As I spend my last weening weeks before grad school catching up on former Oscar bait, I took a slight detour to the movie theater. Quentin Tarantino has a new film out and there is much cause for celebration. I’m here to talk about his new film, and I’m going to warn you that I will give away a lot of things. I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s a “twist” in this movie, but it’s for the best you see it for yourself or only read on if you don’t give a shit.
So before you scroll too far down I would like to come out by saying that my first impression of this film is a negative one. Believe me I really wanted to like this movie, and there is a lot to like about it, but this is probably his weakest offering since Death Proof. If you’re Woody Allen and making a movie a year for 50 years you can take a bad film every once and awhile, even a couple in a row. When you take 3 or more years between films that one dud seems to stick out much more. This is his 9th feature as a director and the best I can say is it’s one of his top ten best movies.
The main problem with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the fact that it’s all frosting, no cake. Having a great single shot dialogue scene about foot massages in Pulp Fiction worked because it led to an altercation that more or less sets things in motion. Once Upon a Time just feels like it’s all set up to no pay off. It’s still a Tarantino film, and his extremely gratuitous close ups of dirty female feet make me wonder if that’s a bit of self parody. Perhaps he’s just gone so far into the deep end that he’s leaning into it, but it’s distracting and omnipresent.
What usually distinguished his films from the many hacks who have tried to emulate him is his dialogue. This has been his saving grace, and it’s largely what makes a film like True Romance (which he wrote but didn’t direct) so memorable. Now sometimes his characters can sound like mouthpieces for the director, like Christian Slater’s love of Sonny Chiba, but it feels genuine. These seem like real words people are saying, real situations. Tarantino is never one to shy away from a good monologue. He lets his actors take their time, and always delivers some very memorable scenes. So somehow it seems like a major letdown that nearly all the dialogue in this film was completely forgettable. If there’s a line you can remember it was probably in the outstanding trailer. That trailer shows pretty much everything about this movie, it’s all that for over two and a half hours.
So here’s where the spoiler parts come in. Tarantino has re-written history before. Somehow with some distance we can forgive the alternate reality of his work. We know none of his films are based on a true story, thankfully. The problem is when certain real world people appear in them it somewhat tricks your mind. For some reason though the comically over the top death of Hitler in Inglorious Basterds was fine. He somehow gave us all the sweet satisfaction of watching history’s greatest monster get brutally murdered for our enjoyment. Yet everything about that film was a farce, and more or less played it as such. The man has a tendency to extract a ton of humor from gruesome violence. What makes Once Upon a Time different is the fact that he waits until the last possible second to pull the bait and switch.
Which leads me to the no-win conundrum of the plot. If you are aware of the Manson family murders and have at least a vague recollection of Sharon Tate then the ending might come across as in poor taste and insulting. I was a little surprised when I heard he was making a movie about the subject, considering Tarantino never does true crime, or factually based films. By highlighting a period with an extremely famous murder it makes the switch seem a little abrupt. It seems like one of those bad twists that was unnecessary. Now if you have no idea who Sharon Tate was and aren’t familiar with Manson, then every scene with Sharon Tate was pretty pointless. In fact nearly every scene with her was pointless.
It seems like Tate and Margot Robbie by extension were just an excuse for Tarantino to show a particular part of old Hollywood that he loved. Sure maybe Rick Dalton could have been invited to the Playboy mansion, but Polanski and Tate were given the heroes welcome. Other than being a “hey I know that place” moment, it also served as a clumsy narrative dump by a very convincing looking Steve McQueen. Her trip to the vintage book store to buy Tess for Roman Polanski is another awkward nudge at the audience to remind you that Polanski made a film of it a decade later. Then there’s the rather pointless scene of Tate seeing her own movie, which shows the real Sharon Tate in it rather than Robbie. Perhaps they didn’t want to do a bunch of effects, but I’ll let it slide as a “tribute” to the real person.
So much of the movie just seems like Tarantino had a bit list of things he wanted to throw into a movie and just stuck ‘em in without any strong narrative thread to link them. It comes across as a series of Family Guy cutaways that feel more like a checklist for him. We have that very pointless scene with Bruce Lee, there’s a whole lot of Leo acting in a Western, a vintage drive-in, old movie marquees, hip period music that only Tarantino is cool enough to know, etc. The movie feels long and it is. Plenty of times I asked myself if I was enjoying it, digging the period detail and the leisurely pace, and every time the answer was no. I kept waiting for the story to get on with it, as opposed to another character building scene of pointless exposition. He also seemed to forget for huge chunks of the film that there was a narrator.
Now things do end strong, but arguably my favorite scene in the movie happens on the Spahn Ranch. This is where Manson and his family are residing, and frankly the movie could have used more Manson. He shows up for one scene, and then is mysteriously out of town when Pitt’s Cliff Booth stops by. Again if you didn't know anything about Manson, then this is just a strange altercation. Perhaps we needed to see them do something gruesome earlier to gauge what kind of trouble Cliff was walking into. The tension in that sequence was great, very reminiscent of the opening to Basterds. This is when Tarantino can flex his muscle on building dramatic tension, and sadly there could have been more to it. Now the payoff in this scene is that, holy shit George really was taking a nap and is blind. This might also be my favorite moment because George is played by Bruce Dern who is just brilliantly cantankerous. We don’t even get a full close up of him, but watching him yell at Cliff while confused and irritable was easily my highlight.
Thanks to the magic of click bait articles I know that Bruce Lee’s daughter was none too pleased with her father’s depiction in the film. Knowing what I do of Lee, I can certainly see her point. Nearly every story ever told of him would indicate that Cliff would have gotten his ass handed to him in the unlikely event they would have fought. Perhaps the point was to set up that he is a formidable fighter, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been at Lee’s expense. Once the Manson murderers show up at Rick’s house instead of Tate/Polanski’s you knew things were going to be different. As much as I might have been confused by the re-writing of history, the sequence was damn enjoyable. Cliff is tripping on acid as he remembers the three from his visit to the ranch, then proceeds to take them all out. The Manson family is depicted as inept clumsy idiots and perhaps that’s more preferable to them being some highly trained assassins, of plain sadists. Also huge assist to the dog, who saves the day and a laughable call back to the flamethrower.
What is somewhat astonishing is that this film was originally even longer. There were more old buddies and references to be found, and I wonder if the eventual 3 hour+ release will simply drag out the boring thing longer or tie it all together. A wise critic once said no good film is too long and no bad film is too short. So length isn’t an issue in and of itself. In some ways this might have worked a little better as an anthology film. The Coen’s recently made The Ballad of Buster Scruggs which seemed like they had a bunch of random ideas if they were to make another Western. Instead of picking one story and fleshing it out, they cobbled together all of those small ideas and made a damn good film that lagged at parts but worked overall. Pulp Fiction in some ways felt episodic in nature, and perhaps he could have made a movie about Tate and Polanski in Hollywood, something about Manson and his family, then a story about Rick and Cliff. Instead he crammed everything into one sprawling and often tedious mess.
Perhaps some day I’ll revisit this (and I swear one day I’ll watch Death Proof again) and change my tune. Maybe I’m harder on Tarantino because I expect more from him. He’s supposed to be better than the average filmmaker, so forgive me if I hold him to a higher standard. Maybe the initial shock of the film needs to wear off and I’ll grow to love it in time. Or maybe this is another Last Jedi that’s only going to piss me off and make me angrier and angrier for the next couple of years. Time will tell. In the meantime watch The Boys on Amazon, it's significantly more entertaining.
