M
ore than any fairy tale, or a sergio leone
film, the title of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth
stand-alone feature suggests an elaborate yarn
that might take a while to tell. Not so very elabo-
rate but indeed a tall tale of sorts, Once Upon a
Time... in Hollywoodis set in a familiar fantasy-
land and era—the perennially mythologized late ’60s, with its
dashing of hopes, fall from grace, bummer wake-up from a beau-
tiful dream. Or, as focused through the lens of Tarantino’s charac-
ters: at the apparent end of the road for a TV actor named Rick
Dalton, and by extension his stunt double Cliff Booth. Beginning
its timeline in February 1969, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
introduces us to Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) side by side with Cliff
(Brad Pitt), the two explaining their trade in a black-and-white
behind-the-scenes interview on an anonymous Western set. Rick
plays cowboys, Cliff plays Rick on horses and in mid-air; both
enjoy making up fun stuff for our entertainment.
What follows surprised many at the ballyhooed premiere in
Cannes this past May, and not because somebody then blows
someone’s head off (which, just to clarify, does not occur). Some-
thing stranger, in fact: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood settles
into a loose-limbed, sunny buddy routine with an undercurrent
of nerves, before paths begin to diverge. Rick anxiously takes a gig
playing a Western villain, with Cliff as his rock-steady support
system but also wandering off on his own as whatever you call
the laid-back stand-in to a potential has-been. And for a third
and vital strand (as ever in Tarantino’s long-game loop-back story-
telling), there’s the “real” figure of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie)
and her husband, shit-hot director Roman Polanski (Rafal
Zawierucha), zooming around town, hanging out, being desir-
able. That despite the small matter of the gruesome Manson
Family murders somewhere in there on the historical record...
Even with that on everyone’s minds, Tarantino does not drive the
film forward with the hand-rubbing glee over narrative tension that
has been his stock-in-trade (and that failed him utterly in his most
recent, turgid feature, The Hateful Eight, which intriguingly Nick
Pinkerton has described as “a stubbornly, defiantly misanthropic
movie, a film that brings back the spirit of Hollywood in the mid-
’60s”). Far from it: Rick embraces his new role as a saloon heavy and
boyishly gets his groove back; Cliff tries to mind his own business with
(an even more Western-like) manly charisma and code of decency;
and the apparently doomed Tate takes unabashed pleasure in being on
the brink of making it—through all of which, Tarantino nurtures into
being something unexpectedly touching, even sweet. The filmmaker
remains invested in the outsider or struggling criminal—a transmuta-
tion of 1970s antiheroes into the language of movie types—and his
heart here lies with these underdogs, the TV actor who was barely
making do and the talented stunt double who might fade away.
A glib formula might describe Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
as combining the middle-ager last-chance gambit of Jackie Brown
and the lurid revisionist urge to punch up history in Inglourious
Basterds. But it’s something at once mature and madly, deeply, and
now less collector-ishly in love with Hollywoodland and, even
more, its far-flung margins—and here, in the most artificial of set-
tings, Tarantino achieves something genuine and heartfelt.A
s anticipated and speculated upon as
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood has been, isn’t
this also a filmmaker who is in many ways deeply
unfashionable for what we call our times? For one
thing, the particular way in which Tarantino lives
in and through movies seems to have receded
from pop-cultural prominence, much less the mythos of avideo-store-educated
savant—a notion that
would meet with blank
stares from a generation
weaned on the firehose of
streaming, YouTube, and
torrents. Likewise, Taran-
tino’s upending of high-low
hierarchies and his secret-
handshake references
quicken fewer pulses amid a
general sense of cultural
amnesia (or indifference)—
not to mention a landscape
where burgeoning televi-
sion offerings elicit wild
critical praise and loving
scrutiny for supercharging
and elaborating within
assorted genres. And most fundamentally, Tarantino’s penchant for
grisly-glorious revisionism has become a non-starter for some in an
era demanding more enlightened approaches to history, very nearly
across the board. In the case of his latest, the filmmaker has already
been put on the spot for the gender distribution of his dialogue.
That last criticism must have befuddled Tarantino, because
Robbie’s Tate is so affectionately written and, with Pitt’s Cliff, surely
shares the heart of the film, Rick’s hapless antics notwithstanding.
Despite the apocalypse we all associate with Tate, in Hollywood’s
Hollywood she is simply an actress with her life ahead of her who
takes pleasure in her own work. A standout sequence, at first seem-
ingly set up for disappointment and a cheap laugh, sees Tate stop-
ping at a cinema where the farcical comedy The Wrecking Crew is
playing, co-starring her in a klutz role. She has to introduce herself
to the theater staff, but then is welcomed in; kicking up her bare
feet on the chairs, she soaks in the laughter of the audience.
She’s enjoying herself, in every sense; the movie’s not Tess of the
d’Urbervilles—the book she buys for Polanski, in another affecting
scene—but she’s making her way (as Cliff, for one, is not). Taran-
tino’s professional admiration is just as palpable here as it is with
Rick when he finally gets going, the joy of moviemaking being
another well-established aspect of the Tarantino mood.
In the eyes of DiCaprio’s Rick, of course, Tate’s already made it,
by virtue of Polanski’s post–Rosemary’s Babycool-kid status; the
young couple tools around in a sports car, free as can be. Mean-
while, Rick on his first shoot in a while spends his downtime read-
ing a Western pulp fiction about a breaker of horses, whom he
describes thus before tearing up: “He’s not the best anymore. He’s
coming to terms with what it’s like to become slightly more useless
each day.” Rick says this to Tate’s formidable next-gen successor—
an utterly self-possessed child actor (Julia Butters) he’s performing
with, who’s busy reading a biography of Disney and taking no guff.
Tarantino’s sympathies have always rested with working profession-
als, whom he has delighted in holding up for glory, whether it’s
directing German TV actor Christoph Waltz to two Oscars or
putting stuntwoman Zoë Bell in a leading role. And sure enough,
in Rick, he sets up a scenario whereby this TV actor whose worth
rests on entertaining folks with daring deeds could accomplish
another spectacular one before the film is through.
Speaking of spectacle, the director’s usual sense of buildup and
whiplash surprise is not where the force of this film lies. Instead it
takes the unusual Tarantino tack of feeling out this moment in no
great hurry, at one point skipping ahead six months—from Febru-
ary to the fabled August of 1969—and not hanging on Rick a28 |FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019 Closer Look:Once Upon a Time... in Hollywoodopens on July 26.The particular way in
which Tarantino lives in
and through movies
seems to have receded
from pop-cultural
prominence, much less
the mythos of a video-
store-educated savant—
a notion that would
meet with blank stares
from a generation
weaned on the fire-
hose of streaming.