by Only film geeks prefer the making-off documentary on APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) over the actual film. In fact, only film geeks have seen it. But when Quentin Tarantino makes a film on film making and the so-called golden era of Hollywood, that may or may not have ended when Charles Mansion and his Family committed a gruesome and redundant act of violence, people want to see it. Instead of following a constructed plotline, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is about nostalgia, the desire to live in or at least witness a presumably better era. What we see is a work of art by a director who has done it before and now understood a lesson plenty of writers have learned before: plot is overrated. But where even the most accomplished writers are prone to fail, Tarantino manages to make an entertaining film with iconic scenes to remember, that simultaneously challenges our ability to indulge in Hollywood nostalgia as much as he does and enjoy it.
When you check on Tarantino’s favorite films, there’s a strong tendency towards the 60s and their unique identity. The prototype of a talented, yet washed up actor who did good in 50s TV western shows that were financed by companies placing advertisements is Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio). A man with talent and skill but also a taste for liquor, he finds himself in an identity crisis. Typecasted, he’s playing the same parts over and over again, the only social life he knows being his friendship with Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his stuntman. Even though Dalton plays the cowboy, gunslinger, the hard-boiled man, Booth actually is that man. He’s the only cowboy left in the West, in Hollywood, California, where there is no West to be conquered anymore. Booth is certainly one of the best in his profession, yet isn’t hired often anymore for picking fights and breaking stuff. To explain his character, we’re given one of the best and ionic scenes Tarantino ever filmed, when Booth challenges Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) to a fight behind set. Moh is a wonderful Lee, bragging about his ability, talking to those in attendance almost like a cult leader. But Booth throws him into a parked Lincoln, not minding the consequences. The cowboy is trying to shape his world but fails, other than the cowboys in movies, like Rick.
The other side of the Hollywood-fence is represented by a young Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and his wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who live next door with Rick but don’t even know him. They attend parties at Playboy Mansion, they meet people, are well-liked, and yet nothing we ever see them do is of any value or purpose. They lead a life so many people wished they could live but it is presented as shallow and meaningless. When Sharon goes to see herself at a cinema, she puts on glasses as massive as those in BLADE RUNNER (1982), serving the same purpose. We learn she isn’t perfect, as she is assumed to be despite her role as clumsy stock character in the film she watches. At the same times this symbolizes how the world of movies is perceived filtered, surreal, until nothing real is left. Neither Sharon nor Roman or any of their friends seem real, and when Charles Manson checks by the Polanski’s, it seems he isn’t real either, just passing through. Even though his violence is aimed at someone else, former residents of the house, Manson has lost touch with reality by failing to become a famed musician, so in this Hollywood microcosm where anything is possible and nothing is real, it is of no importance who is punished and who goes unscathed. Everyone is innocent. Everyone is guilty.
Hey! You’re Rick fucking Dalton. Don’t you forget it.
Cliff Booth
To put it bluntly, the story is slow and repetitive. And it appears Tarantino on purpose demystifies daily working life in Hollywood as uninteresting. Dalton is struggling in his new western, where the characters seem to be modeled after those in EASY RIDER (1969), including their clothes that so clearly contrast any accurate depiction of 19th century American West. EASY RIDER is another of Tarantino’s favorite films, featuring a bunch of cowboys again that are riding their steel horses from Milwaukee. Rick rediscovers his talent and ambition while acting, whereas Booth, who is little more now than his driver and janitor, has no real occupation. Other than Dalton, he has a dog to care for, another social connection, but when we see him living in a trailer behind a drive in cinema in Van Nuys, virtually in the shadows of Hollywood, not much glory is left. Booth is caught in the old days, transported back when he sees a hippie woman named Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) for the third time, taking her out to an old ranch where Booth and Dalton used to film years ago. It is the hideout of the Manson Family, yet Manson isn’t there, as he appears more an idea or myth than actual person. First presented as tough and fearsome, all those people seem little more than pathetic in their defenselessness against Booth. A blind man, owner of the farm we think has been murdered but turns out alive reminds us again that this is a fable. Unable to remember either Booth or Dalton, not caring for much anymore, he epitomizes a Hollywood mindset overly stylized throughout the film. The entire subplot is a new western that serves to prepare the last act. The villains are unmasked as clowns and the cowboy wins the gunfight on Main Street.
Everything we see is well-filmed and interesting, but things appear as if they’re repeated over and over again, almost like reruns of old shows on TV. Those that have seen INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) already assume when the finale is under way that we wouldn’t see an accurate reconstruction of events. While this would’ve been a surprise, it would’ve been tasteless as well. And it wouldn’t have said what Tarantino wants to say throughout the film: in Hollywood, you can do or be whatever you like. Even justice can be served, history can be changed. A stuntman and a TV-cowboy that just returned from Italy shooting Spaghetti films can stand their own against a trio of nutcases wanting blood, slaughtering them instead of being slaughtered. The violence is as explicit as it is ridiculous, emphasized by Booth being high on LSD, not taking it seriously. This being Hollywood, it also makes perfect sense when Dalton goes to his shed where he keeps some tools to get his prop from a WWII flick, a fully-functioning flame thrower, to finish off one of the intruders. Having no touch with the real world, it doesn’t even shock him. There is no division between films and the real world. Instead of being held responsible for owning a flame thrower, Rick Dalton is rewarded for finishing off Manson’s goons. After the police and ambulances left the gates to Polanski’s estate open up for him and he is invited to meet Sharon and her friends. It’s not Polanski’s gates actually, but the gates to Hollywood. What to make of that everyone can decide as they choose.
Tarantino’s love letter to Hollywood’s golden age is not a failure. At the same time, it’s not a success either. Too much of what we see isn’t new or redundant or stretched too far. But the film also features iconic scenes that will stay. What it really wants to say is difficult to tell. And whether or not the world would be a better place with cinema still as big and being what it was back in the 60s is definitely debatable. What isn’t debatable is that ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, like all films by Tarantino, shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It would spoil the fun. Plus, any realization that reality strongly depends on who is perceiving it.
