Pulp Fiction at 30: Quentin Tarantino’s masterwork remains electric

The 1994 follow-up to Reservoir Dogs is a remarkable act of alchemy, winning over both arthouse and multiplex audiences like nothing else before it

Opening Pulp Fiction with the literal two-part definition of “pulp” is a wink and a nudge on writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s part, funny in retrospect when the first definition (“a soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter”) aptly describes the pieces of brain and skull that are accidentally splattered across the back of a 1974 Chevy Nova. Perhaps Tarantino felt some need to offer the audience a formal introduction to the type of low-down genre trash that had always existed outside the mainstream, in lurid dimestore paperbacks or filthy grindhouse theaters. This was not going to be a typical contender for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, let alone the actual winner.

Yet there’s a swagger to Pulp Fiction that makes you believe Tarantino, a true moviemaking savant, could see the film’s future laid out in front of him – the Palme d’Or, the screenplay Oscar, the crossover into a genuine pop culture phenomenon. The transition from the opening scene, where a couple of outlaws resolve to rob an entire Los Angeles diner at breakfast, to the snarling surf rock of Dick Dale’s rendition of Misirlou over the credits feels like Kurt Cobain playing the riff to Smells Like Teen Spirit. Its electricity is that undeniable and surely Tarantino himself must have known it. The film radiates confidence.

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