New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

AUGUST 24 2019 LISTENER 57

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ... HOLLYWOOD

directed by Quentin Tarantino

A

fter all these years, it turns out that

Quentin Tarantino’s best film is

one that feels as if it was made by

somebody else.

To be sure, in Once Upon a Time in

... Hollywood, many of the director’s

notorious obsessions, kinks, and turn-

ons are on display. Yet the qualities that

have made Tarantino an enfant terrible

• the obnoxiousness, the indulgent
  dialogue, the sadism and empty style – are
  mercifully absent. Here is a film laid way
  back, stuck firmly in cruise control.
  The year is 1969 and, in a Hollywood
  where stars live and die by notoriety,
  Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a
  TV cowboy on the wane. With dreams
  of breaking into film long dashed, he’s
  left to play goons and heavies in backlot
  westerns.
  Rick lives in the hills above, where
  his neighbours are the newly famous
  newlyweds Roman Polanski and Sharon

Tate (Margot Robbie). At Dalton’s shoulder

is Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Rick’s stunt

double who’s also his driver, DIY man,

and gofer – “more than a brother but

less than a wife”. When Rick stutters

and despairs and throws tantrums in his

trailer, it is Cliff who picks up the pieces.

All the flashiest scenes go to DiCaprio,

but Pitt leans effortlessly into the satire.

Here is a leading man who knows that

he’s a leading man, quite happy to let

his tanned arms and white smile do the

heavy lifting. He gets the best line in the

film, a shrugged, carefree “fair enough”.

There is a glee, even a smugness,

with which Tarantino marshals the

paraphernalia of the era: a jukebox of

radio commercials, billboards, enormous

cars, drive-in cinemas, knitted lace bell-

bottoms, and the phrase “dirty f---ing

hippies”. It’s a milieu entirely divorced

from the radicalism of the 60s. Here, in

idyllic LA, one can find pure pleasure and

no confrontation – a little carefree haven.

Or not. Of course, everyone knows

what happened to Tate. I was half

prepared to recoil from Tarantino’s sleight

of hand, as if he were pinning down

August 1969 as a moment when America

“lost its innocence”, or some other kind

of cliché. And yet the film’s finale – best

not revealed here – is cunning and

audacious.

It’s an idea that can come only from a

film-maker who, finally, has abandoned

pulpy fictions and matured enough to

take things seriously and think more

deeply about his art.

IN CINEMAS NOW

James Robins

End of the

golden age

A buddy movie set

in an idyllic LA on

the precipice is one

of Tarantino’s best.

DIEGO MARADONA

directed by Asif Kapadia

I

n two superb films, documentarian

Asif Kapadia dived deeply into the

psyches of doomed heroes: first the

racing driver Ayrton Senna, then the

singer Amy Winehouse. Forgoing the

tedium of talking heads in favour of

meticulously edited archival material,

Kapadia places his subjects in a recon-

structed present tense and gives us a

potent sense of intimacy.

Yet Kapadia’s latest, a portrait of

the Argentine footballer Diego Mara-

dona, feels far less intimate than it

should. Beloved, mischievous, talented,

despised, a simultaneous “cheat” and

“genius”, Maradona is a fascinating

figure, and Kapadia’s obsessive search

for veracity and depth is certainly on

display. Spliced between scintillating

action replays is plenty of previously

unrevealed home video, and the direc-

tor excels at placing events in a social

and political context (Argentina’s 1986

World Cup quarterfinal victory over

England played as revenge for the Falk-

lands War, for example).

Yet, in trying to divorce man from

myth, attempting to decouple Diego

from Maradona, the man’s complexity

and contradictions seem to go missing.

His journey, in this film, can go only

one way: from the heights of triumph to

ignominy and disgrace, from “Golden

Boy” to persona non grata. Indeed, much

of Maradona’s later years – the arguably

more interesting part – after his ban from

football in the early 90s is totally absent.

With a fleetness of foot familiar to

Maradona himself, Kapadia dances

around the rougher edges of a life.

IN CINEMAS NOW

James Robins

Films are rated out of 5:

(abysmal) to (amazing)

SHORT TAKE

Brad Pitt and

Leonardo

DiCaprio in Once

Upon a Time in

... Hollywood.