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.
Tarantino is an architect and an alchemist. The same instinct that has led him to curate his career to precisely 10 features before retirement informs the ingenious, achronological structure of Pulp Fiction.
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... feels like Kurt Cobain playing the riff to Smells Like Teen Spirit.
It’s in his mixing-and-matching of high and low influences that Tarantino stands apart, suggesting the diet of a VHS hound who could include early Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Melville in the same binge as crude exploitation pictures.
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