ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (dir. Quentin Tarantino, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie)

Small screen addiction is the subject of Quentin Tarantino's latest film offering 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'.  Specific details of the late 60s/early 70s period are meticulously recorded, and overall Tarantino succumbs to the pervasive revisionism that was probably initiated by the rippling flag in the NASA moon shot still.  This time Tarantino is revising the murder of Sharon Tate and friends by The Family, a crazed hippy cult led by guru Charles Manson.  The big story of the time, the events horrified the public and seemed to end the period of hope and optimism, of flower power, Woodstock and free love. 

The real big cheese of the movie, Roman Polanski, is rarely seen in the movie but we do see Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie). She hardly has a line, and this is where the film somehow missed out on something.  Her big thrill is watching her own movie after walking into a cinema off the street without buying a ticket.  In the clip she watches, she does the moves taught to her by Bruce Lee, who also happens to be a character in the film.  Brad Pitt also has a fight with Lee, the most obviously funny part of the film.  Everyone is at a certain remove from the one true celebrity in the movie, the director of Rosemary's Baby, soon to be subsumed by tragedy and scandal. Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Pitt) are both implicated in the events of the 9th of August 1969, the day that the 60s ended or so it is said.  Dalton is an alcoholic has been and his lines often end tearfully as he seeks redemption in the bottle, Booth is his stunt double, clearly the focus of all the attention.  This is clearly Pitt's most successful part so far, proving that he is not just famous for being....Brad Pitt. Real life characters like Lee and Steve McQueen mingle with the postmodern cartoon that Tarantino puts at the centre of his inordinate folly.  Even Charles Manson turns up as he sticks his nose into Cielo Drive looking for record producer Terry (Melcher).

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is obviously a product of the hashtag MeToo era.  In another scene Booth is taken to Spahn Ranch by a member of The Family, "Pussycat" but he requires photographic ID before his encounter can be taken farther because Pussycat seems either too young or too far-fetched.  The scenes at Spahn Ranch are expertly handled, as the pervasive creepiness and sense of dread are contrasted by Pitt's offhand ability to handle his fists.  Booth gravitates away from the chief celebrity towards the chief creep, "Charley's gonna love you" Pussycat intones.  Booth insists on meeting the ranch's owner, George Spahn, who happens to be sleeping in an outhouse. Burt Reynolds was originally cast in this role, reversing his earlier breakthrough role in Deliverance where he fights off redneck mutants with a bow and arrow.  Unfortunately, Reynolds died before his scenes could be filmed so Bruce Dern who portrayed a Confederate general in Tarantino's other recent film The Hateful Eight stepped in.  Booth meets Spahn but as he leaves discovers that his tyres have been cut by a member of The Family, Clem Grogan. Booth beats up Clem and leaves before Tex, Charley's main sidekick, can arrive.

The film is full of visual re-imaginings of earlier films such as The Great Escape where DiCaprio replaces Steve McQueen and speaks his lines, teasing at the (thin) boundaries between celebrity, celebrity identification, parody and pastiche. The connection between DiCaprio's character Dalton and The Family is the filming of his earlier small screen breakthrough 'Bounty Law' at Spahn's ranch but 'Bounty Law' has been discontinued. Dalton's agent, played by Al Pacino, insists he go to Italy to film a series of low budget spaghetti Westerns and other films in the thriller/spy drama genre. Dalton returns with an Italian wife and a lot more movie posters than he formerly had. Dalton's semi-celebrity status is heightened by the themes of recognition and misrecognition in the film.  Members of The Family recognise Dalton as the lead in 'Bounty Law', Tex even acquired a 'Bounty Law' lunch box, his prize possession at school.  Booth also recognises Tex and other members of The Family after his encounter at the Spahn ranch. The accumulation of pop culture references, forgotten TV series, spin off products, and the major films of the period all come together in a bubbling stew that is also Tarantinoesque.  In short, the mental residue of a former video shop employee.

The film might be applauded by those who cheered when the hippies in Easy Rider were blown off their bikes by rednecks in pick-up trucks with shot guns. The celebration of celebrity culture, a film and publicity industry in overdrive, private property and the antithesis, freeloader hippies failing to take responsibility for their own lives and now ensnared in Manson's strange cult based as it was on The Beatles song ‘Helter Skelter’ (a song about a children’s playground but played out in Manson’s mind as being really about class and race revolution in the US…).  However, the film never manages to speak directly about ideology.  In fact, its own undermining strategies intimate that implicit revisionism and, concomitantly, the conspiracy theories that generate that revisionism, really sum up yet another flippant joke and undermining strategy like an infinite hall of mirrors where the subject ultimately fragments.  Just like the end of a film that Tarantino must admire, Citizen Kane, where Kane is yet another item in his own self-made jigsaw puzzle of detritus that symbolises his life.  The last piece of junk in the junk yard like the ‘Bounty Law’ lunch box or the special Bat Mobile plastic phone that comes with the addition of a grinning Joker gizmo that emits those immortal Joker lines or, indeed, the sled Rose Bud that bursts into flames and then is no more. 

Paul Murphy, Birmingham, August 2019