Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood
(2019): Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring:
Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret
Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern,
Kurt Russell, and Al Pacino. Running Time: 161 minutes.
Rating: 3/4
**spoiler alert for the entirety of
the film**
Well. That escalated quickly.
Tarantino's latest film comes so, so
very close to being the most relaxed, most meditative, and least
eventful film he's ever made. For the bulk of its
close-to-three-hour runtime, it is content merely being a very
thorough callback to a very specific time and place in the era of
"Old Hollywood," or at least "Older Hollywood."
It drenches itself in period dress and a production design so minute
and detailed, that it's basically guaranteed to run away screaming
with the Oscar for Best Production Design next year, along with (most
likely) a bevy of other awards. Scenes and montages riffing on
Tarantino's usual grab-bag of cultural callbacks range from the
gentle and poignant to aggressively in-your-face, and simply occur
over the course of a handful of days with no clear narrative thread
connecting them.
Until, that is, the time for some very
bloody historical revisionism hits at the very end, and the whole
affaid explodes into an orgy of blood and violence on par with what
we've come to expect from QT. Even here, though, while the sparks
are viscerally impressive, they aren't on quite the same level as
some of the most shocking bits from Pulp Fiction, Django,
Basterds, or even The Hateful Eight. Maybe Tarantino
is growing soft and uncertain with age. Or perhaps there is only so
far provocative violence can go before it starts feeling increasingly
unnecessary or redundant.
OUATIH follows Rick Dalton (Leonardo
DiCaprio) and his longtime stuntmen/handyman/best friend (only
friend?) Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Both are seemingly on the downside
after years spent atop the Hollywood totem pole, and neither seems to
be processing it well. Rick drowns himself in drink, cigarettes, and
tearful pity-parties before friends and strangers alike. Cliff
maintains a ceaselessly laid-back, devil-may-care attitude on the
surface, but there are reasons aplenty to think it's at least
partially a facade, as his own history includes a supposed fisticuffs
with Bruce Lee that got him blackballed and (possibly) getting away
with actual murder.
The minuteai of what their career
histories are and what, exactly, they each do on-screen to try and
get their careers back on track is less important than the general
world they inhabit, one that their daily lives reveal to us in bits
and pieces. The comittment to recreating the general vibe and feel
of Hollywood in the late 60's is nothing less than slavish, and it is
indeed an impressive film in how carefully it maintains this
atmosphere.
The twist ahead, however, is set up
fairly early- we know right away that Rick just so happens to live
next door to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, in the very summer where
Tate and her friends were infamously, and brutally, murdered by
members of the Manson family. For those who lived through it, this
was an event so culturally traumatic it is still considered by most
to be THE moment that the Hollywood of the 60's, the one Tarantino
dedicates this entire film to, ended for good.
Margot Robbie continutes to shine as
one of the next big film stars, suffusing Tate with a confidence and
joy that radiate off the screen despite having relatively few scenes
or moments of dialogue. Indeed, she is almost more of an idea, or a
ghost, than an actual character. While I can understand faulting the
film for this approach, I myself found her scenes remarkably
effective, the highlight being a moment where she goes to the theater
to see her own film and takes a clear pride in how the audience
responds to her work. Sharon Tate will forever be defined in the
eyes of most by the tragedy that ended her life, so, personally, I am
for any effort to bring her at least partially out of Charles
Manson's shadow, even though doing so completely will likely never be
possible.
The other controversial parts of the
film are a bit more difficult to parse, at least for me, specifically
the treatment of Bruce Lee in his one main scene and the exact nature
of the violence at the end of the film. In both cases, I feel
particularly ill-equipped to offer moral judgment on the film. Bruce
Lee is treated as a parody of himself, and while there are signs that
this portrayal is something of a fantasy spun by Cliff (we "see"
his fight with Lee as a memory he revisits some years later), I won't
argue with either Lee's family or any other fans who consider the
scene a black mark on the film.
And then there's the ending, which is
likely to be one of the most controversial film choices of
Tarantino's career. Instead of the Tate murders going down as they
did in reality, the would-be attackers decide to break into Rick's
house instead, after an evening Rick and Cliff spent getting
(respectively) stupidly drunk and fantastically high. Even in their
impaired states, though, they manage to fight off and kill each of
the attackers in stupendous fashion. Sharon Tate and her friends are
never murdered, Rick befriends her and her husband and possibly gets
a fresh start to his career, and the glorified image of a specific
past is, perhaps, allowed to endure a little longer.
Should it have endured though? Or was
it necessary for the Hollywood of the 60's to, somehow and someday,
go the way of the dodo? Out of all of his movies, this might be the
one that is hardest to separate from what we know of Tarantino as a
person. This is clealy a deeply personal film, possible his most
personal; a lot about Rick Dalton's character and his fears of being
left behind, overshadowed, forgotten by a new generation could be a
bit of self-reflection on Tarantino's part. Plus, while he has
written some of the best and most compelling female characters of the
past few decades, his relationship to and statement on sexist tropes,
endangerment of women, and an unwillingness to confront the darker
parts of the film industry both past and present are.....extremely
mixed, to put it diplomatically. In the wake of #MeToo, it is
especially hard to watch this paeon to a lost age and NOT think about
all the abuse and manipulation of women and minorites that is
definitely happening off-screen. I'm as ready to give an artist the
benefit of the doubt as anybody, but I admit I am rather sceptical
that QT has ever given much thought to this aspect of his love for
this particular bygone time and place.
There is also the fact that, once
again, terrible, horrific violence is visited upon the human body,
specifically female bodies, in a way that easily draws laughter and
even applause from many moviegoers. Here, too, as a man, I feel I
would be out of my league to try and either condemn or justify the
decisions made in this part of the film. I myself didn't find it
funny at all, but plenty in the theater with me sure did, and I'm
pretty sure most of them were men. All I can offer is some advice to
my male readers; ask the women in your life what they think, and
listen to them when they answer.
And yet, despite all of this, for all
the flaws inherent in Tarantino's obsession with a gaudy past he was
never actually a part of and maybe doesn't glamorize for the right
reasons, there is an undeniable power in his capacity for visual
storytelling and the unspoken richness the people he casts bring to
their roles. And I, too, fervently wish that I had the power to
reach back to specific times in history and give evil its proper
comeuppance, preferably via flamethrower. As flawed and and as
arguably reprehensible as his revision of the Tate murders might be,
the impulse to play with the Fates in this manner is one I am all too
familiar with.
That may not be a very objective, or
sound, or moral reflection on myself. But it does signify that, like
Tarantino, I'm only human, in the end. And time marches on.
-Noah Franc
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