Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Review (2019)

With Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Tarantino has successfully made the film that he tried to make with Jackie Brown. Eventhough with Jackie Brown, he made a superb change of route for a more toned down film compared to the stylistation of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, OUATIH feels like the Tarantino film that is mature, compared to Jackie, simply because with Jackie Brown, he made a deliberately off beat (for him) film, whereas with OUATIH we can actually feel Tarantino’s growth as an artist, with his changing views of the cinema that he belovedly cherishes.

The film follows fading star Rick Dalton, played by my favourite and absolute scene stealer Leonardo Dicaprio, and his stunt double Cliff Booth, played by the cool and suave Brad Pitt, as they try to remain relevant along with the storyline of the real life Sharon Tate, played by the ever graceful Margot Robbie playing the doomed actress. OUATIH is probably one of Tarantino’s first films (ironically this being his 9th) to address the history of cinema in a humane way rather than the typical cinematic love that was present in his previous films.

The Tough,Gangster played by people like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction is replaced by Rick Dalton, a “tough, badass” bounty hunter on screen, whereas in a reality, he’s a coughing, insecure and “on the brink of fading “ man. The coolness and timelessness of the tough guys of the films that inspired Tarantino have been replaced by an aged and faded star along with the real badass, his stuntman Cliff Booth. By this time Tarantino no longer has those scenes where his character’s monologue intelligently a.la Hans Landa, Jules Winnfield etc. All that has been replaced by a sense of sadness and reality and humanness that has so escaped Tarantino’s films in favour of style and wit. The people on screen are no longer characters in a film but have become real people simply because of Tarantino’s brilliant decision to do away with his stylisation. The quick wit and style of his dialogue have been replaced by sadder lines such as the scene with the brilliant Julie Butters as Trudi Fraser, a young method “actor” (as she prefers) wherein he describes the book he’s reading and we realise it is pretty similar to his own life. The scene, which still has Tarantino’s humour, has such a bittersweet sense of sadness with Leo playing phenomenally well (probably the role he should have won an Oscar for). Rick is a movie character, in the sense that he doesn’t behave like people like us do, but its when the cinema-ness of him merges with the reality of life and age, that really hits us. This is probably the first time that a Tarantino character is crying not because he/she should, but because he wants to.

It is this attribute that solidifies the idea set up in the opening of the film, wherein Rick visits Marvin Schwarz, played by a scene chewing Al Pacino, wherein he explains how Rick is getting sidelined. The subplot set up here gets an amazing payoff during the shooting of an episode which involves Trudi saying something to Rick.

Within the Golden Age Of Hollywood, Tarantino also points his camera at the well known early death sufferer Sharon Tate, who was killed by the Manson family members while pregnant, recording her day in a life. These scenes involving Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, involve a surprising amount of tenderness and a warmth unimaginable from the man who made Pulp Fiction. They way we see her live and enjoy life in the town, seeing her own film in the theatres and being joyed by the responses that the audience gives for her performance. An important aspect of the film here is the usage of top shots that Tarantino employs frequently when the characters ( the lead 3) are in Hollywood places, like The Cinema, Hollywood Restaurants, Hollywood Houses etc. We see this first when Cliff goes homes affirming him as a small part of the giant wheel of Hollywood, a man who literally lives in the shadows of the drive in theatre.

We also see Sharon being shown through this showing her as a new part of the Hollywood group, a new actress who lost her life due to crazy lunatics. Constantly confirming that they are little people in the big industry, Tarantino humanises them in a way that wasn’t present in the narcissistic monologues of his character’s in his previous films. The humanity that he is able to imbue in his characters represents a growth for an artist who for the majority of his career has been obsessed with making self consciously cinematic characters. The needle drop music moments of previous films have been replaced by the day to day music heard in records, tapes, radios etc. The film is not story driven, is not probably even character driven. It is driven by the fact that things change. Rick is the one who struggles with the change, Cliff is someone who handles the situations when it comes and Sharon is the change that Rick is facing. In this way Tarantino is making a film, solely made on the basis of the history of cinema but not by making his characters quote it but by making his characters the people who speak these lines that people quote.

It represents the lack of control we have over our life through all 3 characters and by this gives us his most beautiful, poetic and humbling ode to cinema: a film made possible solely due to the history of cinema.

And with this, he has peaked.