Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood (2019)
AND THEY DIED HAPPILY EVER AFTER . . .
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .
Except the events didn’t occur all that long ago—in August of 1969—and they didn’t take place that far away, but in Los Angeles. The central organizing force of writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s latest opus derives from the real-life Tate murders, a mass killing of five adults by members of the Manson Family cult. Nestled within Mr. Tarantino’s romanticized view of ’60s-era Hollywood, the film makes for a tale sometimes deliciously tense, but more often meandering and even pointless.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
The story revolves around a pair of midrange entertainment-industry professionals, actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his friend and longtime stuntman, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). While Dalton seeks to revitalize his sagging acting career, Booth attempts to find work in his own chosen profession, rather than as a man Friday for the actor he doubles. Mr. Tarantino’s script evokes a certain pathos for its protagonists, though the tale itself comes off as spare, with neither a lot of moving parts nor much delineation of the overarching tale he hopes to tell.
Once Upon a Time grounds itself in post–Golden Age Hollywood, when the film industry began to face increasing competition from its small-screen counterpart. Television series proliferated, providing not just a breeding ground for new talent, but a landing spot for unemployed and past-their-prime movie actors. Rick Dalton finds himself in the former category, while facing down the prospect that he might also fall into the latter. To combat his lack of leading-man film work, Dalton engages new representation (Al Pacino in a less-than-convincing turn as agent Marvin Schwarz).
Kurt Russell in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Similarly, Cliff Booth approaches a former employer (Kurt Russell) for stunt work. After pleading his case, Booth manages to get hired, but he doesn’t remain employed for long. An outsize ego and a taste for chaos combine to usher him into a fight with Bruce Lee—a foolhardy undertaking both because of Mr. Lee’s martial-arts prowess, and also because he was busy filming his role as Kato in the show The Green Hornet.
Adjacent to these developments, Rick Dalton’s Cielo Drive neighbor, actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), wanders into the story. Through her seemingly innocent and generally positive personality, Ms. Robbie’s character brings a calmness to the proceedings. At the same time, her presence proves unsettling, given that the film is set in the very month in which she will be ruthlessly murdered. Tate doesn’t actually have much to do or say in Once Upon a Time, though, and her inclusion feels more like a love letter—albeit a brief and poorly defined epistle—to the late actress.
Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Indeed, the entire film plays like a billet-doux to 1960s Tinseltown. Once Upon a Time boasts numerous scenes of characters driving the streets of Hollywood and the surrounding environs of Los Angeles. Landmarks—such as the Cinerama Dome, Musso & Frank Grill, the Fox Westwood Village Theater and the Village Theater, the Cicada Club in the James Oviatt Building, and El Coyote Cafe—abound. But while atmospheric, many of these sequences stretch out far beyond their capacity to entertain. At two hours, forty-one minutes long, the film could easily have had twenty or more minutes removed from its running time without deleterious effect.
Another notable locale in the film is the Spahn Ranch, an actual location owned in 1969 by octogenarian George Spahn, who rented his western-themed sets and horses to movie and television shoots. Mr. Spahn also allowed the Manson Family to stay on his property rent free in exchange for their labor. In Once Upon a Time, Cliff Booth picks up a local hitchhiker and, in terms of the story, somewhat conveniently takes her where she asks to go: to the Spahn Ranch. Still, despite the contrived means by which Mr. Tarantino moves his characters where he needs them to be, the scenes that follow are filled with genuine tension—owing to the peculiar behavior of the residents, but also because of who the audience knows those people to be.
Brad Pitt and Margaret Qualley at the Spahn Ranch in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
In fact, the anxiety the film generates arises mostly because of its inexorable march toward real-world events. For much of its bloated length, Once Upon a Time makes it clear that it is drawing a straight line to 8 August 1969, when four members of the Manson Family drove to the Cielo Drive home of Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski (though Mr. Polanski was working on a film in Europe at the time), and murdered all five people there. It feels inevitable that the audience will witness a re-creation of those events.
But Mr. Tarantino has trod the boards of history before, and most assuredly not in documentary-like fashion. In Inglorious Basterds, he reimagines a plot to kill Adolf Hitler during World War II—a plot that, in his cinematic revisionism, succeeds. How would he handle the murders of Sharon Tate and four other people?
With a warning that spoilers follow, it should be noted that literary examples of alternate histories date at least as far back as the Roman historian Livy in the first century BCE. In English, the first known instance is “P’s Correspondence,” an 1845 short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Thus, when Mr. Tarantino tells the story of the Manson Family’s trek to Cielo Drive in August 1969 and has them encounter not Sharon Tate and her houseguests, but her neighbor, Rick Dalton, and his stuntman, Cliff Booth, the writer-director is certainly in good company. Nevertheless, the climax feels more like wish fulfillment than anything else. Because of Sharon Tate’s presence as a character in Once Upon a Time, excising her from the story of the Manson Family in some sense extends the narrative valentine Mr. Tarantino has already crafted for her. But to what end? To what artistic end? It was not clear when viewing the film, nor is it upon reflection.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Lead actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie do fine work in bringing their characters to life. Mr. Tarantino directs with a skilled hand, though he could have been more judicious—more active—in the editing bay. But while he has penned his screenplay with obvious confidence, his purpose in creating this story feels ill-considered. Despite good performances from its primary cast, a nostalgic trip through the Hollywood of yesteryear, and some compelling scenes, the film is unfocused and overlong. Once upon a time, Quentin Tarantino made great movies . . . just not this time.
**¼ (out of *****)
©2019 David R. George III
2019 • 2 HOURS, 41 MINUTES
BONA FILM GROUP • HEYDAY FILMS • SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT • VISIONA ROMANTICA
STARRING
• LEONARDO DICAPRIO, BRAD PITT, MARGOT ROBBIE
ALSO STARRING
• KURT RUSSELL, EMILE HIRSCH, MARGARET QUALLEY, TIMOTHY OLYPHANT, JULIA BUTTERS, AUSTIN BUTLER, DAKOTA FANNING, BRUCE DERN, MIKE MOH, AL PACINO
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY
• QUENTIN TARANTINO
2019 ACADEMY AWARDS (2)
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: BRAD PITT
• BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
ADDITIONAL 2019 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS (8)
• BEST PICTURE (LOST TO GISAENGCHUNG [PARASITE])
• BEST ACTOR: LEONARDO DICAPRIO (LOST TO JOAQUIN PHOENIX FOR JOKER)
• BEST DIRECTOR: QUENTIN TARANTINO (LOST TO BONG JOON HO FOR GISAENGCHUNG [PARASITE])
• BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (LOST TO GISAENGCHUNG [PARASITE])
• BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (LOST TO 1917)
• BEST COSTUME DESIGN (LOST TO LITTLE WOMEN)
• BEST SOUND EDITING (LOST TO FORD V FERRARI)
• BEST SOUND MIXING (LOST TO 1917)
