Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s unabashed love letter to the Hollywood of yesteryears. It’s a meticulous recreation of Hollywood in the 60s, complete with parties at the Playboy Mansion and hippies living in an abandoned movie ranch.
Like Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained before it, it’s also a storytelling exercise in rewriting history to avenge the wrongs of the past. However, what’s different about Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is that it’s a (mostly) mature reflection on the Hollywood life, told through the lens of a buddy story involving Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt.
Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio) was once the star of the hit NBC Western series called Bounty Law. Nowadays, he takes bit-parts as the heavy (the bad guy) in other serials. Producer Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) persuades him one evening to try his hand at Italian Westerns, which convinces Rick that he’s washed up and his career is winding down. Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is Dalton’s stuntman, though by his own admission he’s mostly Rick’s chauffeur nowadays, after too many incidents of drunk driving meant that Rick was barred from driving himself. Booth is a soft-spoken man of many talents: in a flashback, we see why he’s been blacklisted from most stuntman jobs, after he dents a costume designer’s car by throwing Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) against the door.
Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), in the meanwhile, has moved into Cielo Drive, right besides Rick Dalton’s own house, with her husband, the director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). A free spirit who enjoys dancing and music, at one point she visits a movie theater to see herself in her new movie, The Wrecking Crew, taking in the laughter and joy of the crowd at her onscreen antics.
These three stories rarely, if ever intersect for most of the movie’s almost three hour runtime.
Dalton confronts his fears of failing to live up to his dreams, and Booth finds himself flirting with a young hippie girl Pussycat, who takes him to the Spahn Movie Ranch, where she lives with dozens of other hippies. It’s here, however, the movie picks up steam, with a tense sequence where Cliff investigates the ranch, trying to meet with the old owner, George Spahn. The film enters firmly into endgame territory by the third act, which leads to a glorious (and gratuitous) show of violence.
The story works more like a novel than a film: it interweaves Rick’s struggles with his career with the quiet, solitary life Cliff leads in his trailer, where he lives with his well-trained dog, Brandi. Sharon Tate is more of a presence than a character: Tarantino builds up her ethereal nature throughout the film, and there’s more emphasis on her expressive eyes (and that famous smile) than dialogue. “I think at that time it was an incredibly exciting time in her life,” Robbie told EW. “She was newly married, and her career is really taking off and Hollywood is an exciting place where there’s so much opportunity and experiences to be had. Therefore I wanted her to feel hopeful, I wanted her to feel excited. Yeah, it was really beautiful to be able to have those more quiet moments to herself where she’s just kind of loving life in Hollywood.”
Of course, there are times when the audience begins to wonder where the film might be headed. At the hands of a lesser director, the audience would have been bored: here, the camaraderie between Rick and Cliff holds their attention for most of the movie.
There’s a good juxtaposition between Rick and Cliff: while Rick spends his time trying to act like a hero, Cliff spends most of his time being one by default.
It’s a clever play on the actor/stuntman relationship, and also, in some ways, an invocation of two sides of Tarantino’s own personality: one side is a tough, laconic badass whereas another side is the movie nerd, obsessed with delivering and feeling uncomfortable amidst a sea of changes.
One of the things that sticks out in this film are the lovingly-rendered driving scenes. Cliff roars through the streets of LA (and the mountainous outskirts) with authority, music blaring loudly as she speeds through the scenery in his blue Karmann Ghia. Often, the camera is positioned in the back seat, staring squarely between Rick and Cliff. Tarantino discussed this with the EW. “…A big part of my memory of Los Angeles at that time is being in the car with my stepfather. Being in the car with my mom. And driving around and listening to the radio playing all the time. And how we listened to the radio back then, which is different than the way we listen to the radio now, where you just kept it on one station. You didn’t move around looking for songs.”
As for if this is Tarantino’s best film: there are better, more tense films like Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds. However, this is a more personal, intimate film, treated with more restraint and maturity than any of Tarantino’s other films. This is a modern fairy tale, filled with melancholic people lamenting the fact that the best parts of their lives are behind them. But it’s also filled with wonder and hope, and it’s encouraging that at the end of the film, Tarantino lets that hope triumph in the face of great adversity.
