Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

You can tell from the poster what sort of movie this is. It is a love letter to old Hollywood, a bygone era before the modern age of cinema began, one that looks adoringly at the films and the people of the time and celebrates them. Tarantino has made his career paying homage to genre films and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is like a summation of that, an homage to all that inspired him as a film maker. With just enough cinematic magic to give us the fairy tale ending we want.

I'm not a fan of true crime. The idea of entertainment based on real suffering is difficult for me to swallow. I understand the fascination with murder and the need for us to work through our fears around these horrible crimes, but the genre boarders on exploitation and quite easily crosses over. When I heard Tarantino was making a film centred around the murder of actor Sharon Tate I was worried. Especially with his penchant for stylized violence, the sort of thing that worked brilliantly in the fictitious stories where he explored sexism and sexual violence in heterosexual relationships (Kill Bill) or what if fantasy of WWII (Inglourious Basterds), but in recounting a horrific true life crime I worried he would more than cross any reasonable line. I was wrong.

This is Tarantino's most mature film. Sedate and stoic for a Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood shows him doing all the things he does well (deep dive character development, crafty interwoven plots, smart and sharp dialogue) but doing it with less adolescent urgency and more tempered pacing. A long film that never feels long, Tarantino tells a story about a friendship set in the world that he loves and that created the art he loves for good or for bad. He gives them a rose coloured narrative and us a cathartic way to look at this world as well.

His Tate isn't victim or object. We've come to see her in that light. Instead Tarantino casts her as a lovely human. At times I wondered why she was so prominent in the film when her character never does much of anything. But I realized she does do something important. She lives. She has connections. She experiences joy and frustration. She doesn't get the arc we are expecting. She instead gets to be alive before that fateful night. Instead of this being about her death. This film is about her as a living breathing person. I'm not sure I've seen something that frames her that way before.

Tarantino's Polanski isn't romanticized or celebrated. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actually uses him very little. It was Tarantino's first film after parting ways with sexual predator Harvey Weinstein and he slyly comments on Polanski's own sexual crimes by having another character specifically turn down sex with a minor due to the fact that she's a minor.

Tarantino pulls this off despite all my fears about what this film could be. It is none of those things. Instead it is that tribute to Golden Age Hollywood and to friendship really. In many ways it captures all the things that make a Tarantino movie a Tarantino movie. However in all of that it may also be the least exciting. That's not necessarily bad. It doesn't have the glitz and glam of his usual efforts. His style is muted and although it start to peek through in moments he keeps it rather restrained. While I was never bored throughout the long run time, the story full enough to keep it engaging throughout, I was also rarely excited or moved. In some ways the film is rather touching. But its emotional impact is slighter than some of his other works.

Another down side is a weird, disjointed scene featuring Bruce Lee in the middle of the film. The scene is played for laughs but has a strong air of racism with it that took me out of the film and made me feel fairly gross. I don’t see a good reason for Tarantino playing this scene this way, making Lee a laughing stock. The excuses that it is about building Pitt's character don't make sense. It didn't require making Lee seem like an ass to accomplish that. The whole part just felt way out of left field and took away from an otherwise strong movie. While I love that the film reimagines history and changes events to tell its story (it's not claiming in any way shape or from to be historically accurate) there is no need to paint a real life person as an ass without reason.

But overall this little loving fantasy is worth seeing. Well made. Well acted. And with a twist which gives the ending the kind of feeling that feels really good leaving the cinema.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Al Pacino, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell, Bruce Dern, Dakota Fanning, Michael Madeson, Luke Perry, Mike Moh, Damien Lewis
Writer/Director: Quinton Tarantino