Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Review)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Everything You might Expect from a Tarantino film…
For the sake of honesty when it comes to my review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I have to admit that I can’t stand Quentin Tarantino. Now, normally I’m all for separating the art from the artist when it comes to a lot of things. For example, Roman Polanski is a terrible human being for what he did to that child. However, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby are still incredible pieces of cinema. More than most other art forms, I feel like this is important because film is a collaborative effort. So, to hate a movie simply because of one person’s role in what is a group effort, doesn’t seem fair to everyone else who was involved. For that reason alone, I will refrain from calling Tarantino a smug, self-indulgent, misogynistic, narcissistic, hack who only regurgitates bits of other movies and pop culture in an attempt to prove how edgy and “hip” he is. Well, at least from this point forward.
Like Inglorious Basterds, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a movie that takes an entirely fictionalized approach to historical events. The movie very clearly is meant to focus around the Manson killings that occurred in the late 60s, but instead of specifically following the events surrounding those incidents, the film focuses on a fictional actor named Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) and the bromance with his stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The movie sports tons of little Easter eggs that demonstrate Tarantino’s obsession with all things from that era, including appearances by actors playing the likes of Steve McQueen, Bruce Lee, and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). The film follows Dalton as he navigates the twilight of his career, trying desperately to hold on to his relevance as he struggles with his inevitable decline into obscurity. All the while, the terror of what audiences assume is to befall Dalton’s neighbor, Sharon Tate, weighs heavy in the air.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is essentially glorified historical fanfiction. It takes place in a very specific place in a very specific time surrounding very specific events but twists the world to fit a narrative that serves more like a daydream or a fantasy. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that in principle, but if you’re going to go so far as to reference that time and those events, why would you go as far to change so much regarding them? This was the case with Inglorious Basterds where Tarantino had a small band of soldiers successfully kill Hitler, and he does it yet again (though I won’t spoil how he does it this time around). While this film seems a lot more focused than a lot of his ADD riddled stories in the past, the film essentially falls apart in the last half hour. This is because the movie is over two hours of build-up for what amounts to 15 minutes of pay off, which ruins everything it had going for it. I honestly, loved watching the story of Rick Dalton as he struggled with his insecurities while he tried to figure out where his life was going. Which begs the question, why even involve Sharon Tate and the Mason cult in this film at all?
Like all of Tarantino’s films, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is filled with some incredible performances, especially from Brad Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio. Dicaprio puts so much detail into his character from nervous tics to a slight stutter that’s developed from his self-esteem being beaten and bloodied by rejection since his heyday as a recognizable movie star. He’s trying so hard to keep it together while on the precipice of a mental break down that you can’t help but feel for the guy. The same goes for Brad Pitt’s Cliff Dalton. Cliff, however, is just along for the ride. He’s an aging stuntman who is going through the same issues, but his are mostly due to his own cocky and confrontational attitude. The two light up the screen and deliver one of the best bromances I’ve seen in years. Then again, it would be hard to make either of these tremendous actors look bad on screen. Still, the characters they are given to work with are both a lot more impressive and a lot less overwhelming than a many of Tarantino’s previous protagonists.
I promised not to insult Tarantino in this review and I won’t. However, a lot of the qualities I don’t like about him are also ever-present in his work. For one thing, despite the fact that Tate is the intended victim of the Manson cult, Margot Robbie has incredibly limited screen time and maybe ten minutes of dialogue at most. It’s also hard not to notice just how brutally the female characters are treated throughout the movie. Sure, some guys get punched out, but what happens to the women in it made me cringe, and that’s coming from someone who regularly watches horror movies. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood also has a lot of focus on feet to the point where it’s hard not to notice just how predominant they are in a lot of shots. I’m not one to knock anyone and their fetish, but it’s kind of distracting when two characters are sharing a screen and bare feet are pressed against the glass in the foreground. That being said, this was a much more mellow and focused film from the normally chaotic director delivers. I’ve always found his movies to have great dialogue, but incredibly self-indulgent monologues to the point where they become masturbatory. This film still has monologues, but the nature of the film taking place in Hollywood and on movie sets makes it much more forgivable given that it’s actors playing actors playing characters.
I was a pretty big fan of the first three-quarters of this film. There’s no arguing that Tarantino isn’t a competent filmmaker and I won’t try to take that away from him. However, the last act of the movie is a bit of a mess and threatens to undo a lot of what’s accomplished over the course of the movie. It rushes to a grandiose and violent final sequence that’s cool but just emphasizes the problematic elements of his filmmaking style when it comes to women. The acting is tremendous and the attention to detail borders on obsessive making Once Upon a Time in Hollywood an incredible period piece. The same can be said for the unique and interesting (though much more restrained) characters that Tarantino creates for the all-star cast. I would even go so far as to say that I greatly appreciate Tarantino’s fanboy nature when it comes to film history. In the end though, I would say that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a well-crafted movie with impressive performances, but it’s one that I’m not sure I would really want to watch again just because of how far off the rails it goes in the end when Tarantino simply can’t seem to help himself anymore.
