Quentin Tarantino's films are always full of existentialism.
Existence refers to the existence of man, or the existence of the will to live. Of course, things that do not have life consciousness also exist, wind, rain, water, stones, water cups, flower pots, bicycles, clothes, and other organic and inorganic things are all inanimate consciousness beings.
According to Schopenhauer's theory of will, inanimate conscious beings, plants, animals, and people have a higher level of intention than the former. Due to the different degrees of intention of these beings, this leads to different phenomena in these beings. The problem of existentialism, to put it simply, is the question of what man is, why he lives, how he should live, and how one person's life relates to another person's life.
That is, a forced choice is not a pure choice.
The choice emphasizes the subjectivity and initiative of man, and this choice is pure and pure, and the so-called pure and pure is that it does not come from the value interference of the secular world, nor from the influence of the concept of the other, it belongs only to the subject itself, not to the other.
People who live according to worldly ideals and worldly feelings, although they are freed from the loneliness of free people, they become each other's hell.
This is what Sartre called the other, hell.
Taking Quentin's "Pulp Fiction" as an example, Quentin set up two choices for people to complete existence in the movie, one is the choice of ordinary people, and the other is the choice of extraordinary people.
Ordinary people's choice: Blair and Martha are partners, and Blair and Martha have a dispute over money, so the sent Juss, Vincent and Blair have become each other's hell.
Little White Rabbit and Pumpkin happened to rob the restaurant where Jus and Vincent dined for personal gain, Jus and Vincent became each other's hell, Vincent bought high purity for private pleasure, Martha's wife faced death after smoking, if Martha's wife died, Vincent had to pay the price, so Vincent and Martha's wife became each other's hell, Martha wanted to bribe Butch to play fake punches, and Butch cheated Martha's money for his ideals and his wife's happiness and escaped, So Martha and Butch became each other's hell.
From this point of view, the choices made around each of them' personal desires and private demands are not really real, which is a significant feature of secular ideals and worldly feelings, so they become their own hells with each other.
As far as the choice of the extraordinary man is concerned, the extraordinary man is the man who transcends worldly ideals and worldly feelings, who neither acts according to his own personal likes and dislikes and private desires, nor does he live according to worldly rules and worldly values.
His spiritual consciousness is the product of continuous cultivation and continuous awareness, so he no longer has the interests of ordinary people, the thinking of ordinary people, the emotions of ordinary people, the behaviors and choices of ordinary people.
The religious leaders, great men and cultural giants of history belong to this category, and since such people are no longer controlled by personal likes and dislikes and private desires, nor are they bound by secular rules and worldly values, they are alone, so they grasp their own existence, they grasp their own existence, so they are lonely.
And those who imitate him and follow him, they are both their own paradise and the paradise of others. Overall, there doesn't seem to be a very human choice in Pulp Fiction, because everyone here seems to be a person subject to money, what and sexual temptation. They all seem to be ordinary people, and since they are ordinary people, it is inevitable that they will become each other's hell.
However, there are several very human choices in the movie. That is, such a choice makes both sides each other's paradise. One is that Butch could have chosen to escape but chose to rescue Martha. One is that Juss could have chosen to kill the pumpkin but chose to let him go. One is that Vincent could have chosen to give up the shock of Martha's wife but chose to save her. One is that Jimmy could have refused to help Juss dispose of the body, but helped him. These actually indicate very human choices.
Extraordinary human choices are actually choices that abandon selfish personal interests and personal desires. Butch abandons his personal grudge with Martha to save Martha, and Martha forgiving Butch for abandoning his personal grudge, so the two sides create heaven for each other with extraordinary human choices. Vincent abandons the mentality of coping with work and saves Martha's wife, who thanks Vincent for saving her life and chooses not to tell Vincent, so the two sides create heaven for each other with extraordinary human choices.
Jimmy abandons his wife's concerns about divorcing him and chooses to help Juss, who chooses to understand Jimmy's situation and quickly disposes of the body, so that the two sides' very human choice becomes each other's paradise. Joss got rid of his humiliating resentment and chose to forgive Pumpkin, and Pumpkin also abandoned his endless desires to choose to respect Jus's principles, so that the very human choice between the two sides became each other's paradise.
In order to better illustrate the problems of human existence, Quentin used symbolic methods: money and sex refer to worldly ideals and worldly feelings; guns, violence, accidents, blood, and fighting refer to the harm, misunderstanding, fighting, hatred, death caused by ordinary people's choices to each other, that is, hell; Martha and Martha's wife, Jimmy and Bonnie, Butch and Butch's girlfriend, pumpkin and little white rabbit symbolize the harmony, happiness, freedom, love and new life brought about by the choice of extraordinary people, that is, heaven.
The same movie and "Pulp Fiction" reflect this feature.
That is to say, in Quentin's eyes, the name means the existence of a person, with a name, he is a person, and since he is a person, he has the ability to independently perceive, think and live.
There is no protagonist in Quentin's films, or everyone is a protagonist.
In real life, the same is true, ordinary people are accustomed to infinitely enlarging their own thoughts, opinions, thoughts, emotions, and emotions, but ignoring the thoughts, opinions, deaths, emotions, and emotions of people they do not know.
People seem to have this experience in reality, you may be angry at the other party's unintentional words, but you can ignore the death toll of earthquakes, traffic, mining accidents, and major safety accidents. The reason for this contrast is that people are accustomed to amplifying their worldly feelings and worldly desires, and they cannot understand and treat human existence with extraordinary human thoughts, hearts and emotions like Quentin, Sartre, Tolstoy, Confucius, Jesus, Andyamuni.
I have to say that this is the unique place of Quentin's film style, which is also the place where the film thinking is different from other directors, perhaps in the eyes of other directors, it seems that only the protagonist is a living person, the protagonist's emotions, thinking and choices are the most important, and the supporting role is only a supporting role, a prop that is extracted from the emotional color and thinking spirit.
Quentin believes that the time of each character shown in the film is long and short, but this does not mean that the person with a high appearance rate is a specific and complete person, and the person with a low appearance rate is a puppet without spirit and no emotion. Quentin's films actually reflect the actual existence of people, according to Quentin and the existentialist point of view: everyone in real life, who can say who is the protagonist, who is the supporting role? Obviously, no.
Everyone has the ability to think independently, perceive independently, experience independently, make independent choices, and act independently. In the existence of human beings, there is no theory of protagonists and supporting roles, only the theory of interconnection and mutual influence. That is to say, each person's choice will affect the other's choice, and the other's choice will in turn affect their own life trajectory. Quentin's films are actually allegorical lives, and the characters in Quentin's films seem to have words and talk about very trivial, everyday and even trivial things.
This actually represents the state of life of people in reality, and don't people in reality live in trivial and daily things such as eating, drinking, sleeping, eating, living, living, and playing?
Quentin's movie in each character talks about nothing around the so-called unified movie theme of this thing, the movie role is everyone's shadow, the movie people talk about burgers, talk about gossip, talk about husband and wife relationship, talk about bed sheets, talk about troubles, talk about coffee, talk about punctures, talk about sex, why aren't people in reality talking about home, talking about work, talking about children, talking about mother-in-law relationship, talking about shopping, talking about cosmetics, talking about cooking, talking about gossip? In this way, in fact, life is talk, and words are life.
This is a part of human existence, and the second part is choice, which is also the most prominent place of dramatic contradictions, and it is also a reference to real life.
When Jus pointed a gun at the pumpkin, the little white rabbit pointed a gun at Jus, and Vincent pointed a gun at the little white rabbit, the four people were choosing, Juss could choose to shoot or not to shoot, the pumpkin could choose to resist or not resist, the little white rabbit could choose to shoot or not to shoot, Vincent could choose to shoot or not to shoot, and each choice would be related to and affect the fate of the four people present, that is, the existence of people.
Suppose, if Juss chooses to shoot first, the little white rabbit chooses to shoot later, and Vincent finally chooses to shoot, excluding unexpected factors such as misfire, dud, and inaccurate shooting, then the final survival may be Vincent, if Vincent chooses to shoot first, then the person who survived may be Vincent, Jus, and pumpkin.
If the little white rabbit chooses to shoot first, Win Vincent and then shoot, then it may be Vincent and Pumpkin who survived. If the little white rabbit chooses to point the gun at Vincent, then it will involve a different fate and life existence.
This is just a manifestation of choosing to reach the extreme of the contradiction, and the same is true for the entire plot of the movie, the movie begins with the little white rabbit and the pumpkin choosing to rob or not to rob, Juss faces Blair's gang choosing to kill or not to kill, Blair's accomplice hidden behind the door is choosing to shoot or not to shoot, Vincent chooses not to take the gun to question Marvin's theological problems, Jimmy's wife Bonnie chooses to go home early from work, Butch's father chooses not to hide the watch, Butch chooses to fake punch or not to fake punch, The taxi driver chooses not to tell Butch, Martha chooses not to chase butch, Butch chooses whether to get the watch, Vincent chooses not to go to the toilet in Butch's house, Martha chooses not to forgive Butch... The same is true in reality, where the fate and existence of each person is related to both his own choices and the choices of others.
That is, everyone decides on each other in their choices.
Facing nothingness does not mean facing meaninglessness, and nothingness is not meaninglessness.
Whether one is serious or not, whether one is serious or not, or not, marks the premise of whether one is rational and mature enough to recognize the truth of the world, society, and man. The universe is nothing, so there are galaxies, nebulae, and stars, because nothingness accommodates the existence of all things in the universe, if there is no nothingness, but entity, fullness, then there is no space that contains all kinds of material worlds.
All matter in the universe is based on nothingness, and nothingness gives matter a space to exist. Society is also based on nothingness, human society is born out of the inanimate material world, for what kind of social form to build, how to build social form is the process of human beings in the long history of continuous exploration and accumulation of experience, human society before the birth of no unique, certain standards and principles to follow the implementation.
The free development of human society from the initial unconscious term of office to the later conscious construction of an ideal social system through social revolution is a process from scratch.
So everything arises from nothingness, not from reality. For the individual person, it is even more from nothingness, as a conscious life, he arises from the unconscious material world, when the individual life ages, dies, and decays and then returns to the unconscious material world. For man, it is also a process from nothingness to existence, and then from existence to nothingness.
When people's choices are also made in the face of nihilistic values and ideas, talent is the true existence. This truth is obvious, and "reality" means that man does not make his own choices, but only reads according to the things that have been pre-infused.
Dogmatic ethics and secular justice, although of social significance, are not autonomous and authentic choices after the awakening of the subject consciousness, and subjectivity is thus lost in non-authentic choices. Unless, of course, man does something without any value indoctrination or moral discipline that makes him a righteous man, a moral man.
(Author: Li Peng)