Is Quentin Tarantino Really a MacGuffinite?
Both Wikipedia and AI are of the opinion that Quentin Tarantino has endorsed the MacGuffin theory of the Pulp Fiction briefcase – that it’s simply a plot device and its contents irrelevant. I have never come across any statement by Tarantino in which he does such endorsing and I’m sceptical that one could exist. This isn’t only because I’m a partisan of the time machine theory and feel that the facts on the screen so clearly attest to the briefcase containing a time machine that it’s hard to see how this might have happened unless Tarantino had wanted them to do so. It’s also because in a number of comments about the briefcase Tarantino has hewed to the line that viewers need to make up their own minds about it. This after all is Pulp Fiction, the film whose two main characters live to be opinionated. It hardly seems likely then that Tarantino would switch tracks and tell viewers that the business with the briefcase is a MacGuffin, which is telling them what to think quite as much as if he proclaimed the briefcase’s contents.
It’s more probable that what people have taken for endorsements are in fact Tarantino carefully avoiding laying down the law. For example, statements by Tarantino such as that he thinks it great for viewers to reach different conclusions about what’s in the briefcase are interpreted to mean that he’s giving his backing to the just-a-plot-device camp. But surely the point is that he isn’t saying what’s in the briefcase, isn’t saying that it doesn’t matter what’s in the briefcase, isn’t saying that there isn’t anything in the briefcase – he’s just saying that it’s cool with him for people to have different ideas on the subject.
On the evidence of the film, Tarantino considers it key to its understanding that viewers realise the briefcase contains a time machine. The film reverberates with clues which point the viewer in that direction. As if to underscore that there is an answer to the briefcase puzzle he even stages the film as a kind of video game in which Brett and his chums, trying to make off with the briefcase, can be seen as avatars for the viewers who are trying to figure out its contents.
But for Tarantino to feel that the briefcase containing a time machine is a vital component of his film is totally consistent with him respecting that viewers will make what they will of a film and that this is a good thing. That for Tarantino the crime isn’t coming up with wayward theories, it’s not coming up with theories at all, is confirmed by Marvin’s fate. ‘Man, I don’t even have an opinion’ he says – and the next instant Tarantino blows the sucker’s brains out.
July 7, 2025