The Structural Beauty Of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Up along until Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Tarantino had strictly worked with semi-conventional structures, wherein he would take existing genres (Exploitation films in the case of DeathProof, war films in the case of Inglorious Basterdd, Spaghetti Westerns in case of Django Unchained etc) and would ground them with his own style as a layer over it, where the Quickdraw showdowns of the Spaghetti Westerns were replaced by the quintessential Tarantinian verbal showdowns through dialogues, the exploitative fun of an exploitation film is kept at the end preceeded by typical QT conversation scenes.

Pulp fiction though is a standout in the sense that it is a crime film setting and character wise but it doesnt go into conventional crime territory but merely uses that as a structure to tell a story. It is with Pulp fiction and OUATIH that we can see Tarantino's evolution as an artist.

The genre conventions broken in Pulp Fiction act as an act of rebellion, a showcase of the young blood energy. The convention breaking was a mere exercise of style whereas with OUATIH Tarantino resists categorisation in a genre because he uses it in a way to comment on his characters.

Rick Dalton is a fading star who is trying to avoid being categorised as a villain actor or the "heavy". He tries to act in various other ventures in a way to remain relevant and not typecast and this itself is what the movie is: It is trying to be different in a stream of movies which are largely overrun with IP movies like the MCU, DCEU, all other U films etc.

In a move extremely unlike Tarantino, where his films have been quasi-genre exercises where the genre itself is broken with his style. The only one which standsout of the lot is Jackie Brown. The only film which is unlike Tarantino owing to its own lack of QT violence or stylistic dialogue which popularised QT. But again it was also a film that QT had made in order to subvert public expectations. It was the mature film that he wanted to make to mimic the "aging" of directors wherein directors would begin making more artistically mature films as they aged, one which had lesser style and greater depth.

He did achieve that but what Tarantino neglected back then was the benefits of experience and aging, something which is so heartfully seen in OUATIH through the magnificent scene where Rick is reading the book and reminiscing his own semi-failing career. It can be very easily seen as Tarantino himself reflecting on his own cinematic journey till now.

It is a film free from any kind of genre conventions or filmic structures.

With Cliff, Tarantino shows him with the swagger of a movie hero but again traps him in the mold of being the hero's friend, but it is again the hero's friend who performs most of the stylish action. We also see how Hollywood has categorised him as an outcast due to allegations of him being a wife killer (which is hinted to but not confirmed in a flashback.... Typical Tarantino)

The best example is the brilliant spahn ranch sequence where the tension of a violent sequence keeps building as it has all the staples of a typical Tarantino sequence which builds to great tension and ends with violence. However what Tarantino does here is he frees both himself and Cliff. He frees Cliff naturally as the scene doesnt end with violence and also by preventing him from being subjected to his own writing trope which is the "tense sequences ending with violence" trope. By doing this, Tarantino emacipates himself from his own stylistic devices to in order to further his characters' narratives. We see that after the time jump where Rick has profited by starring in some great commercial vehicles.

The final stretch of the climax has him rewrite history to place the final stamp of freedom. With this, he emancipates characters from the cruelty and sadness of real life by making Sharon Tate live, and giving Rick a potentially happy career through the images of the eternal: The Cinema.