Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry. Directed by: Quentin Tarantino.
Once upon a time in the mid-summer of 1969, a rising actress, 8 months pregnant, went out to dinner with her husband – a new wave film directing auteur destined for greatness – her hair stylist friend, an aspiring screenwriter and a young heiress. There was food, there was laughs, it was the hottest night of the year, and so the four (and unborn infant making five) returned to the actress’ home on Cielo Drive. The home, formerly owned by Terry Melcher, a record producer and his girlfriend Candice Bergin, an actress, was a nice one.
This was a nicely turned out evening, until three people turned up, uninvited, unwelcome, and unhinged. The three assailants murdered the actress, her unborn child, and three friends on the orders of their cult leader whom they came to call Charlie.
The three hour Hollywood epic, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, is the ninth film by writer-director Quentin Tarantino. Charting the trials and tribulations of has-been actor Rick Dalton, a former leading man of popular TV series Bounty Law now designated to playing villain-of-the-week heavies on newer more popular shows, and being fifth choice for action flicks. Along with his former stuntman Cliff Booth, now turned to his lacky, driver and confidante the two try to make it as Hollywood hits a changing point in the world, and it just happens that Dalton’s neighbour is Sharon Tate.
To begin on the positive side, for those who love QT’s work, and frankly, you’d be a fool not to at least admire his ability there is plenty to love. He’s on fire with his writing, perhaps not the most quotable of his films, but the back-and-forth between characters is there where you’d want it, and of course, it shows in his ability to write hokey false TV shows and movie scenes.
Similarly, the film looks gorgeous, melding old film stock, his beloved way of shooting, with visuals that evoke the period of the old and the new clashing as the world around it is changing. Polanski, who features sparingly – and often looking like Austin Powers – was one of the new wave of Hollywood directors who did away with sound stages, and the old style of filmmaking, the studio system and ushered in the neo-realist Hollywood style. Polanski, along with the likes of Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, De Palma and a handful more who would go on to bring method acting, and realism to the screen were crushing the old way of making movies.
Robert Richardson gives the film a timeless feel, as if you’re walking around in a dream, a half forgotten memory of the golden age of Hollywood as it gives way to something else. Of course, the music choices are perfectly selected, and the use of radio calls to mind Reservoir Dogs while the various narratives that intertwine is very Pulp Fiction-esq.
Tarantino similarly has a way of coming up with movie and TV titles that could possible be real movies or TV shows. It’s fitting that his false Hollywood narrative runs through everything – Lee Donowitz the movie producer from True Romance, references to fake movies like Nation’s Pride (Inglourious Basterds), stuntmen (Death Proof), Fox Force Five (Pulp Fiction), and a ton more that would be boring to go over, some of the fake movies here are funny in how possibly real they could be: Nebraska Jim and Operation Dy-NO-Mite spring to mind.
And it goes without saying that the vast cast that he’s assembled are all on top form is an understatement. DiCaprio and Pitt anchor the film with their easy rapport while Hollywood legends (Bruce Dern, Clu Gulagher, Al Pacino), and the offspring of Hollywood titans (Harley Quinn Smith, Rumer Willis, Maya Hawke) are all well placed in tiny roles.
Though it is DiCaprio who steals the film with his neurotic actor Dalton, who goes apeshit in his trailer when he forgets lines he practiced, and has a breakdown when faced with a method acting little girl (American Housewife’s Julia Butters) are the stuff of legendary Tarantino characters.
And were it just a film about the old Hollywood dying and true QT caper fun of mismatched people making a go of it, with a banging soundtrack and a little cursing thrown in for good measure, the film would easily be one of his best.
However, it isn’t. The film is long, clocking in at about three hours, and really it could have been half the runtime and better for it. QT doesn’t like short films, and taking the four and a half hour cut and turning it into a three-hour film seems impressive but there is so much fat on this cow you could carve out a rich sirloin steak and still ride the cow home for supper.
Most actors show up for a scene or half a scene, and most could be cut. Most notoriously Mike Moh’s Bruce Lee. In Tarantino land, he’s a pompous oaf, easily bested by Pitt’s Booth in throwaway gags never to be seen save for one of two glimpses. To use him and to mock him in such a manner when Tarantino liberally stole most of his stuff for his Kill Bill film’s is a little on the nose and it’s no shock to find that Shannon Lee finds it offensive. It makes no sense why the scene is there, nor a recurring motif about the fact that Booth killed his wife and got away with it, which makes him a less than sympathetic character. Many of the real people in the film shouldn’t be there – Damian Lewis has a cameo as Steve McQueen, here portrayed as a hung up guy lusting over Sharon Tate because reasons.
For all the questions of if doing a film about Tate and her murder is correct or not aside, this subplot (hardly a subplot, more a garnish on which to hang diversions) need not be here, it offers nothing except for scene after scene of Margot Robbie (who is talented beyond compare) to dance around barefoot – and then later barefoot and pregnant. Manson appears once, for no real reason.
That said, even in this there is some magic, a sequence in which Booth drives a hippie Pussycat (a fantastic Margaret Qualley) to George Spahn’s ranch leads to a tension filled encounter with some familiar faces as the Manson followers, and that works. It’s filled with the tension of say the diner scene in Pulp Fiction or the opening of Inglorious Basterds or later in that film the scene in which Christoph Waltz demands that Melanie Laurent wait for cream on her strudel.
The narration in the second half of the film doesn’t really sit right either, and the third act is enjoyable but leads to an inevitable and predictable sigh. A better cut would see the film focus on just Dalton and Booth, and forget the real people B.S. which seems to be there only to upset people and generate some controversy, though this may very well be the first QT film that doesn’t have liberal use of the N-word which might say something for it, and does feature a great number of cameos from regular Tarantino alumnus.
All of that said and dealt with, this is still a thrilling, often funny, sometimes painfully so film that even though it has no need to deal with the Tate murders is more sensitive to it than say John R. Leonetti’s reprehensible Wolves at the Door. For QT completists it will have a well of thrills that you’ll return to, for his critics, it’s a trough from which to eat heartily. Take your pick about which side you sit on, and continue. But one thing is for certain, no one knows how to make a movie quite like Tarantino.
