14 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Culture

The popularity of true crime has in-

creased substantially in the past five

years, bolstered by podcasts like “Seri-

al” and documentaries like Netflix’s

“Making a Murderer.” It’s no wonder

that a true crime wave is hitting Edin-

burgh Festival Fringe next month.

The festival, which starts on Friday

and will run for over three weeks, has at

least 15 shows, ranging from comedies

to darker material. “Bible John” looks at

the unsolved case of three women be-

lieved to have been murdered by a serial

killer in Glasgow in the late 1960s, and

“The Incident Room” examines the po-

lice investigation into the Yorkshire Rip-

per, Peter Sutcliffe, who was convicted

of killing 13 women in the late 1970s and

early 1980s.

At the Edinburgh International Festi-

val, which coincides with the fringe fes-

tival, the Swiss director Milo Rau will

stage “La Reprise,” which explores the

murder of Ihsane Jarfi, a young gay

man, in Liège, Belgium, in 2012.

As for the lighter fare, the comedians

Anna Drezen, Matt Price and Rhys

James will tackle true crime in their

stand-up sets. In addition, true crime

stars are also making appearances: the

“Drunk Women Solving Crime” pod-

casters will have a residency in Edin-

burgh, while Laura Nirider and Steven

Drizin, lawyers featured in “Making a

Murderer: Part 2,” will discuss the case.

But questions remain about the ethics

of making entertainment out of murder.

Do producers and consumers risk glam-

orizing these crimes, and possibly exon-

erating the perpetrators? And how

much can we trust podcasts and TV

shows to stick to the “true” part of the

true crime label, knowing viewers’

thirst for well-paced, satisfying narra-

tives?

As an art form, theater may be well

positioned to examine such questions.

In “La Reprise” and “Bible John,” for in-

stance, the actors directly address the

audience and remind them of their

shows’ artifice. The plays invite viewers

to consider the power, and the limita-

tions, of theater and storytelling as a

way of making sense of human brutality.

In “La Reprise,” the murder of Mr.

Jarfi can be retold simply: He was mur-

dered by drunk, homophobic young

men. “But then you go deeper,” Mr. Rau

said, “and the play becomes a recon-

struction of what happened in five acts

and, in parallel, an essay about the tools,

the methods, we use to make theater.”

He added: “It starts with the questions:

How can you understand something

that is [not] understandable? How can

you represent the emotions but also the

violence itself onstage?”

The show features a mix of profes-

sional and nonprofessional actors who

introduce themselves to the audience.

They also restage conversations they

conducted with Mr. Jarfi’s former part-

ner, parents and one of his killers.

Mr. Rau rejects the idea that he is

turning tragedy into cheap entertain-

ment or using it to shock. Mr. Jarfi’s fam-

ily “completely understood” his inten-

tions, he said, even though he graphi-

cally restages their son’s murder. “I’m

an artist, I believe in the power of art to

heal, by repeating the trauma itself,” Mr.

Rau said.

Caitlin McEwan, a Scottish play-

wright, also said she was interested not

in making a “straight play” about true

crime but in producing “something that

speaks to the audience and does some-

thing formally inventive,” she said. In

“Bible John,” four women start off by

playing present-day true crime podcast

enthusiasts. Later, as their obsession

deepens, the characters begin to re-en-

act scenes from the case, taking on the

roles of victims and police officers.

The play examines how the true

crime genre leaves us craving neatly

structured stories and solutions. This is

particularly pointed in the Bible John

case, which was never solved. “Narra-

tively, that is really interesting,” she

said. “How do you tell a story as a the-

ater maker that doesn’t have an end-

ing?”

Ms. McEwan also wanted to explore

another thorny issue: gender. True

crime is much more popular among

women than among men. “I’ve got a lot

of friends who are obsessed, and I was

really interested in why it’s always

women,” Ms. McEwan said. “There are a

lot of women who feel really conflicted

about it, but won’t stop listening.”

Ms. Drezen, a “Saturday Night Live”

writer and stand-up comic, has a theory

as to why. “It’s like we’re preparing,

we’re studying: Obviously I’m going to

get murdered at some point,” she

laughed, darkly. In her show “Okay Get

Home Safe!!,” she explores her love of

true crime, how we’re sold the idea that

the world is dangerous for women, and

the times when she actually has found

herself in danger.

“True crime is so centered around

white, cis, straight women, and feminin-

ity being this unassailable virtue,” Ms.

Drezen said. “White women are in less

danger than a lot of other populations —

people of color, trans women — why is it

that we’re so scared?” Her show will

look at why violence against women is

so “marketable.”

Ms. Drezen also comments on how

strange it is that such a topic has be-

come “fun and fluffy” entertainment.

“I’ll take a break from political analysis

podcasts, and turn on something about a

woman who died while screaming ...

why does this feel relaxing?”

The creators of “The Incident Room,”

David Byrne and Olivia Hirst, said that

ethically, they did not want to use “the

murder of a woman as a dramatic foun-

dation,” and wanted to find other ways

to make the show thrilling.

The Yorkshire Ripper case has been

dramatized on British television several

times. But in this version, the murderer

is not depicted. Instead, the action is set

entirely at the police station, where de-

tectives on the case were often com-

pletely overwhelmed by the sheer vol-

ume of information. Mr. Byrne met with

real officers, and had access to the ar-

chive of the investigative journalist Mi-

chael Bilton, to uncover the challenges

of catching a suspect in the days before

DNA testing or CCTV footage.

They also wanted to look at the story

through a gendered lens, Mr. Byrne

said, and the play is told from the per-

spective of a real police sergeant,

Megan Winterburn. This also opened up

the issue of sexism in the police force,

and how the case affected the everyday

lives of women in Yorkshire at the time.

(The police told women not to go out at

night.)

“There were more women running”

the investigation “than men, but they’ve

not been represented in any of the dra-

mas about the Yorkshire Ripper,” Mr.

Byrne said. “And obviously these are

crimes against women. So dramatically

as well as socially, that felt interesting.”

Mr. Byrne found himself as gripped

by the case as by any true crime pod-

cast. “I’ve been terrible at parties for the

past two years, because it’s all I talk

about,” he said.

Staging (true) crimes in Edinburgh

Dramatists try to make

sense of the feverish public

interest in real murders

BY HOLLY WILLIAMS

ANDREW JAMES FILMMAGIC, VIA GETTY IMAGES

“I’ve got a lot of friends who are

obsessed, and I was really

interested in why it’s always

women.”

Clockwise from left: “La Reprise,” which

revisits the killing of a gay man in Bel-

gium in 2012; the comedian Anna Drezen,

whose show is titled “Okay Get Home

Safe!!”; and Caitlin McEwan, the author

of “Bible John.”

HUBERT AMIEL

There is a lot of love in “Once Upon a

Time... in Hollywood,” and quite a bit

to enjoy. The screen is crowded with

signs of Quentin Tarantino’s well-

established ardor — for the movies and

television shows of the decades after

World War II; for the vernacular archi-

tecture, commercial signage and fa-

mous restaurants of Los Angeles; for

the female foot and the male jawline;

for vintage clothes and cars and ciga-

rettes. But the mood in this, his ninth

feature, is for the most part affection-

ate rather than obsessive.

Don’t get me wrong. Tarantino is still

practicing a cinema of saturation,

demanding the audience’s total atten-

tion and bombarding us with allusions,

visual jokes, flights of profane elo-

quence, daubs of throwaway beauty

and gobs of premeditated gore. And

yet “Once Upon a Time... in Holly-

wood,” whose title evokes bedtime

stories as well as a pair of Sergio Le-

one masterpieces, is Tarantino’s most

relaxed movie by far, because of both

its ambling, shaggy-dog structure and

the easygoing rhythm of its scenes.

Though trouble percolates on the

horizon and mayhem arrives in the

final act, this is fundamentally a hang-

out movie, a bad-guys-come-to-town

western more like “Rio Bravo” than

“High Noon.” Above all, it’s a buddy

picture about two middle-level enter-

tainment industry workers doing their

jobs and making the scene over a few

hectic, sunny days in 1969.

The friendship between Rick Dalton

(Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth

(Brad Pitt) functions for Tarantino as

both keystone and key. It’s an organ-

izing principle and a source of mean-

ing, and a major reason that “Once

Upon a Time” is more than a baby-

boomer edition of Trivial Pursuit

brought to life.

Unlike many of the people they

share the screen with — the period-

specific A-list characters include

Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Steve

McQueen (Damian Lewis) and Bruce

Lee (Mike Moh) — Rick and Cliff are

made-up. Rick is an actor on the down-

ward slope of a moderately successful

career. A star in a handful of westerns

and combat pictures, and of a popular

TV western series, he is now mostly

cast as a one-episode villain on other

people’s shows. He’s considering an

offer to make spaghetti westerns in

Italy. (Tarantino supplies perfect fake

clips to annotate Rick’s filmography).

Not a has-been, exactly, but not quite

what he used to be or might have been.

Cliff is his longtime stunt double, but

as Rick’s roles have shifted, his role

has changed, too. His duties include

driving Rick (whose license has been

suspended) to and from auditions and

sets, performing minor household

repairs and generally being available

as a sounding board and drinking

partner. You can’t really call Cliff a

sidekick — we’re talking about Brad

Pitt — and he’s not really a servant,

either, even though Rick pays him for

his time. An older vocabulary is

needed: Cliff is a gentleman’s gentle-

man, a man Friday, a dogsbody, a

squire. “More than a brother but less

than a wife” is how the movie puts it.

The relationship isn’t defined by

money or sex, but by a difference in

rank accepted without comment or

complaint by both parties. The inequal-

ity between the men — Rick lives in a

spacious ranch house up in the hills,

Cliff in a cluttered trailer down in the

valley — is what dignifies their bond,

just as the contrast of their tempera-

ments sustains it.

Rick, a sloppy drinker and a furious

smoker, wears his feelings close to the

surface. He weeps over the state of his

career, throws a tantrum in his trailer

when he messes up a scene and is

moved to tears by the exquisiteness of

his own acting. Cliff is a different kind

of cat — lean, taciturn, self-effacing,

slow to anger but capable of serious

violence. Some say he’s a murderer; he

himself occasionally alludes to a crimi-

nal past. Better not to ask. Apart from

Rick, his main attachment is to his dog,

Brandy, whose loyalty is the mirror of

his own. (DiCaprio’s baroque, exuber-

ant emotionalism perfectly comple-

ments Pitt’s down-to-the-bone min-

imalism. They’re both terrific.)

If the guys aren’t quite Don Quixote

and Sancho Panza, their companion-

ship nonetheless takes shape within a

fundamentally aristocratic social order.

Joan Didion, in an essay first published

in 1973, described the Hollywood of

that era as “the last extant stable

society,” and Tarantino’s tableau con-

firms this view. Life isn’t perfect, but it

is coherent. People know their place.

They respect the rules and hierarchies.

Rick’s neighbors Sharon Tate and her

husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zaw-

ierucha), live higher up in the canyon

(at the end of a gated driveway) and

also on the status pyramid. They are

regarded not with envy or resentment,

but with awe.

The governing virtue in this world is

courtesy. The things produced within it

are ridiculous, but also beautiful. Resi-

dents take seriously things that are

objectively silly, which lends a measure

of charm to otherwise pedestrian

moments. A series of on-set interac-

tions between Rick and two other

actors — a leading man played by

Timothy Olyphant and a juvenile

played by the phenomenal Julia But-

ters — demonstrate the workings of

this code. What they’re collaborating

on might look like disposable commer-

cial trash, but making it involves craft

and tradition, folk wisdom and spiritu-

al discipline, trust and integrity.

Tarantino’s sense of the movie past

is often described as nostalgic. He

tends to be seen — by admirers and

critics alike — as a film geek, a fanboy,

a fanatic cinephile with an encyclope-

dic command of archaic styles and

genres. True enough. But “Once Upon

a Time... in Hollywood” shows that he

deserves a loftier, possibly more con-

tentious label. It’s the expression of a

sensibility that is profoundly and pas-

sionately conservative.

John Ford, one of old Hollywood’s

greatest conservatives, ended one of

his greatest movies with the exhorta-

tion to “print the legend.” Tarantino’s

answer is to film the fairy tale.

Alongside the knight and his squire,

there is a princess — Tate — who lives

in something like a castle and is mar-

ried to a man who looks a little like a

frog. Tarantino has never been much

interested in sex or romance — vio-

lence and vengeance are what make

his stories run — but he has a senti-

mental investment in marriage and a

thing about wives.

Sharon, who is barefoot, pregnant or

both in most of her scenes, is not so

much a symbol of innocence or glam-

our as an emblem of normalcy. The

best stretch of the movie follows her,

Cliff and Rick through their separate

routines on a single day. Rick is at

work, fighting off a hangover and his

own self-doubt. Cliff picks up a hitch-

hiker — a girl he’s noticed before,

played by Margaret Qualley — and

drives her to the Spahn Movie Ranch

in Chatsworth, where she lives with a

bunch of other young people (and an

old guy played by Bruce Dern, one of

many memorable cameos). Sharon

also gives a stranger a ride, buys her

husband a gift and stops in at a theater

in Westwood to watch herself in “The

Wrecking Crew,” a spoofy action caper

starring Dean Martin.

That’s a real movie, as are most of

the others whose titles appear on

billboards and marquees. In the real

world, six months after that magically

ordinary imaginary day, Tate was

murdered in her home on Cielo Drive,

along with four of her friends. The

killers lived at the Spahn Ranch, and

were disciples of a failed musician

named Charles Manson.

That’s the opposite of a spoiler, by

the way. If you don’t know about the

Manson family, or if you’re vague on

the details of their crimes, you may not

feel the tingle of foreboding that is

crucial to Tarantino’s revisionism.

Didion, in “The White Album,” wrote

that “many people I know in Los Ange-

les believe that the Sixties ended

abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969, ended at

exactly the moment when word of the

murders on Cielo Drive traveled like

brush fire through the community.” But

what if the ’60s never ended? Or

rather, what if the ’60s, as a half-cen-

tury of pop-culture habit has taught us

to remember them, never really hap-

pened.

The political struggles of the decade

are deep in the background, occasion-

ally crackling through car radio static

along with traffic and weather reports.

The music we hear isn’t a soundtrack

of rebellion, but an anthology of pleas-

ure. Tarantino’s anti-ironic celebration

of the mainstream popular culture of

the time amounts to a sustained argu-

ment against the idea of a countercul-

ture. Those who would disrupt, chal-

lenge or destroy the last stable society

on earth are in the grip of an ideolog-

ical, aesthetic and moral error. Hippies

aren’t cool. Old-time he-men like Rick

Dalton and Cliff Booth are cool.

You don’t have to agree. I don’t think

I do. But I also don’t mind. There will

be viewers who object to the movie’s

literal and metaphorical hippie-punch-

ing on political grounds. There will be

others who embrace it as a thumb in

the eye of current sensitivities, and

others who insist the movie has no

politics at all.

To which I can only say: it’s a west-

ern, for Pete’s sake. Politics are wound

into its DNA, and Tarantino knows the

genome better than anyone else.

Which is just to say that like other

classics of the genre, “Once Upon a

Time... in Hollywood” is not going

anywhere. It will stand as a source of

debate — and delight — for as long as

we care about movies. And it wants us

to care.

Buddies bonding in Tarantino-land

MOVIE REVIEW

An invented duo forms

the core of a film that

unfolds in the real 1969

BY A.O. SCOTT

ANDREW COOPER/SONY PICTURES

Brad Pitt, far left, and Leonardo DiCaprio

in “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.”

Above, Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate.

ANDREW COOPER/SONY PICTURES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

The governing virtue in this

world is courtesy. The things

produced within it are ridiculous,

but also beautiful.

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