While Quentin Tarantino’s Palme d’Or is being broadcast tonight on TMC, return to a question that has tormented fans since the film’s release: what exactly does Marcellus Wallace’s mysterious briefcase contain?
We are at the end of Pulp Fiction.
Shortly before delivering the briefcase they have just recovered to their boss Marsellus Wallace, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) recover from their recent emotions over a well-deserved breakfast. But this short moment of respite is soon disturbed by an unexpected robbery, and before the injunctions of an intractable Tim Roth, Jules finds himself obliged to open the mysterious briefcase.
“That’s wonderful !”, exclaims the robber, his face suddenly illuminated by a strange light emitted by the suitcase. But where exactly does this curious light come from? What is “magnificent”? What can the famous briefcase contain to immerse Tim Roth in such a state?
Leaving the viewer unanswered to all these questions at the end of his film, Quentin Tarantino thus gave birth to an unmissable McGuffin (an unimportant object serving as a pretext for the development of a script), but also – of course – to many theories.
While some fans conventionally imagine a bunch of diamonds, others show a little more originality in their assumptions. According to them, the case could thus contain:
Miramax Films
- an Oscar (Mia Wallace, Marcellus’ wife, dreaming of becoming an actress, her husband would have managed to get her one)
- a gold Elvis Presley costume (more precisely the one Val Kilmer wore in True Romance, another feature film whose screenplay was signed by Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino, and which could therefore take place in the same universe)
- the soul of Marsellus Wallace. According to this last theory, which is undoubtedly the most famous of all, the gangster embodied by Ving Rhames would have made a pact with the devil and would have sent his two henchmen to recover his soul. Indeed, the combination that allows them to unlock the suitcase is none other than 6-6-6. Not to mention that, according to legend, the souls of people who make a pact with the demon would be sucked in by the neck (which would explain the adhesive plaster stuck behind Marsellus’ head).
Which of these theories do you find most convincing?
(Re) discover them in detail in our special video …
