Thoughts
on the 9th (?) film by Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood (2019), the new film by Quentin Tarantino, is a difficult one to unpack,
critically speaking, so this cursory review, if one can even call
it such, is more a summing up of initial thoughts, as opposed to any sort of
definitive statement. An attempt to process some of the reactions to the film,
both from my own initial viewing, as well as the cultural conversations that have
surrounded the film since its first release.
To begin, I felt the
charges of racism and misogyny seemed a bit off to me, although his female
characters have never been more transparent as they are here. It's rare for a
Tarantino film to be this lacking in non-white representation, but not
unprecedented. Reservoir Dogs (1992) has only one black supporting character, and
Inglourious Basterds (2009), despite historical revisionism, is still a largely
"white" film. And while the violence at the end of "Once Upon a
Time..." is certainly gratuitous, its aimed at both sexes. Tarantino's
violence has never had a gender bias.
I had greater problems
with the more conventional aspects of the film; chiefly its narrative
structure. Tarantino has always been wildly indulgent as a screenwriter, but
it's difficult to think of another film of his as undisciplined as this. For a good 90-minutes "Once Upon a
Time..." has a relaxed, conversational quality that evokes filmmakers like
Eric Rohmer and Richard Linklater; positively luxuriating as it does in a
painstakingly recreated late-1960s setting, where scene after scene of characters
going about their odd-jobs and daily routines feel designed to barely progress
the narrative but suggest something of a life being lived. At one point
Tarantino throws in a flashback within a flashback, both of which function
mostly as covert exposition (essentially to establish stuntman Cliff's almost
superhuman abilities and ease around death - both of which pay off in the final
scenes) before jumping eight months ahead for a last act, which for some reason
now has a storybook narrator.
I wonder if Tarantino has
become so accustomed to dividing his films into chapters that he's now
incapable to telling a straight story? Unlike the unconventional narratives of
Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997), the storytelling
of "Once Upon a Time..." just has the feel of bad plotting.
Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood [Quentin Tarantino, 2019]:
After seeing the film, I
wrote on Facebook that it was, for the most part: "Tarantino's most restrained and mature film since Jackie Brown;
finding an emphasis on leisurely observation, period detail and genuine
melancholy. A film that at first seems to be preoccupied with a feeling of
finality; its disparate strands of plot and the collisions between real-life
and fantasy always arriving at the end of things; the end of the Hollywood
studio system, the state of innocence, the American "West", a life,
the friendship that exists between men, etc. Then all of a sudden it isn't;
erupting into an orgy of cartoon violence in its final scenes.
The
title however is the clue. "Once Upon a Time...", like in a fairy-story?
Here Tarantino wants to show the triumph of Hollywood escapism over brutal
reality; re-writing history to provide the closure, catharsis (even vengeance)
that real life denies us, but which the cinema is more than capable to indulge.
As Carleton Young said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) - "This
is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." But is
this enough?
The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance [John Ford, 1962]:
Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood [Quentin Tarantino, 2019]:
If
I have a complaint about the film it's this: I wish Tarantino had shown enough
courage to follow the story through to its historical conclusion. Throughout so
much of the film there's a sick-inducing sense of tension and inevitability
developing around the expectation of the real-life horrors to come. In this
sense, the characterisation of Sharon Tate is the film's representation of
American innocence - primed as she is to be lost in a bloodbath of
counter-cultural decadence - and the often observational scenes of her
character gong about her daily life have a beautiful sadness to them, which is
powerful. But by subverting the reality of Tate's eventual fate, Tarantino
betrays those scenes and reduces the characterisation to nothing. A shame."
I liked "Once Upon a
Time..." a lot better than my least favourite of Tarantino's work to-date,
Django Unchained (2013), where the extended third act descent into cartoon
violence felt more egregious. But as much as I found a lot to appreciate here,
it still ranks as one of the weaker Tarantino efforts for me, far behind my
very favourite films of his, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Death Proof (2007),
Inglourious Basterds and The Hateful Eight (2015).
As an aside, I would argue
that "Once Upon a Time..." could form an odd little triptych with two
other recent "auteurist" films, The House That Jack Built (2018) by
Lars von Trier and Glass (2019) by M. Night Shyamalan, in the sense that they
function both as a kind of final statement or meta-commentary on their filmmakers'
respective careers (loaded as they are with all the quirks, eccentricities and
manipulations that their authors are best known for), but also a provocation to
the audiences that have both derided and defended them; "doubling
down" as it were on the more contentious aspects of their aesthetic and
ideological concerns to the extent that the films both define and obfuscate (intentionally?)
their actual intentions.
The sense of nostalgia
permeates every aspect of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and its evocation of
late-1960s Los Angeles to the point at which the film becomes less concerned with
the more conventional development of character and plot, and instead finds drama
and interest in the images of actors driving classic cars through painstakingly
recreated Hollywood streets; where the camera picks out and lingers on period
signage and billboard advertisements while songs and commercials play from
stereo to stereo. For Tarantino, such sequences are the backbone of the film,
and it's this immersive, atmospheric quality and the sense of period authenticity
that really defines the film as a genuine experience.
