Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, and a lot of familiar Tarantino regulars (and at least one of their kids)

Do you like beautiful people doing interesting things? Then you like Hollywood, and that’s precisely what Quentin Tarantino is illustrating in his 9^th film, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. If there’s one thing you know about Quentin Tarantino, it’s that he loves movies, especially of a certain era. If there are two things you know about Quentin Tarantino, it’s that he admires the shit out of Japanese martial arts films and spaghetti westerns. Many of his films include trademarks of these two genres, and with the title of his latest film, he is paying homage to perhaps the greatest spaghetti western director of all time, Sergio Leone, a man responsible for two landmark epics, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America. Both of those films invoke the common fairy tale prelude, Once upon a time as a way to express the opening of a narrative that will be about past events, but the phrase also signals a fable-like quality within the work. The same can certainly be said about Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is the story of a fading TV actor, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his friend and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Dalton has the starring role in a weekly gunslinger western called Bounty Law, a program similar to the 1960’s series Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen. Booth’s career has hit a few snags so to speak, but Dalton remains adamant on keeping him as his exclusive stuntman as well as employing him as his chauffeur and occasional housekeeper. Most importantly though, Dalton has dreams of stardom on par with the greats of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The film takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, just as classic Hollywood is losing its grip to new Hollywood and the post-classical movement.

Many will cite this as being the least “Tarantino” of all of his films, whatever that means; however, while the plot is perhaps more loose than his previous films, Tarantino captures the atmosphere of this dynamic time with great success. There’s a lot going on in this film, which is why I think some will have a tough time figuring out what to make of it. On one hand, we have Dalton’s quest for fame, attempting to leverage some television notoriety into a film career without aging out, becoming typecast, or losing his game all the while battling an internal conflict about whether he is worthy of fame in the first place. Then we have Booth’s ambiguous, deliberate sojourn through the land of broken dreams. However, he appears mostly unaffected. His role is almost Virgil-like, like a guide on a personal tour through hell with the Manson family smack dab in the center. I’m sure most readers know by now that the film costars Margot Robbie as Sharron Tate, a Hollywood starlet forever tragically linked to the madness of the Mansons. While the two main characters are on two very separate personal journeys, Tarantino craftily balances this film on the relationship between the two men allowing the film to move along nicely despite their uniquely different paths. Moreover, the friendship between Dalton and Booth is smart, clever, and relatable. There’s no arbitrary cliché-constructed conflict dropped on the audience for cheap drama. There’s a sense of history between them both, and this comes through mostly thanks to the exquisite performances given by Pitt and most notably DiCaprio. The scenes of DiCaprio prepping and delivering various shots as an actor within the film are some of his best work.  

The ending of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood will most likely be the greatest discussion topic and conversation piece produced by the film, and it is a doozy. It’s those ellipses (…) that set this film apart from the Leone films I mentioned earlier, and it is there where I could start to go down the rabbit hole. However, not to spoil anything, all I will say is that I am already eager to see the film a second time with the ending in mind, and my guess is I’ll appreciate the film differently and quite a bit more upon a second viewing. A familiar experience with most of Tarantino’s films, but this one may be one of his most fascinating conclusions of any film he’s made.

What we have here is a modern-day auteur at the top of his technical game taking chances and making movies that still make an audience appreciate the medium and the experience it can offer. There’s tremendous atmosphere populated with thrilling takes on movies, dreams, American culture, music and the divisive nature of society. Plus there’s a bitching soundtrack curated no doubt for some of the blunt references they make to the film’s plot. The soundtrack also being the medium for Tarantino’s only cameo, a device in nearly all of his films, some being overt (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained), and some being practically non-existent (Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill, Jackie Brown). Speaking of cameos, this film has some good ones that are not Tarantino, and I will not spoil any of them. Just go see this movie. I have almost nothing bad to say about this movie other than it’s not Tarantino’s best, which is to say it’s the best movie of 2019 so far by a long shot, just not the best movie of 1994. A

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is rated R and has a running time of 2 hours and 41 minutes.