What Cal thinks:
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In 1992 Mr. Blonde cut off the ear of abducted LAPD officer Marvin Nash to the sound of ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’. The mutilation was not shown on camera, but Reservoir Dogs was still banned from home video release in the UK while becoming a hit at theatres and launched filmmaker Quentin Tarantino to stardom. This stylised violence has been synonymous with Tarantino’s work ever since and has led him to both multiple academy awards and controversies. In a viral interview with Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy, before the release of 2013’s Django Unchained, Tarantino insisted that he had no interest in discussing a proposed association between violence in cinema and in real life. However, in what we are to believe is his penultimate release, the last superstar filmmaker makes his thoughts on the issue abundantly clear.
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood follows the lives of three actors over the course of a few months in 1969, only two years after the ground-breaking release of Bonnie & Clyde (1967), could-have-been star lost in a changing scene Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a young actress on the precipice of stardom, who in actuality was the victim of a horrific murder before her life could blossom. The Manson murders are well documented, but this is the story of the Manson non-murders as Tarantino continues to revise history in the vein of Inglourious Basterds (2009). Basterds, which cheekily calls itself his masterpiece, was met with a similar split reception as Once Upon a Time upon its release ten years ago, but apart from a reference to burning Nazis, which is sadly more fitting now, these films share little in common. Whereas Inglorious was a widescreen war western, Once Upon a Time plays like a rambling adventure at the end of the era of the cowboy.
For a commentary on violence, this is one of Tarantino’s least vicious films as there is no actual bloodshed until the final act. Until then it is a washed-up buddy film with Leo & Brad: a love letter to the days of underappreciated Spaghetti Westerns and backlots filled with saloons, and a touching tribute to Tate’s tragically unfulfilled potential which reminds us to remember her as a person who lived not merely one who died. One of the most tender moments of Tarantino’s career takes place as, Robbie, with all the angelic innocence of Joan Fontaine in Rebecca (1940), watches the actual Tate in The Wrecking Crew (1968). The suspense builds as the sincerity of Tate is juxtaposed with the cantankerous cowboys of Rick & Cliff – the former of which complains about hippies while the latter brings a long-haired hitchhiker right to the heart of Manson Country. Tenderness quickly turns to terror on Spahn Ranch in the closest we may ever get to a Tarantino horror. The dread from this site does not dissipate until the wannabe killers arrive at Cielo Drive to kill the people who taught them how to kill onscreen in a cartoonishly gruesome climax, because you can’t show a flamethrower in a toolshed in the first act without someone getting burnt to a crisp by the curtain call.
This lack of violence is actually one of the film’s strong points, because even though from the first minute we know the story is a ticking time bomb leading to that fateful night in August, we are allowed to follow these characters during their everyday lives, resulting in an incredibly fun experience. The lack of a traditional story may be off-putting for some, but Tarantino knows what he’s doing by letting his movie stars be movie stars. Leonardo DiCaprio gives perhaps the most hilarious performance of his career, featuring an incredible meltdown scene which Paul Thomas Anderson described as ‘sexy Hamlet’. Margot Robbie radiates pure joy every time she is onscreen and it is impossible not to become completely enthralled by her portrayal of Tate. It is hard to discuss Robbie’s role without also mentioning the controversy surrounding it. Most of the issues with this comes from her perceived lack of importance to the film compared to both Pitt and Di Caprio’s characters, however this is completely untrue unless you naïvelyy believe that counting a character’s lines is a good way to judge their relevance to a film. As we have already mentioned Tarantino is no stranger to criticism, but to claim that his movies (including Once Upon a Time) do not feature strong women is downright wrong. Shosanna in Inglourious Basterds , the titular to Jackie Brown (1997), pretty much every single character in Death Proof (2007), strong women and Tarantino movies go together like Elizabeth Warren and Dwayne Johnson, or rather like violence and Tarantino.
Trademark Tarantino may not arrive until the final moments, bar a Rashomon-esque Bruce Lee flashback, but violence is ever-present in this imagined world as we are reminded that conflict far outdates cinema and for as long as there has been film, there has also been violence on film, even if The Great Train Robbery (1903) is tame by today’s standards. Everything on TV in this movie that isn’t I Love Lucy (1951-1957) features fighting from fictional Bounty Killer Jake Cahill to Adam West’s Batman with its POWs and BONKs. The film uses radio advertisements as artefacts that help us travel back to 1969 as the characters navigate the streets of Los Angeles. Between commercials for tanning lotion and cologne, a telling advert for 1969 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man is played. One of the shorts adapted is ‘The Veldt’, a story about children who become disturbed after witnessing lions feasting on animal carcasses. The critique that Tarantino’s films are too cruel is itself criticised as he was not the first to show bloody images on screen. Producer Marvin Schwarz, portrayed by Al Pacino, echoes the director’s views on cinematic violence by proclaiming: “I love that stuff, you know with the killing”. There is an abundance of murder in Rick Dalton’s old Hollywood, as there is in Tarantino’s modern world. Violence is the vessel through which the director provokes the audience because he believes “it’s so much fun” and it’s clear he agrees with Billy Loomis who said: “movies don’t create psychopaths”.
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is not an elegy, but it is as the title suggests a fucked-up fairy-tale that ends optimistically as the princess is saved. In reality, the loss of Sharon Tate caused doors to be locked at night as innocence was seen as lost and Rick Dalton’s Hollywood would be lost to time too. But in this world, perhaps that innocence lives on, if it was ever there to begin with.
What Johannes thinks:
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Confident and brash in every scene, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a picture that could have only been made by writer/director Quentin Tarantino, steeped in a heady, jukebox-charged milieu. In recent interviews, Tarantino has noted that, in what constitutes a personal trend, the films he makes are those he would to like to watch himself; the making of films otherwise a way in which to satisfy his preference for certain sights. Something of this self-delight in his own work does translate into the glorious spectacle of Los Angeles ‘Tinseltown’ 1969 that is so artfully reconstructed on the screen. It is a world that has perhaps been lived-in less than it has been dreamt, but Tarantino nevertheless displays a close attention to a certain moodscape of Hollywood cinema, a transition from the old style into that of the new. (In thematic likeness, Orson Welles’ recently-surfaced The Other Side of the Wind (2018) operates as a unique point of comparison.) However, beneath the surface of this dazzling collection of episodes, it is little more than another pulp story, cardboard-thin and somewhat unenthralling. Uneven scenes intersect with indulged, overdrawn pieces of dialogue, before climaxing 140 minutes in with an unbearable moment of violence that is without doubt the most gratuitous element overall. Little more than one of many exploitation movies conceived in the wake of Sharon Tate’s murder by the cult Manson ‘family’, Tarantino guises truth with a revisionist fairytale that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
Leonardo Di Caprio plays Rick Dalton, a buffoonish cowboy figure who lands role after role as the ‘bad guy’ of pilot television shows – Bounty Law being his most successful – as well as cheap studio westerns. Glued to each of his creative endeavours is his former stunt-man double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), now a valet and handyman around Dalton’s luxury pad in the hills. Over a couple of days in February, the duo discover that Dalton is neighboured by the newly famous director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and his bleach-blonde wife, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a familiarity that becomes all too worrying when the narrative skips ahead six months to the time of the real Tate’s murder. Hollywood is a playground of demands and expectations that all but breaks the ailing spirit of Dalton, propped up by the compliments of Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) and the wake-up calls of Booth: “You’re Rick-fucking-Dalton. Don’t you forget it!” Tarantino’s most successful moments are when the two characters interact, not dissimilar to the casual brotherhood of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction (1994). Tarantino conjures a baggy fantasy with Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, a drama of seeming randomness, or carelessness, that is here met by comparably aimless events. An incredibly personal topic, it is also one that allows the personality of its maker to swamp its cinematic landscape – once again, everyone speaks like a Tarantino avatar – carrying us alongside his ego more than anything else.
Tarantino admitted in a recent Picturehouse interview to having worked on the script on and off for several years, flexing it between screenplay and prose, before eventually deciding on cinema as the required medium. Coincidentally, and despite the endeavours put towards its revision, the product of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood feels incredibly unformed, almost as if we were following a process of thought over any sense of narrative. Actions have no follow-through; scenes appear incoherent against one another, and its list of characters (Sharon Tate being the worst example) are given almost no time for development. Reservoir Dogs (1992), an incredible début, was successful because it found urgency in the scenes that took place either side of a failed heist, inviting a sense of myth to the core of its narrative. Likewise, The Hateful Eight (2015) used the stage prop of “somebody poisoned the coffee” to provoke new reactions amongst a blizzard-refuged ensemble. In Once Upon a Time, with the exception of the nearby Manson cult, nothing provokes change and nothing appears to ask for it. Aesthetics reign over plot development for Tarantino, the geeky, nostalgia-fuelled era a wonderful stage to reimagine…but just a little hollow when probed for any true grounding. Thom Andersen’s 2003 video-essay Los Angeles Plays Itself anticipates LA’s devolvement into a set of tired, iconic images – landmarks typically used in filming, such as the giant ‘HOLLYWOOD’ sign, governing its presentation and movie sentimentality. Tarantino is one of many directors who plays into the ideals of this aesthetic.
After watching Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, the problem of on-screen violence (typically male, typically glorified) again resurfaces – only, unlike the period works of Django and The Hateful Eight, Tarantino might be said to have a more appropriate stake. For the greater part of the film, no violence is exchanged or gestured at. All this changes with the revenge beating of “Clem”, by Booth, who discovers a tyre to his 1966 Cadillac DeVille slashed at the ranch – one punch is followed by another, and another, each bloody and heightened by slow motion. Such violence is celebrated, enjoyed…not met with consequence – and does Tarantino care? No, not really, and maybe we shouldn’t either. Ironically it was the source of most laughter in the screening I attended, each display of queasy, masculine aggression was processed as some form of hilarity. I found myself tuned into the audiences’ enjoyment more than my own – desensitised to the ultraviolence of his career, laughter for many seems to be the only resort to any display of onscreen action. Potentially the least funny Tarantino picture so far, I strained to find anything to laugh at across its entire running time (with the exception of its best exchange: “Are you real?” “I’m as real as a donut.”)
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is another very watchable picture from an illustrious and extraordinarily original director, but creative mannerisms now slouch into overfamiliar, stultified expressions of before.
