If the Circles Don’t Get You the Rectangles Will
Pulp Fiction is a cornucopia of geometry, at least if your interest is circles and rectangles. Clocks preside over the circular contingent, here not symbolising the passage of time so much as (because the time machine is always liable to return you to somewhere previous) its failure to pass. As for rectangles there is of course the briefcase. Even more fundamental though is the gimp’s hutch, or as it might be called coffin. For when he is woken up what does that represent except how the dead, should Marsellus travel to a time between their birth and their demise, are reanimated? That Maynard is a bit doubtful about Zed’s instruction to wake the gimp seems a hint that more is on the table here than some unfortunate’s repose being disturbed.
There are rectangles and there are circles, and then there are rectangles upon circles, otherwise known as cars in their yank-tank manifestation. Taking their cue from clocks, car wheels do not take you anywhere. This is the significance of cars serving as booths at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. It is also signified by the fate of the three autos we see most of: one is in a road accident; one smashes into a house; and the last ends up in a compactor. Their rectangular, coffin-like aspect is most evident in the scenes involving Marvin: his head being blown off; the bits of skull and associated gore which then shine a light on the gangsters’ cleaning prowess; head restored, the glimpse of him in the boot (a rectangle inside a rectangle).
Also worth noting here is the scene where Vincent drives the near-death Mia to Lance’s house. ‘Don’t die on me, Mia’, he says – exactly how someone might address a car if it was threatening to expire. Conflating humans and their technology is a key part of the film’s dystopian vision. The viewer is invited to consider how long humans are going to be able to keep ahead of the bots. By placing his humans in a maze of circles and rectangles Tarantino fixes them as cyphers in a machine, or more precisely, given that it’s a binary setup, a computer
With AI being the apocalypse around the corner, it starting to seem that the only question whether we will be exterminated or enslaved, this is all obviously extremely topical. It didn’t need people realising that the briefcase contained a time machine for Pulp Fiction to encapsulate the end times turn-of-the-millennium mood. The present though does seem exactly the right moment for appreciating the movie’s full force. Now surely, with film-making itself, like every other creative endeavour, being encroached upon by AI, is the time to recognise the manner in which Pulp Fiction captures the zeitgeist with its time machine as metaphor for how humans have lost the way forward.
October 6, 2025
