Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
Rated R, 161 minutes
Quentin Tarantino’s films have often been enjoyable but irritating. Movies like “Django Unchained” and “Inglourious Basterds” got by on their flair and irresistible energy, even while we knew that the man behind them was an arrogant blowhard trying to shock and impress with his encyclopedic knowledge. “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” finds Tarantino acknowledging this reputation and challenging himself, sincerely, to do more. That he broadens his horizons without sacrificing any of the specificity and spectacle he craves is what makes his new movie a masterpiece, his best since “Pulp Fiction.”
Following six months in the lives of a washed-up TV star and his stunt double, “Once Upon a Time ...” lacks a traditional plot, comprising scenes and vignettes that gradually establish the mood of Los Angeles in 1969. The TV star, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”), is in a mid-life crisis brought on by realizing he’s not a leading man anymore, while, naturally, his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, “Inglourious Basterds”), is experiencing a decline in his own workload. Despite changing times, the two still find the good; they spend their time driving together, drinking together, watching Rick’s supporting-role performances as they air on TV.
By coincidence, Rick’s next-door neighbors are Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, the real-life director and actress, whose house was the site of the grisly Manson Family murders in August 1969. Interspersed with scenes of Rick and Cliff’s antics are scenes of Tate (Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”) going about her life, a newly famous star thrilled just to be alive in Los Angeles, blissfully unaware of the dark forces at work around her. She goes to see her own movie, stopping for a photo with the box office clerk; her innocent joy increases as the tragic night approaches, as if to punish us.
Of course, this is Quentin Tarantino, who once depicted Jewish mercenaries killing Hitler in a movie theater. His take on Hollywood’s darkest moment is, fittingly, an absurd parody, a scene so unhinged only he could have directed it. The scene more than delivers on the promise of the two hours he makes you sit through to get there; it shocks, not just for its vileness but also for how enjoyable it is.
Even more impressive is the movie’s endearing realism throughout the long buildup to that moment. Tarantino has always been an escapist filmmaker, making movies not as reflections of real life but as roller coasters, replacing our emotions with adrenaline. But here, his characters want what we want, fear what we fear. Consider Rick Dalton, berating himself in his trailer for forgetting his lines, crying at compliments, filling the voids in his life with alcohol and food. It may be a surreal and serendipitous version of the universe, but in Tarantino’s Hollywood, the stars really are just like us.
That realism extends to politics, but Tarantino is loath to state his intentions. Instead, he makes coy suggestions: is the placement of a rearview mirror in the opening credits intended to look like a Hitler mustache against the face on the billboard behind it, or is that just a coincidence of framing? Is there a commentary on “good guys with guns” rhetoric in the movie’s scenes of violence? This repeated invitation to scrutinize his directorial decisions gives the movie weight, even as the scenes themselves are playful and polite.
It’s this playfulness, almost optimistic in its sincerity, from a director we all thought a curmudgeon that makes the movie as flat-out enjoyable as it is. What else should we make of Margot Robbie spending most of her screen time lost in a smile, or the little girl who appears like a Greek soothsayer to teach DiCaprio’s Rick a lesson on perspective? What sense can there be in Brad Pitt’s Cliff standing shirtless on a rooftop thinking about the time he fought Bruce Lee, except that life must go on? Led by Pitt, who gives one of the most captivating performances of his career, the cast leans far into characters that are larger than life and are always, at Tarantino’s command, viewed from the right angle. The result is a movie that plays like an immersive dream, one you want to return to as soon as you’ve woken up.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 8/9/19.