Mark Reviews Movies: ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 26, 2019

In writer/director Quentin Tarantino's 10th feature (the ninth, by his math), three stories of almost equal weight mostly come together on the hottest night of the year in 1969. The film is called Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, although the title doesn't arrive until the ending. The timing is appropriate, because, by the end, Tarantino has dismissed history for the comfort of a fable.

This isn't to suggest that the filmmaker completely disregards reality. To the contrary, up until the film's lengthy climactic showdown, Tarantino revels in the twilight of an era. In the middle of a scene of dialogue, we hear a radio news report about the trial of Robert Kennedy's assassin and also some business about the conflict in Vietnam. None of that particularly matters to this story, because such issues are merely an ignored blip on the radars of these characters. They live and breathe the world of Hollywood, although the smog makes breathing an issue and it's hard to make a living when the gigs stop.

The trio of main characters consists of formerly famous TV cowboy Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), the actor's stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), and rising starlet Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). The last one's name will be known to most with even a passing knowledge of Hollywood history or the more notorious crimes of the 20th century.

Tate was one of several victims of Charles Manson's "family," and the gruesome murders of her and four others—in a rented, hillside home she shared with her husband, the director Roman Polanski—easily could be seen as one of the key events that signaled the end of the cultural zeitgeist of the 1960s. A music festival outside a small town in New York, about a week after the murders, would be the decade's climax. Four months later, it would end, not only on the calendar, but also with a killing at another music event.

We go into the film knowing this, especially Tate's tragic end, and that knowledge is key to the air of almost romanticized melancholy that Tarantino creates here. The decade will end. The stars of the past will fade. Members of that strange "family," occupying an old ranch where a lot of TV shows and movies were once filmed, will set forth into the world with murder on their minds. The only question, perhaps, is whether or not Tarantino, who isn't against the notion of changing history based on the influence of his fictional characters, will take these sad, undeniable truths to their actual ends.

The film's Sharon—as she'll be referred to in order to separate the character from the real person—is mostly unnecessary to the story, but her presence, happily dancing in the house and giddy when she sees her name on the marquee of a movie theater, is central to the film's tone. While Rick, now making guest appearances as villains on shows with up-and-coming stars, and Cliff, serving as Rick's driver and gofer while he waits for work that isn't coming (Just about everyone in town thinks he got away with murdering his wife), see the end of their careers right in front of them, Sharon's career is just beginning. We know what happens to Tate, though, so the sorrow of Sharon's story is always in the back of our minds.

In the forefront, we get Rick and Cliff going through a fairly ordinary 24-hour period on the decline. Rick receives an offer to make a Western movie in Italy, which he takes as a sign that his career is essentially finished, so he's determined to make an impact while filming his upcoming guest spot on a TV pilot. Meanwhile, the laid-back Cliff does some work around Rick's house and drives around town, listening to the hits of the day on the radio and waiting to pick up his boss when filming has completed. He keeps spotting a hippie named Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), who eventually asks him for a ride to an "old-timey" location, now populated by a clan led by mysterious Charlie (Damon Herriman).

As one may have gathered by now, there isn't much of a plot of which to speak here. The story is all about and in the details, from Tarantino's overt display of his hefty pop-culture knowledge (The film meticulously and convincingly invents and re-creates shows and movies of the era, including Rick's bygone stint as a television bounty hunter, his role as a Nazi-hunter with a flamethrower, and a dream of him in Steve McQueen's place during a scene of The Great Escape) to the way real people (such as McQueen, played by Damian Lewis, dishing gossip about Sharon's love life at a party and Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh, getting into a fight with Cliff) drop into and out of this fictional account with such effortless ease.

Thus, the story plays out—with Rick battling his insecurities to get a game-changing take, Cliff unwittingly traveling into the underbelly of the era, and Sharon obliviously enjoying the minor fame and success she has obtained so far. Each section tells its own, isolated tale of being—or not knowing that one is about to be—confronted by change, featuring characters who both symbolize the difficulty of accepting or realizing what's to come and, at least in the case of the two men, are richly drawn in their own terms.

It's a nostalgically mournful but still entertaining romp, mixing fiction and reality while building up to the point when reality seems ready to crash upon everyone. As for how Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood handles that event, the title should be a big hint. It is, after all, a fairy tale of sorts—one that can't happen in the real place but certainly can happen in this Hollywood.

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