Short Takes: Once Upon A Time in … Hollywood (2019)

Time being short (mine and yours), I’m going to forego lengthy reviews this week and take a quicker, briefer look at some movies getting a lot of attention this summer.

First up is Quentin Tarantino’s latest picture, Once Upon A Time In … Hollywood. It is a critical success, achieving a “Fresh” score of 85 on the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 84; as well as a commercial success – with box office receipts not far behind the latest kids’ and action franchises (Fast & Furious - Hobbs & Shaw; Spider-Man: Far From Home and Lion King).

Tarantino has become somewhat of a polarizing figure for movie buffs; so, what do I make of him?  I really liked his Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill, Vols 1 and 2 (2003, 2004), and also enjoyed Jackie Brown (1997). I admired the stylishness of his work, and the fact that he wrote and directed each of these projects. Yet, while his subsequent projects continued to be quite slick and entertaining, I had issues with Inglourious Basterds (2009) for its ahistorical appropriation of the holocaust for purely commercial ends, and with Django Unchained (2012) again based on issues of cultural and historical appropriation. By this time, Tarantino’s fixation on revenge themes and his exploitive reliance on scenes of violence, though still stylish, were wearing thin with me. I skipped The Hateful Eight (2015).

Once Upon A Time In … Hollywood is a pleasant surprise. Turns out I loved it. It’s relaxed, funny, and smartly stylish (natch). It’s an homage to a particular time and place: 1969 and Hollywood. It’s got the looks, music, cultural references, TV and movie references, and the celebrities – people like Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), Michelle Phillips and Mama Cass (Rachel Redleaf and Rebecca Rittenouse), Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) and many more.  (True, there’s no Woodstock, antiwar protests and such like, but that stuff is not on the radar of his characters.) There’s still a bit of the trademark violence, but it is tempered, does not predominate at all, and is pleasingly cathartic.

It’s got two of our best male actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, at the top of their form, and so comfortable with each other and in their respective roles – DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, an insecure TV-cowboy actor facing a career downslope at a time when the Western genre is fading fast, and Pitt as his long-term stunt double, Cliff Booth, a laid-back, unrufflable  tough guy who, with Rick’s career on a slide, also works as his driver, handyman and drinking buddy – it feels as though these two actors been working together for years.  In fact, this is their first project together.  And they are worth the price of admission by themselves.

There’s also a dark undercurrent in the film, as we glimpse members of the Manson gang, including Susan Atkins, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Squeaky Fromme, Leslie Van Houten and, very briefly, Manson himself. We also follow the young actress Sharon Tate, who as fate would have it, lives right above Rick’s ranch house in the Hollywood Hills. By all accounts Tate was a free spirit – sweet, generous, fun-loving - and beautiful, of course; which is just how the part is written and how she’s played by Margot Robbie. There’s not a lot of character development here, and Robbie doesn’t have to stretch much, but she is certainly a joy to watch.  

             

[A bit of re-assurance is in order here: do not avoid this movie fearing that you’ll have to witness the horrid murder of Tate and her friends. Tarantino will lead you down that path but trust me on this.    I won’t reveal more.]

Speaking of free spirits, Margaret Qualley, who co-starred in the small but wonderful Novitiate (2017) a couple years ago, is featured here as Pussycat, a young, flirty hippie girl, and a fictional member of the Manson’s female coterie, who catches Cliff’s attention. She is an actress to watch. Qualley will forgive me, I’m sure, for mentioning in the same paragraph that Once Upon A Time In … Hollywood also features one of the great dogs of recent cinematic memory, a pit bull named Sayuri, who plays Cliff’s loyal and remarkably obedient pet Brandy.

Once Upon A Time In … Hollywood is a charmer: highly entertaining, beautifully constructed, well-acted. In short, it’s a gem. A high point for writer/director Tarantino, and an appealing summertime treat.

2 hours 41 minutes.                        Rated R 

Grade: A

In Wide Release