Movie Review: Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood ***** / *****

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino.

Written by: Quentin Tarantino.

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio (Rick Dalton), Brad Pitt (Cliff Booth), Margot Robbie (Sharon Tate), Margaret Qualley (Pussycat), Dakota Fanning (Squeaky Fromme), Al Pacino (Marvin Schwarzs), Lena Dunham (Gypsy), Timothy Olyphant (James Stacy), Sydney Sweeney (Snake), Damian Lewis (Steve McQueen), Kurt Russell (Randy), Austin Butler (Tex), Emile Hirsch (Jay Sebring), Lorenza Izzo (Francesca Capucci), Bruce Dern (George Spahn), Victoria Pedretti (Lulu), Mike Moh (Bruce Lee), Zoë Bell (Janet), James Landry Hébert (Clem), Rafal Zawierucha (Roman Polanski), Damon Herriman (Charles Manson), Luke Perry (Wayne Maunder), Maya Hawke (Flower Child), Mikey Madison (Sadie), Madisen Beaty (Katie), Nicholas Hammond (Sam Wanamaker), Samantha Robinson (Abigail Folger), Scoot McNairy (Business Bob Gilbert), Harley Quinn Smith (Froggie), Rebecca Rittenhouse (Michelle Phillips), Daniella Pick (Daphna Ben-Cobo), Costa Ronin (Voytek Frykowski).

 

Spoiler Warning: Just don’t read it if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know.

 

We’re lucky if we get one film like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a year. I’m not just talking about the quality of the film – although the star rating clearly lets you know that I’m in the “it’s a masterpiece” camp. I’m talking more about the fact that here we have a big budget, star studded, studio film that runs nearly three hours – almost all of which is talk – and it’s become a film that you need to see – you need to have an opinion on. And the opinions on the film run the gamut from masterpiece to trash – and everything in between. In the week since the film opened, it’s seems like there isn’t a character, a scene, a moment that hasn’t inspired some deep think pieces, and sharply divided opinions. You can love the film, hate the film – you can be extremely mixed on the film – but you cannot be indifferent to it. The discourse around the film has been inspiring – true, some of the hottest of hot takes have been asinine – but I’ve read pieces that I completely disagree with, that are brilliantly written and argued, where it’s clear the writer means what they say, and come to that opinion after deep thought. I honestly cannot remember the last time a film like this existed – and inspired this much debate. I don’t think I can add much – but I’ll sure try.

 

It is easy to say that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a love letter – it is, to old school Hollywood, to Sharon Tate, to an era long dead, if it ever existed in the first place. It’s also an elegy and a eulogy, a fairy tale and a revenge fantasy. It’s another of Tarantino’s revisionist histories – in line with Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained – but goes farther than either of those films did. After all, even if Hitler didn’t die in a fiery movie theater, the history of WWII wouldn’t be that different if he had. And even if Django got his righteous revenge on a slave owner – it’s one slave owner, one plantation – it isn’t going to end slavery. But the ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood really does make you wonder what the past 50 years would be like had it happened this way – had Charles Manson and company been thrown in the dustbin of history, not forgotten as much as never known in the first place. Tarantino lets you know precisely what he thinks of Manson – he isn’t worth any more than a single scene where he doesn’t actually do much of anything. His family gets more attention – if not more respect. They are scuzzy and violent and pathetic – and they get what they deserve (the silliest of takes I have heard is that Tarantino is too mean to the Manson family members – given what they were about to do, I don’t share that sentiment).

 

But Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is only about Manson in a roundabout way. It’s mainly about Hollywood in 1969 – in the days where the studio system has pretty much failed, and TV has risen, and a new generation of directors are about to remake movies in their own image. What place is there for someone like Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), once a famous TV cowboy in a 1950s show, now relegated to taking on guest roles in others shows – where is plays the heavy, so that someone newer and younger can take him down to prove how tough they are. True, an agent (Al Pacino) if offering a chance to make some movies in Italy – but who likes Spaghetti Westerns? In his real life, Dalton is a drunken, insecure mess. He cannot even drive himself anymore, since he has so many DUI’s. Luckily his old stunt double – now basically his lackey – Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is always around to drive him, take care of his house on Cielo Drive – right next to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate’s house -  and basically do whatever is needed. Cliff is not that much like Rick – while Rick is insecure and weak, it’s pretty clear that Cliff can dominate in any room he wants to – it’s just a matter of whether he wants to or not. Pitt’s performance is remarkable – perhaps the best of his career. There is something knowingly phony to Pitt’s performance – to his smile here. Yes, he and Rick are best friends – and real friends. But Cliff is always aware that he isn’t Rick’s equal – that he is his employee. He may get to hang out with Rick, drive his fancy car, housesit that big house – but all Cliff has of his own is a dingy trailer behind a drive-in movie theater, and a pit bull he adores. Rick is the only one who still wants Cliff around – because, while, maybe Cliff murdered his wife. Or maybe it was an accident a la Marvin in Pulp Fiction. Or something else entirely – Tarantino makes a reference relating to Natalie Wood, which if it tells you anything it tells you we don’t really know.

 

The two best friends go on separate adventures for much of the movie. Rick gets a guest spot on the (all but forgotten) real life Western Lancer – once again playing the heavy. And while he’s as much of a drunken, insecure mess as always off camera, on camera something happens to him – that old magic comes back. Perhaps it’s talking to an incredibly smart, charming child actor (Julia Butters) – who has a long scene with Rick, and doesn’t realize just how much she gets to him – if for no other reason than because he finally realizes what the book he is reading is about. It’s a remarkable sequence. Cliff’s sequence is even better though – after his repeated car flirtations with Pussycat (Margaret Qualley – stunning and brilliant) leads him to eventually pick her up, and drive her to Spahn Ranch – where they used to shoot Westerns, but now is home to Manson and his family. “Charlie” isn’t there when he arrives – but lots of people are. And Tarantino masterfully builds the tension through this long sequence – Cliff’s long talk with Squeaky (Dakota Fanning), and eventually George Spahn himself (Bruce Dern)).

 

Through this all, Tarantino flashes to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) herself. Tate’s career in Hollywood was just getting off the ground when she was murdered by the Manson family in real life – and in the 50 years since then, the details of her death have overshadowed those of her life. Tarantino seeks to correct the record on that – showing Tate is a young, vibrant, fun-loving woman – partying with equally pretty people in Hollywood, and basically just being happy. He doesn’t get too much into her biographical details – her already troubled marriage to Polanski say – because that’s not relevant to what he’s doing here. In Robbie’s best sequence as Tate, she goes to see her movie The Wrecking Crew when she says it playing. The sequence sets us up to think maybe it will end in embarrassment – she has to explain to the staff who she is. But it ends up being beautiful. Tarantino – who elsewhere will recreate real movies and actors, here lets Tate’s own performance in the film play out in front of Robbie watching in the audience – and us, watching her watch herself. It is a beautiful tribute to Tate.

 

Then comes the ending. Given Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, you knew that Tarantino wasn’t going to play this straight. If you want to see how an alternate history of the Manson murders can go horribly, offensively awry, you can watch The Haunting of Sharon Tate from earlier this year (better yet, don’t, and just trust me). Tarantino doesn’t go that way. I have to admit I’m still mulling over the ending here – what it means, and why Tarantino decides to do what he does. But it works.

 

There is a lot more to discuss here. Is the films treatment of Bruce Lee (brilliantly played by Mike Moh) accurate, racist – somehow both? Or is it some audience reactions to its portrayal that’s racist? Why did Tarantino want to puncture some myths, and not others – Polanski is barely a character here at all, and neither is Steve McQueen – but both could have be treated a lot more mercilessly then they are here. You could – and surely someone will – have a great book of essays about just about everything in the film. What of the production design – which is great in period details, especially in recreating what 1969 looked like in the movie. Or Robert Richardson’s cinematography – which is deliberately not as show-y as most of his work with Tarantino, but is still wonderful – when he moves the camera here, you notice it more (like the wonderful shot coming around the table to DiCaprio – which reminded me a little of Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir from earlier in the summer).

 

For now, I kind of consider this “review” to me first draft thoughts on the film. It’s been a long time – perhaps since Inglorious Basterds, but probably even longer – that Tarantino has made something quite this thorny, this tricky, this complex. Hell, it’s been a while since anyone has.