Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” credit: screengeek.net
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (USA, 2019) is as fondly nostalgic for the filmmaker’s adopted hometown as anything else he’s done. Lovingly shot by cinematographer Robert Richardson, the downtown streets, high-rent residences in the canyons and the desert scrub just outside of town are unmistakably cinematic. It’s a well-wrought environment for a complex narrative. Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an increasingly insecure professional actor transitioning from glamour-puss TV good-guy stardom to older, more morally-chequered character roles. He’s a nice-enough guy, but he’s also a bit of a small-town lunkhead, truth be told. But he’s smart and has good judgment on who’s advice to follow. His best friend and business partner is Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who serves as Rick’s stuntman, chauffeur, bodyguard, personal assistant, maintenance man and any other role they can think up on the fly. Cliff’s pretty accommodating, lives in an Airstream out behind a drive-in and has a bull terrier who perhaps gave Brad some nomination competition. Cliff has a secure and easygoing temperament that’s the perfect counterbalance to Rick’s mid-life jitters.
Also figuring prominently are Rick’s new neighbors on lush, hilly Cielo Drive, the Polanskis, Roman and his bride Sharon Tate. The recently arrived couple are the toast of the town, making the scene at a party at the Playboy Mansion West. But the beautiful but modest Sharon can barely believe her luck, bashfully asking a movie theater box-office worker if she can come in to see her own latest film, the Dean Martin spy spoof The Wrecking Crew.
That Once Upon a Time… in the title suggests a fairy tale somewhere in the midst of all of this car culture, pop music, celebrity promotion and movie shooting, and we slowly learn that its monster, named Charlie, may live at the Spahn Movie Ranch outside of Chatsworth, along with a group of communally-living young friends named Tex, Pussycat and Squeaky.
Tarantino’s film hits notes of affectionate comedy and graciousness that he may not have found expression for since Jackie Brown (1997). But in bringing all of his narrative lines together, you just know that retributive violence, laid on fairly thick, will also figure into the revisionist history that Tarentino spins. He saves most of it for the astonishing conclusion, but the film is peppered with unfortunates on the wrong end of someone’s anger, or expertise.
I don’t think it’s my Best Picture favorite this year, but it’s up there, far better than Hateful Eight and Inglorious Basterds, and a bit better than Django Unchained. He’s veering much closer to John Woo’s masculine-centric sensibilities than Robert Aldrich’s or Sergio Corbucci’s, but his storytelling chops (if sometimes long-winded) are still impressive. It’s his best film in twenty years, easily, and well worth seeing even if it doesn’t win an Oscar. (The masterful Richardson will lose to Roger Deakins this time, and rightfully so. Pitt’s a shoo-in for supporting, though – that’s bank.)
Periscope In The Bathtub 