L.A. Alchemy
In Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry, his 2021 booklength sonnet sequence, David Beach blew the locks off cinema’s greatest mystery, demonstrating that the Pulp Fiction briefcase contains a time machine – and thereby revealed it as also cinema’s best joke (Butch’s watch hidden from the prison guards, the film concealing a timepiece from viewers).
Now, in the spirit of the little differences in hamburger cuisine between the United States and Europe, he offers a variant interpretation, one where Marsellus turned the dial back to halfway through the twelfth sonnet.
This version of the critique largely dispenses with thematic implications. It focuses instead on the intricate brilliance (watchmaker’s fantasy) of the logic by which the film establishes that the briefcase has to be, what at first seems so surprising, a laptop Tardis. Notably here the sequence demolishes the beguiling but fool’s gold theory that the briefcase is a ‘MacGuffin’, no more than a plot device and its contents irrelevant. And as well the sequence solves the film’s other great mystery, why Vincent is shown twice on the crapper.
1.
Pulp Fiction begins and ends with the
restaurant incident where Honey Bunny
and Pumpkin are brought to the realisation
that day jobs mightn’t be so bad. Between
times the film shows the events which have
led gangsters Jules and Vincent to also
happen upon this eatery. And we peer
into the future – witness Vincent being
shot dead, and the rape of the gangsters’
boss, Marsellus. The film closes with Jules
and Vincent pausing at the checkout as
if looking for someone to pay, then
jamming their guns down their beach attire
and exiting to a flourish of surf rock.
2.
Vincent (John Travolta) is surely
cinema’s most engaging cold-blooded
killer. When he strides away into the
Los Angeles sunshine it has to wring
a pang from the viewer to know that
such a mixture of logic-relishing
curiosity and goofy candour will
soon be lost to darkness. Yet quite as much
as the ending dramatizes Vincent’s
fate, it clamours for the viewer to note
that the gangsters are departing the
restaurant to restore to Marsellus
a mysterious briefcase, the reclaiming
of which has been their morning’s work.
3.
On regaining the case Vincent had checked
its contents. Not someone who one feels is
easily impressed, and already aware
what the contents were (or should be), he
becomes quite befuddled before assuring
Jules that they were ‘happy’. Viewers were
kept in the dark – or rather the golden
glow which the case emits. The final
restaurant scene stokes the mystery. Pumpkin
demands that Jules opens the case, pointing
a gun at him. The gun is also pointed
at the viewer – who gazing down the barrel
while told to disclose the case’s contents
might feel a sense of heightened ignorance.
4.
The mystery crescendoes some more on
Jules opening the case. Pumpkin becomes
trapped in admiration, his rapacity
overwhelmed. He asks if it’s what he thinks
it is. This gets an affirmative. He calls
it beautiful – Tim Roth’s face the picture
of someone suddenly capable of
wonderment after all these years. He can’t
hear Honey Bunny’s increasingly agog
questions about what has gone so right. But
then Samuel L. Jackson, as the poor choice
to cross even in a transitional
phase, seals the mystery at its zenith by
grabbing the gun and shutting down the show.
5.
The engaging Vincent will soon be shot
dead. Marsellus is about to get his
mysterious briefcase back. As the film
closes these are the two events which it
presses upon the viewer. And by doing
so it sets the viewer up to ask,
however idly or fleetingly: Could
Marsellus being reunited with his
briefcase somehow lead to Vincent cheating
the bullets? The question might the more
readily be asked since during the
reclaiming of the briefcase Jules and Vincent
are shown remaining unhit despite being
blasted away at from unmissable range.
6.
This episode puts Jules and Vincent
at loggerheads about whether they have
witnessed a miracle. Jules believes they
have – so much so that he resolves to quit
gangster life and walk the earth searching
for God’s purpose. He transforms from a
hoodlum who thunders Old Testament
bombast before executing people
into a hoodlum who remonstrates with
his partner for blaspheming. But even
if Jules and Vincent not being hit by the
bullets counts as a miracle, Vincent’s
future survival would be a greater
one. Because Butch’s bullets didn’t miss.
7.
We see Vincent slammed back into one of
the soundproof bathrooms popular at the time
in Los Angeles, before dead as crap. To
do him any good the briefcase would have
to contain some sort of resurrection
kit – Jules sprinkling holy water on
him, whatever else is needed, then
when he rejoins ‘the life’ saying: ‘Okay
motherfucker, you best not be telling
me that this doesn’t qualify as a
miracle’. Yet – the film does allude to
just such success against death, showing two
other of its major players – Mia and
Marsellus – return from extinguishment.