy stands in relation to its fulfilment. The postmodernist Tarantino expresses in a full and technicolour form what Jameson the modernist had only partially understood in the more static arts of painting and architecture.