Spoiler warning – I have avoide any final act spoilers, but do talk about many aspects of the film in detail. If you intend to see the film but have not as yet, I recomend you watch it before reading this. 
I was really concerned when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was announced. Firstly we don’t need another movie about Charles Manson, but more significantly, is Quentin Tarantino capable of the sensitivity needed to tell the story of the horrendous murder of actress Sharon Tate? My fears were exacerbated by the fact I didn’t particularly enjoy his last film, The Hateful Eight (2015). Quentin Tarantino has been self indulgent ever since Kill Bill (2003 and 2004) got so long the studio forced him to cut it in half. Django Unchained (2012) is a good 165 minute movie that could have been a great 100 minute movie. The Hateful Eight, just dragged! But I am always hopeful of a return to form, after all, I love Tarantino’s first six movies (Kill Bill is officially one movie), and despite their problems Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight had some really good moments. It is has been suggested that his work is also hollow and shallow, and totally lacking in sensitivity. As for lacking in sensitivity, he would probably say guilty as charged and proud of it. Shallow, is unfounded, but they are certainly hollow, this isn’t a problem, and shouldn’t be considered a criticism. This is partly because they are so entertaining, but mainly because it is the intention, it is part of the art, the idea of l’art pour l’art suggests true art, is free from any didactic, moral, or function. The lack of sensitivity was a bigger hurdle to overcome knowing what happed to Sharon Tate and how it could have been depicted. However, I had overlooked one thing: Once Upon a Time. The title evoked the Sergio Leone Once Upon a Time movies, I had forgotten that Tarantino had started a movie Once Upon a Time, and that movie, Inglourious Basterds was revisionist at very least, bordering on a fairytale.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, falls very much in this category, revisionist and, or fairytale, and like Quentin Tarantino’s best movies Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997), its full of characters you want to spend time with. The film is littered with a mixture of real and fictional characters, it is told from the prospective of two of the fictional characters Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Dalton is an actor who had been the star of a TV western, until he quit to pursue a movie career, think Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive. Unlike McQueen who within a couple of years of leaving TV was making The Great Escape, Dalton’s career is in a slow but undoubted descent, playing villain of the week on other peoples shows. Booth is Daltons stunt double whose work has dried up in line with Daltons. He now works as a driver and general gofer for Dalton, who finds himself without a driving licence thanks to a string of DUI charges. If not an alcoholic, Dalton is on his way to becoming one! Racked with insecurity, Booth is also a crutch, the friend who will tell him how it is, but with a positive spin, an ego massage.
The film is set at the turning point in cinema after the death of the Golden Age, and in the early days of New Hollywood when young filmmakers were making films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Wild Bunch, and Easy Rider (both 1969). This is symbolised by Dalton who doesn’t know his place in the new order: Idols like Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart are a thing of the past. At the same time, he is too old to be a star of new Hollywood like Al Pacino (who appears in the film as Daltons new agent), and Dennis Hopper (who is referenced in the film). He isn’t as good, or possibly just as lucky as Steve McQueen (who appears as a character played by Damian Lewis). The actor who isn’t mentioned, is Clint Eastwood who went from the TV show Rawhide (1959–1965) to Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns (between 1964 and 1966). But then neither is James Arness who was the star of Gunsmoke for twenty years but never found anything like that success on the big screen.
In the film, Dalton lives next door Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), and his new wife Sharon Tate (delightfully portrayed by Margot Robbie). This both brings the story together and gives prospective to the Daltons character. Polanski is the hottest director in town thanks to his previous film Rosemary’s Baby (1968). His young wife Tate, is something of an enigma, groomed as a studio ingénue, in a system that no longer existed. Married to, and working with Polanski, what could have happened if not for her tragic death? Polanski is largely absent from the story concentrating more on Tate as she drifts through the film, an ethereal presence in the background of the story. It has been suggested that she doesn’t have enough lines of dialogue, but that somehow misses the point of what this story is, she is the heart of the movie, not the subject of it. The film portrays Tate purchasing a first edition of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a gift for Polanski. A fan of Hardy’s work, she recommended the story to her husband for a movie adaptation. Ten years later, he made the film, with Nastassja Kinski in the title role. It was nominated for six Oscars, winning three of them. Would this have been a project they worked on together? 
Forgoing a traditional three act structure, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has one prolonged act, a time jump and a montage followed by a final act. The less you know about the final act the better, I am therefore not going to mention it further. The montage that separates the two acts is Tarantino at his best, it is snappy and fun where it could have been clunky and distracting. Narrated by Kurt Russell, it gives a great insight into the “spaghetti” film industry, filled with too clever for their own good in jokes. What we see is the natural conclusion to the first act, and a perfect setup for the conclusion. This is no surprise as one of Tarantino signatures, and expertise is the juxtaposition of narratives. The brilliance of the montage is how it blends a little truth, and a lot of in jokes into the fiction.
Quentin Tarantino has an interesting history of shooting people in cars talking, and making it really interesting, his first two movies, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction are full of them. The latter even had a key scene in a restaurant where old cars had replace booths. This isn’t anything new, he would have grown up watching movies like American Graffiti (1973), and Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), that latter making great use of the smaller Techniscope cameras to get inside the car and changing the way cars were shot. Here we see great conversations in cars, or one particular car, Rick Dalton’s Cadillac Coupe DeVille. We see Dalton talking to Cliff Booth, these conversations centre around Dalton’s insecurities and fears. But we also see Booth picking up Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) a hitchhiker; their conversations are frivolous and fun in the vein of what we expect from Tarantino. Tate however is more a mystery, we see her driving with Polanski in his old MG, and in her Porsche giving a lift to a hitchhiker. The two journeys have destinations, the first at the Playboy Mansion, the second at valet car park. Despite the lack of dialogue we learn so much about the character in this moment. The hitcher and Tate embrace and wish each other luck, an instant if temporary friend. At the Playboy Mansion, Tate is greeted by friends Mama Cass (Rachel Redleaf) and Michelle Phillips (Rebecca Rittenhouse), the trio immediately go off to dance joyously. We learn a little more, thanks to some exposition from Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis). That is where we start to understand, the film is Rick Dalton, and Cliff Booth’s fictional story that we follow while the real world happens around them. They, like everyone are witnesses to history unfolding, and they are our way into this world separated from us by almost exactly fifty years. The reason to stay with the film, is that you want to spend more time with these people. Booth is described as a war hero, it is suggested he may have committed, and got away with a terrible crime. He comes across as a nice guy, the type you would like to have a beer with, but there is something under the surface, is he totally zen, or is this anger management? Is he a coiled spring waiting to explode? As always, Tarantino writes characters better than he rights stories, this is probably why Jackie Brown, based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch remains his most accessible film. But, as all successful people are, he understands his limitations and works with them, sometimes embracing them. Structure is his his friend, his collaborator. 
Like all the best Tarantino movies, Once Upon a Time is as much about look and mood as it is about story and character, and that is what he has created so well. You believe that Rick Dalton, lives in that house, and that Tate and Polanski live next door (and he is afraid to talk to them), and that Booth lives out in the valley behind a drive-in. The streets look like the 1960’s and look like a real world, not a set (except the E-type Jaguar, on Daltons road that never moves in six months), the people dress like they are from the 60’s not dressing up to look like the 60s’, and listen to music of the time. Music has always been a big thing in Tarantino movies, and he is famous for his deep cuts, there is no exception here. He wisely stayed away from The Beatles (referred to as, The White Album) and we get a perfect blend of Paul Revere & The Raiders, Bob Seger, Neil Diamond. a lot of the songs I recognise, but don’t really know. This vague recognition is all part of the shorthand that drags us in, as is Booth’s T-shirt bearing the logo for Champion spark plugs (I’m sure I had one when I was a kid, and expect to see people wearing them again now). But, I suspect it goes deeper than that. Tarantino isn’t just saying “remember the 60’s?” He is saying “this is what the 60’s were, and this is what they could have been!”. He is reminding us of the ideas and ideals of the day, and how they were lost, forgotten and destroyed, but for the smallest things, those ideals could have been realised. And most significantly, he is telling us that we are at a similar tipping point today and asking the question, “what the fuck are you going to do about it”. This is possibly the first time since Inglourious Basterds that he has had something to say. Am I reading too much into this and attributing Tarantino depth that he doesn’t have? I don’t think so. This is a film that needs a second and a third viewing, and like Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds one that film students will be debating and deconstructing for a generation.
As mentioned at the top, I am not going to go into the final act, but have said enough to indicate that it isn’t an accurate depiction of events, it doesn’t try to be. If you are interested in what happened, and how this was a turning point for the era and movies, listen to Karina Longworth’s amazing podcast You Must Remember This, where she dedicated a who season to the lead up, events, and aftermath.
If this is to be Quentin Tarantino’s penultimate movie (I don’t believe it is), it is truly a return to form, and an amazing springboard to his swansong. Taken on its own merits it is a fun, and often funny film that somewhat recaptures my favourite of his films, Pulp Fiction. It is also a fitting love letter to the Hollywood as a whole, and the birth of New Hollywood. A director who has always had an eye on late 60’s,a and 1970’s cinema, he has finally visited, and it was a rich and rewarding trip. The film has its issues, but they are easily forgotten simply because they are outweighed by everything else that is so good. Not Tarantino’s masterpiece but an accomplished work and for only the second or third time in his career, he isn’t just entertaining us, he has something to say. Thank you Quentin!
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