Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
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Only someone like Sharon Tate could go from picking up what was probably a very expensive first edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles — a present for her husband, who made a movie based on the book after her death — to getting into a movie theater for a screening of The Wrecking Crew (her last film) without paying the measly 75 cents to get in just because her lovely face is on the poster.
Al principio solamente la vemos a través del ojo de Dalton cuando llega a la nueva mansión junto a un consagrado Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), pero después también la acompañamos a una fiesta en la mansión Playboy y un paseo por las calles de la ciudad donde termina entrando a una proyección de The Wrecking Crew.
Sharon is making her own mark in Hollywood and spends the day watching a movie she made with Dean Martin, The Wrecking Crew.
With the “Polish prick” (as Steve McQueen calls him) usually away on business, a pregnant Tate keeps herself occupied by hanging out with friends and watching herself in such efforts as the Dean Martin spy spoof The Wrecking Crew.
Like Rick, we also get to see Sharon grapple with a sense of professional unfulfillment when she heads to the theater where her movie, The Wrecking Crew, is playing.
There many shots of walking feet, and Sharon Tate's bare feet on the seat in front of her as she delightedly watches herself on screen in a theater showing The Wrecking Crew.
Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and then Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
In some ways, he may see commonality between that reality and that affecting the characters of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” who too are watching hopelessly on as their aesthetic is eroded down to its rawest materials.
The film’s title takes inspiration from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and pays homage to spaghetti and TV westerns of the 60s through the format of a dark buddy comedy.
Pese a esto, las historias se entrelazan de manera similar a un spaguetti western que seguramente fue inspiración para Tarantino: el filme de Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in the West .
After all, Quentin Tarantino calls his newest film “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” which is, of course, not only an homage to Sergio Leone (“Once Upon a Time in the West,” Once Upon a Time in America”), but also the traditional way to start a fairy tale.
It echoes “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), both directed by Sergio Leone, whom Tarantino reveres.
Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and then Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
Or a fairytale, as we might glean from the title – which pays homage to Sergio Leone’s visionary Once Upon a Time in America , a “memory piece” in the grandest sense.
It echoes “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), both directed by Sergio Leone, whom Tarantino reveres.
Tarantino’s title tells us exactly what he was hoping to accomplish, harking back not to fairy tales but to his idol Sergio Leone’s masterpieces, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America .
Even the title is desperate to join the club of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984).
We get an affectionate look through their eyes at the workings of an industry transitioning from the star system of Louis B. Mayer to the era ushered in by films like Easy Rider.
In the year of the release of Midnight Cowboy; They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; Easy Rider; The Wild Bunch; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, why are all of Tarantino’s movie marquees confined to marginal throwaways like Three in the Attic; The Night They Raided Minsky’s; Krakatoa, East of Java and the like?
By the year 1969 – the year of Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy – Rick is reduced to playing the villain in other people’s shows, fearing that he is already a has-been.
Arthur Penn’s Depression-era gangster romance considerably upped the level of acceptable onscreen mayhem, and by 1969 two more extreme examplars, Sam Peckinpah’s ultra-violent Western The Wild Bunch and Dennis Hopper’s openly countercultural youth film Easy Rider, were in post-production and screened later that year.
In those months following the release of “Easy Rider,” which dropped like an atom bomb in Hollywood, Dalton’s quaint action persona is a relic.
Lo hace a su manera; situando el relato en un año clave para la historia estadounidense: ese 1969 en el que el movimiento hippie perdió su inocencia, se ahogó en la sangre de Sharon Tate y en su cuerpo torturado, pero también el año en que el éxito de una película como Easy Rider (Dir.
When someone states that he heard that Rick was up for the Steve McQueen part in the great WWII flick The Great Escape, we’re treated to an actual scene from the film, with Rick appearing as Hilts instead of the King of Cool.
He says he was up for McQueen's part in The Great Escape (1963).
There are flashbacks, including an amusing and possibly embellished vignette to a run-in Cliff had with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh); an alt-reality scene from The Great Escape starring Rick in the Steve McQueen role; a narrator who pops up startlingly to give a clarification early on, then disappears again until the end; one- or two-scene appearances by a cavalcade of actors — Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Luke Perry, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Damian Lewis, Dakota Fanning, Rumer Willis, Scoot McNairy, Margaret Qualley, etc., etc. — some based on real people, some not.
One of the things that ...Hollywood does best is to invisibly drift into flashbacks and fantasies, virtually none of which are clearly marked out: only Rick's daydreams about the time when he was in contention for Steve McQueen's role in The Great Escape for about ten seconds are obviously marked out as separate from the overall flow of images, and that's primarily because the digital witchery used to place DiCaprio into the 1963 film isn't quite ready for prime time.
Reference-spotters, in particular, will have a field day, and Tarantino has a lot of fun with film and TV history, inventing his own Rick Dalton-starring movies with real-life equivalents, as well as using some flawless effects work to insert DiCaprio into real-life films and movies such as The Great Escape or an episode of The FBI. (It's worth pointing out that there's a wealth of trivia related to each of these moments, such as the fact that Dalton was at least partly based on Burt Reynolds, who DiCaprio replaces in the FBI episode).
Tarantino and his editor Fred Raskin, along with the help of cinematographer Robert Richardson’s 35mm photography, coolly craft a film that takes numerous tangents to show admiration for works like The Great Escape (1963), C.C. and Company (1970), and FBI (which ran from 1965 to 1974) without ever feeling superfluous, despite a daunting 161-minute run time.
From the cars, to the clothes, to the hairstyles, to the home décor—everything is perfectly, lovingly in place, and Tarantino packs the film with references to movies and television and music both familiar and obscure (marquees and posters and billboards in the background remind us of the existence of movies such as The Night They Raided Minsky’s, The Illustrated Man, Ice Station Zebra, Candy, and 3 in the Attic).
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It is Tarantino’s tribute to American Graffiti (1973) where a college student picked up a young girl in his car.
Shades of American Graffiti ’s Wolfman Jack linger over the proceedings as we wheel up and down Hollywood Boulevard in Booth’s “bitchin’ Coupe de Ville.”
She is almost a dream figure like the blondes in “American Graffiti” and “Stardust Memories,” especially compared to the shrewish female characters in the film the stunt coordinator married to the Kurt Russell character and the unnamed character married to Booth.
Director
Quentin Tarantino
Critics compare Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood to 8 of Tarantino’s own films.
It’s not much of a spoiler to say Hollywood is alterna-history in much the same way Inglourious Basterds is.
Just as Tarantino’s war movie Inglourious Basterds (2009) opened with the line ‘once upon a time’, this comedy-drama reimagines modern history as a fairy-tale.
Starting with 2009's Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino began setting his often-fantastical movies during key periods in history—in the midst of World War II, in the time just after the Civil War, in America's slavery era.
Hitler is killed in this movie, too, though not by Rick: It’s a character he played in a hit movie of his youth that bears a resemblance to Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
Because it's Tarantino — who's found a fascinating niche in the revisionist history genre with films like this, Django Unchained, and Inglourious Basterds — there's a glint of heroism that emboldens every character, sometimes in vicious ways.
From Grindhouse exploitation flicks and revisionist history Inglourious Basterds to revenge-fantasy Kill Bill Volume I and II and Django Unchained, it’s easy to tell he’s obsessed with movies and their power to tell a story.
It would rankle me more if this were an earlier Tarantino, when he was more concerned with being clever than with being kind (Jackie Brown is, of course, the notable exception).
Like Tarantino's best movies—Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction—Once Upon a Time technically has a plot, but it's one that takes plenty of detours.
At 34, he made Jackie Brown , a film about hitting middle age and wondering what life has to offer next.
Tarantino has always had the heart of a video clerk, and so many of his films read as checklists of recommendations: Kill Bill and Jackie Brown especially, but it's right under the surface of every one of his movies.
Faint undertones of Jackie Brown can be felt, as well as hints of Death Proof – with the whole stuntman storyline.
Comparatively, the downtime in Pulp Fiction (1994) worked because the banter and hip dialogue enriched the characters.
Like Tarantino's best movies—Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction—Once Upon a Time technically has a plot, but it's one that takes plenty of detours.
Here and there, Tarantino-universe references pop up: Rick does an ad for Red Apple Cigarettes, for example, which also appear in Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, and Kill Bill Vol I.
Pulp Fiction was all about cool, and the most interesting thread in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is Tarantino embracing his uncoolness.
It is Tarantino’s best, bravest and most confrontationally impudent movie since Pulp Fiction.
Other filmmakers may inspire the likes of Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, or Kill Bill , but none of those same filmmakers could have made Tarantino’s works like Tarantino.
Tarantino's regular cinematographer Robert Richardson, shooting in 35mm, colors the film of its time, one beautiful overhead crane shot taking us from Dalton floating in his pool with his stein full of whisky sours to Tate and Polanski roaring out of their gate (the high speed, twisty Hollywood Hills drive we follow cannot help but recall Uma Thurman's "Kill Bill" accident).
Esa era, a grandes rasgos, la declaración de Quentin Tarantino en Los odiosos ocho, una película tan desesperanzada y tan malévola que, tras verla, uno sintió deseos de preguntarle al autor de Kill Bill si le apetecía quedar para tomarse algo.
Esta dialéctica -la comparación constante entre un objeto de la realidad y un objeto ficticio construido- es puesta en marcha también de manera visual cuando crea una mezcla de spaghetti western y wuxia en Kill Bill (2003), tomando a Lady Snowblood (1973) como una de las principales fuentes de inspiración.
And so it went for another dozen years, taking in Pulp Fiction , Jackie Brown and Kill Bill ( Volumes 1 and 2 ).
QT’s celebrated canon — Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, the Kill Bill diptych , Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained , and The Hateful Eight — are all movies for moral idiots.
I want to make hard-d–k movies and I want them all to come from the same place as Reservoir Dogs; from the same artist, from the same man.”
It’s hard to believe director and two-time, Oscar-winning screenwriter Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained) actually might call it quits after he completes 10 movies, especially since it’s evident with his ninth feature, Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, that he hasn’t lost a step when crafting a scene and seems to be having just as much fun as he did when he started making movies 27 years ago with Reservoir Dogs.
For what it’s worth, I would place Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown in an interchangeable second, third and fourth place under this film, with the ad hoc chart’s remaining slots taken up by, in order, Django Unchained, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, The Hateful Eight and the two Kill Bills.
Reservoir Dogs was refreshing at a time when film narrative was stagnant and dialogue didn’t feel real.
It’s a shame that, within this dialogue, the dry and wry wit of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction just isn’t there.
But where Death Proof made me excited to watch Vanishing Point , the tedious pace of this film doesn’t inspire me to seek out Gunsmoke or Navajo Joe .
Faint undertones of Jackie Brown can be felt, as well as hints of Death Proof – with the whole stuntman storyline.
For what it’s worth, I would place Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown in an interchangeable second, third and fourth place under this film, with the ad hoc chart’s remaining slots taken up by, in order, Django Unchained, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, The Hateful Eight and the two Kill Bills.
There’s another Austin, Texas-based radio show and Tennessee-based movie shoot in “Death Proof,” and faux Nazi propaganda films in “Inglorious Basterds.”
As its title suggests, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a fairy tale, and filmmaker Quentin Tarantino lays the glamour on thick in what could arguably be his 10th film , depending on how you count Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 and whether you include Death Proof .
Branching off from this nonsense, Time Magazine had not one but five reporters actually sit down and count how many lines are spoken by women in Tarantino’s films, then discarded “Death Proof” from their results because apparently it didn’t fit whatever point they were trying to make about the director of “Jackie Brown” and “Kill Bill” being some sort of sexist.
From the heartthrob years of The Beach and Titanic to the Dapper Leo period (know it by the side-parted hair, the fine suits, and the tiny guns) of The Departed/Shutter Island/Inception era, climaxing with the smug, boozy bloat of The Great Gatsby and Django Unchained phase, Hollywood has always taken care of its Oscar-destined golden boy, like all its Robert De Niro protégés.
Because it's Tarantino — who's found a fascinating niche in the revisionist history genre with films like this, Django Unchained, and Inglourious Basterds — there's a glint of heroism that emboldens every character, sometimes in vicious ways.
From Grindhouse exploitation flicks and revisionist history Inglourious Basterds to revenge-fantasy Kill Bill Volume I and II and Django Unchained, it’s easy to tell he’s obsessed with movies and their power to tell a story.
And in the 2010s, the director has almost completely lost the thread: 2012's Django Unchained was a stiff, sluggish miscue whose problems have only become more obvious with age, and while I personally thought and continue to think that 2015's The Hateful Eight was a step in the right direction, I have never once felt any urge to re-watch it.
Citations to his other movies are scattered everywhere, referencing Antonio Marghereti (you’ll mentally hear Eli Roth slowly pronouncing “Marghereti” when you see it for yourself), Red Apple cigarettes, the Django Unchained movie set and Nazi’s being burnt alive.
His hands were used in Inglourious Basterds to strangle actress Diane Kruger to make the moment more real, and while filming The Hateful Eight (2015) an antique guitar was smashed to pieces but Tarantino was more satisfied with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s natural reaction .
Here and there, Tarantino-universe references pop up: Rick does an ad for Red Apple Cigarettes, for example, which also appear in Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, and Kill Bill Vol I.
What’s missing, as in The Hateful Eight, are any quotable lines of dialogue that immediately transfer from screen to memory to tongue.
And in the 2010s, the director has almost completely lost the thread: 2012's Django Unchained was a stiff, sluggish miscue whose problems have only become more obvious with age, and while I personally thought and continue to think that 2015's The Hateful Eight was a step in the right direction, I have never once felt any urge to re-watch it.
A different approach from his previous works such as The Hateful Eight, where The White Stripes play over a movie set several years after the American Civil War.
When it was announced in 2017 that Tarantino’s next project after the godawful The Hateful Eight would be a film about the Manson Family murders in 1969, I accurately guessed the film’s ending before ever seeing a trailer.
From early versions of “A Star Is Born” and the classic “Sunset Boulevard” to more recent films like “State and Main” and “Hail Caesar!” filmmakers have dealt with the hypocrisy, egos, and raw emotions involved in the movie business.
If you have a nagging sense of déjà vu, I would suggest that you see these scenes in light of “Sunset Boulevard” with William Holden trying to convince Gloria Swanson that she is still a superstar.
It admittedly sounds alluring, like the sirens call evoked by L.A. classics like “L.A. Confidential,” or classics about the movies like “Sunset Boulevard,” or perhaps even burgeoning ingénues about both, like “La La Land.”
Tarantino’s own go-to example tends to be Billy Wilder, who wound down his career with less than fondly remembered efforts like Fedora and Buddy Buddy .
Tarantino’s own go-to example tends to be Billy Wilder, who wound down his career with less than fondly remembered efforts like Fedora and Buddy Buddy .
But all that is outside the movie’s scope; Rick is still in his Navajo Joe phase, and hasn’t yet had his Deliverance or his Smokey and the Bandit.
But where Death Proof made me excited to watch Vanishing Point , the tedious pace of this film doesn’t inspire me to seek out Gunsmoke or Navajo Joe .
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But writer/director Quentin Tarantino thoughtfully humanizes Sharon Tate, the 26-year-old Valley of the Dolls star who was murdered by the Manson Family in 1969, to weave a narrative about celebrity and shattered dreams in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood .
Rick’s new next door neighbors happen to be Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), hot off directing “Rosemary’s Baby,” and his actress wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie almost capturing Tate’s particular sweet naivete) who is a rising star with "Valley of the Dolls."
The theater staff is amused and surprised, if not exactly star struck – they don’t really know who she is until she mentions her part in Valley of the Dolls .
This year I’ve seen three movies featuring Tate: this, The Haunting of Sharon Tate , and Charlie Says ; I also watched the fevered Valley of the Dolls , which Tate starred in.
The rising star’s murder near the end of her pregnancy and its peace and love era-ending eeriness notwithstanding, the real Tate’s role (and that of Patty Duke’s Neely O’Hara) in Valley of the Dolls is obvious subtext here, especially for the trajectory of DiCaprio’s TV actor Rick Dalton who battles alcoholism while trying to stay relevant as an actor and ends up making B-movies in Italy.
From the cars, to the clothes, to the hairstyles, to the home décor—everything is perfectly, lovingly in place, and Tarantino packs the film with references to movies and television and music both familiar and obscure (marquees and posters and billboards in the background remind us of the existence of movies such as The Night They Raided Minsky’s, The Illustrated Man, Ice Station Zebra, Candy, and 3 in the Attic).