Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019)

Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie

This isn't a story of a delusional cult leader Charles Manson or his weak-minded followers he called a family. While he and his children do have a presence in the movie, the story is not about them, they offer, in the end, a kind of Hollywood catharsis at the end. This isn't really a movie about Sharon Tate (Robbie) either. She is, from our point of view as she is from the point of view of Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), a distant Hollywood princess, whose career is going towards stardom, while even longline actors like Dalton can only watch from the sidelines, hoping to bask in the possibilities knowing someone like her can bring. 

This review is spoiler-heavy, so if you haven't seen the movie and want to see it without spoilers, you can stop reading it here. 

Rick Dalton is a middle-aged western star, whose best days are more or less behind him. Together with his stuntman Cliff Booth (Pitt), he does his best in trying to get roles from anywhere he can. He hopes to throw some crumbs to Booth as well, who has fallen into dislike in the Hollywood circles, as it is widely believed he murdered his wife and got away with it. If he did do that, is not explicitly told. We do have an idea of how that happened, but if that was a murder or not, remains a mystery.

The first part of the movie revolves around Rick and Cliff doing what they can in Hollywood. At the same time, Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) is trying to get Rick into Italian westerns, an idea Rick dislikes, as it sounds like an official announcement of him being a washout. While Rick is working on any production he can, Cliff does mostly busy work for him and drifts around aimlessly, which leads him to a ranch the Manson Family is occupying. They are living in an old movie ranch Cliff and Rick used to film a western show. This is one of the sparse injections of reality to the story, as Manson Family was living at Spahn Ranch at the time.

Cliff checks out George Spahn, worried about his wellbeing amongst the odd hippies. Squeaky Fromme (Dakota Fanning) gives him a cold welcome but still lets him see the old man, who is, if not in the right of his mind, still alive and kicking. Spahn wasn't killed by the family, but his ranch hand Donald Shea was cut to pieces by them. But for this story, that detail matters little, as Shea isn't in the movie, at least not as a named character. Fromme gained more notoriety later after she failed the assassination attempt of President Gerald Ford. 

When all this is happening, we get something of a voyeuristic view on the Hollywood life of Sharon Tate. We see her attending parties with other stars, hanging in her home with her husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), and going to a theatre to see her own movie she did with Dean Martin, The Wrecking Crew. She more or less glides through Hollywood like a vision you can almost touch, but can't really reach despite she is quite nice and pleasant towards people she interacts with. She's not a star full of herself, she's almost like an idea of how'd we'd like famous people to be, a playful spirit, who wishes no-one harm.  

Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) is seen in the movie only briefly when he wanders to the house Tate and Polanski live in. He comes there to see the previous occupant, Terry Melcher, a music producer, as Manson had aspirations of being a musician. One of his songs was actually recorded by the Beach Boys but ended up clashing with them after they changed the name of the song. Understandably this Manson connection is not something the members of the band were proud of later on.

Some Hollywood dreams later, the washed-up star Rick Dalton ends up doing movies in Italy. He spends half a year shooting Italo movies, having Cliff with him doing the stunts. During his stint in Italy, he also manages to get married and the three of them finally return back to Hollywood, but in an altered state: Rick doesn't have enough money to keep Cliff on his payroll anymore, so they decide to get blasted after their arrival back home.

To the sad tale of Sharon Tate, this is where the story changes from reality. While the heavily pregnant Tate is at her home with her friends, Cliff and Rick arrive drunk at Cliff's house, next to the house of Tate and Polanski. Cliff goes out with his dog, Rick blends up some margaritas when a junky old car drives to his driveway. It's the Manson children, whom Rick berates and tells to get out from the private drive. They leave and Cliff returns back, now high from an acid-coated cigarette. He's just about the feed his dog when the Manson children break through the door of Rick's house. What follows is Tarantino's revenge fantasy, where instead of killing Tate and her friends, the Manson Family chose the wrong house. Cliff and his dog take care of two of the members, but is stabbed, Rick dispatches the last killer with a leftover flamethrower prop from one of his movies.

After the paramedics have taken Cliff to hospital, Ricks's Hollywood tale of takes a new turn. One of Tate's friends, worried about the ruckus, comes to see what is going on, which leads Sharon to call Rick for a drink, where she takes the old western star into her warm, pregnant, angelic embrace.     

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is above everything else, a story about Hollywood. Of the people, who live there, who dream there, and who try to exist in it. It is a story about how Hollywood might be and how people see it. It is a fairytale, a dream of how things should have gone, a tale of where flawed people manage to stop something horrible from happening, even if it happens almost as a mistake. It doesn't even really matter, if the things seen in the movie really even happen for real, the end might just as well be Cliff's drug-induced hallucination. You can take it however you want, as, in the end, the ending is a happy one people would much rather have for Sharon Tate.

Out of the most recent Tarantino movies, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is the only one that really justifies its length. the story is a sprawling kaleidoscope of events, historical and fictional. that tie together into a narrative with a unique feel. It lets itself wash over you, allowing you to pick whatever message you want from it. It is, perhaps, a bittersweet story of a place, that never was real, but which many people still think has more meaning than it has. Like all fairytales, it doesn't matter that the story is not all true, all that matters is, how it makes you feel, their currency, just likes Hollywood's, is belief.


 


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