Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

A really fun send up to classic Hollywood with some troubling elements…

Tarantino is an interesting director. He has a unique style and flair for dialogue, yet his work can suffer from indulgence that drags down the pacing and they often contain problematic elements, mostly unnecessary violence against women or sexual assault. Art is subjective of course, and a director can have many reasons for why certain things are in their films, but after it shows up in many of their films, you can start to see a pattern.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a great film. It has some amazing performances and brilliant characters. The dialogue as always is massively entertaining. Leonardo DiCaprio makes an excellent washed up action star, and Brad Pitt is very watchable as a laid back stunt man. There are sections of the film that really stand out to me, for instance when DiCaprio’s character Rick Dalton is struggling to remember his lines on set and has a break down. His conversion with the young child actress onset and his triumphant scene where he finally nails the performance is incredibly cathartic and it shows that though he might not be the same star any more, Dalton can manage to reclaim a small amount of what he once had.

The film handles Sharon Tate and the history around her for the most part in a respectful way. In the scene in which Tate goes to see her own movie at the cinema, the film she watches features the original Tate and doesn’t try to composite Margot Robbie on top of the film, as is done with Dalton later on. Every scene in the film which makes fun of Hollywood is hilarious and demonstrates the more ridiculous and fickle sides of the industry. Tarantino clearly had a lot of fun making this film and it shows in the send ups he does at the beginning of the film to his own work. There are many flashbacks to Dalton’s films and a lot of them are clear parodies of Tarantino’s work, including a western tv series and a war film in which Dalton kills a group on Nazis with a flamethrower. Tarantino almost seems to be commenting on his own career through this film. Dalton used to be a much bigger star than he currently is, and while Tarantino is still big, he isn’t perhaps as fresh and exciting as he once was. He even tried to retire a few years ago.

The film is less a defined story and more an exploration of a golden age of movies that has passed by. Dalton meanders around nearby more famous people; he even lives opposite Roman Polanski. The Manson family plot seems to be attempt to right wrongs of the past through film. (Spoilers for the ending) In the real-life events the Mansons invaded Polanski’s home while he was away and brutally murdered Sharon Tate, his pregnant wife along with three friends. In Hollywood, the cultists instead recognise Rick Dalton from his old TV show and decide to kill him instead. However, they don’t account for Pitt’s character Cliff Booth coming home having smoked acid. He freaks them out with his behaviour and manages to fend them off with the help of his dog. They all end up dying as a result of their murder attempt, symbolically avenging Tate and preventing the event that helped end the golden age of Hollywood from happening. Dalton even gets to visit Tate in her house and the film ends with them all the characters that died in real life getting to live on.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. And yet certain areas of the film did make me uncomfortable. Coming back to the ending, although it can be seen as a depiction of awful people getting their comeuppance, it doesn’t feel the same as Inglorious Basterds. In that film many Nazis are horribly killed, but since most of them are men and they are seen in the film committing horrible atrocities themselves I can cope with it a lot easier. But we never see any of the Mansons commit murder or any really nasty crimes before they show up at the house. They intend to kill Dalton, but it doesn’t create the same feeling when all they have done is talk about killing people. And the way Cliff kills them is not fun to watch. He launces cans in their faces, repeatedly smashes their heads against walls and sets the dog to bite and tear them to pieces. It’s horrific, and the fact that a grown man is doing this to two petite young women makes it particularly troubling. It wouldn’t be so disturbing if the tone of the scene wasn’t so obviously comedic. Dalton even kills one with a flamethrower. Yes, the real people were vicious murderers, but onscreen this still looks like a group of troubled youngsters getting brutalised. And all of it being played for laughs just didn’t sit very well with me.

The film also does a disservice to the memory of Bruce Lee. In a flashback scene we see Cliff Booth listen to Lee as he brags about his martial skill. Lee claims he could beat Muhammad Ali in a fight, and Booth and he come to blows. Cliff ends up throwing Lee into a car so hard he dents it and gets thrown off the set. There is something childish in the way Tarantino creates a character so good at fighting he beats up Bruce Lee. The only explanation is that he is a stunt man, but that isn’t the same thing as a martial artist, and it feels disingenuous. On top of that the presentation of Lee as a braggart who inflates his martial legend to stroke his ego, and claims to be able to beat Ali in a fight is flat out disrespectful. It sells the real man short, and it also means that one of the few POC characters in the film is a joke.

Despite all this, the film shows that Tarantino has matured in his writing and directing. Aside from the end violence, there is very little needless action. The story is more of a character study and a look back at a period of film history. Tarantino shows a willingness to critique his own films through the lens of parody, and he still has the best dialogue and some smashing characters and cinematography. This film is a fun time, but I would say that Quentin can do better. It might be a challenge but I think he could make an amazing film that doesn’t contain questionable violence against women, or bad taste racial politics. I look forward to seeing that film.