Once Upon a (Bad) Time… with Tarantino
Along with a horde of Tarantino-worshipping boys, I entered the movie theater to see Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood expecting greatness: two-plus hours of edge-of-your-seat suspension, violence so gratuitous it’s comedic, and scenes so detailed you can only imagine how many takes it took to get them right. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood has every one of those Tarantino trademarks… it just takes an entire 160 minutes to get to them. Tarantino is a director known for his timing, but he lacks that control entirely in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Advertised as a love letter to Hollywood, the film takes place in 1969 and follows has-been actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman/best friend/handyman/chauffeur Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), as they attempt to navigate the plateau of Rick’s career. (Could it be a parable for Tarantino navigating his own?) Peppered between scenes of Cliff and Rick are vignettes of Sharon Tate’s (Margot Robbie) glamorous life with her husband director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and friend Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), Rick’s next-door neighbors.
The Guardian just slated Once Upon a Time as the 100th best film of the 21st century, and there are a few things about the film that must be commended. It is beautiful to watch, and Tarantino takes every opportunity to flood the screen with easter eggs of 1960s culture. In one scene, Cliff rides down Hollywood Boulevard in a Volkswagen convertible passing by the lit-up neon signs of famous Golden Age establishments like El Coyote Café and Pussycat Theater. The costumes are iconic — I fully intend to dress up as Sharon Tate for Halloween — , the music is perfectly selected, and the cast is bursting at the seams with star power — yet I was still dissatisfied.
The movie’s main source of tension is the presence of Charles Manson and his cult of followers: The Manson family. Most people know what happened to a pregnant Sharon Tate on the eve of Aug. 9, 1969, when she was brutally murdered by the cult. So every time Tate appears on screen, you wait for her death, expecting it to come in true Tarantino fashion– all blood and gore.
However, honoring the film title’s fairytale allusion, Tate is never killed. Instead, it’s the murderers who get what’s coming for them. In the penultimate scene, the members of the Manson Family walk into the wrong house and end up in Rick’s living room. For five minutes, violence and gore ensue until one of the murderers, screaming, jumps into the pool where Rick is lounging obliviously. Rick then retrieves a flamethrower — a prop from one of his own movies — and scorches the murderer, leaving the audience amused and disgusted. Rick proceeds to finish his cocktail and walk up the street to Tate’s house, where he’s invited inside. He spends the rest of the night chit-chatting away with the woman we all thought would be murdered.
While certainly a nicer story to tell about Tate (at the very least, she hasn’t been murdered), the film’s timing is all wrong — it requires a patience that I most certainly do not have. The whole film felt masturbatory on the part of Tarantino. With a budget of $90 million, Tarantino used every cent, flooding the screen with Hollywood stars like Robbie, DiCaprio, and Pitt — as well as Dakota Fanning, Margaret Qualley, and Lena Dunham, who play members of the Manson Family — and a surprise cameo from Al Pacino.
Despite its meticulous attention to detail and design, Once Upon a Time felt lazy. In the same fashion as Suicide Squad and Ocean’s 8, Once Upon a Time relied on a famous ensemble and director to get its name in everyone’s mouth. But in the end, it left a bitter taste and longing for the nostalgia of the conventional great, classic cinema which Tarantino spends the film alluding to. Rather than fulfilling my hope for the next great movie, Tarantino seems to be scratching the proverbial undercarriage of some Hollywood executives (and undeniably himself).
In sum, Once Upon a Time feels more like an elegy for Hollywood than a celebration. Author Joan Didion, a good friend of the real Tate and Polanski, once said, “Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.” However, Once Upon a Time is unfulfilling. The excitement I felt entering the movie theater fell faster than those boys could respond, “Tarantino,” when asked who their favorite director is. Rather than leaving the theater buzzing with excitement, the only thing I felt enthusiastic about was buying one of Tate’s sleek, black turtlenecks and a pair of white gogo boots for my Halloween costume.
