Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Personal Response to a Controversial Love Letter

[Contains major spoilers for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood]

I came out of Quentin Tarantino’s latest film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with predictably mixed feelings. Seeing so much of the film’s generated discussion and criticism online beforehand most likely played into my experience a bit. But I didn’t feel as satisfied with it as I had wanted to.

It’s a messy love letter that gets as much right as it does wrong. That being said, it’s an entertaining ride that miraculously feels like half its runtime.

The catharsis Tarantino is reaching for with his hangout movie is slightly cheapened by the fact it’s two stories shopped into one. One is the story of Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio) and his loyal stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The other being Sharon Tate’s cultural moment before her life was put in danger by The Manson Family.

“The catharsis Tarantino is reaching for with his hangout movie is slightly cheapened by the fact it’s two stories shopped into one.”

The way Cliff and Rick end up playing a part in the fictional retelling of the infamous night of August 9th, 1969 is a subversive twist that should be welcomed by anyone who knows the gristly details of the real-life events. It’s refreshingly un-sensationalist, but if you’re going to make a movie that taps into an event that changed the way the late 60s were remembered, it may need more than what is offered in this outing.

I’m in love with the way Sharon Tate gets her happy ending here (I’ve thought about her a lot lately while researching The Manson Family). And Margot Robbie does her best to bring Tate’s sunshine persona to screen.

Unfortunately, she’s used as eye candy a bit more than I would’ve liked. And I don’t believe the scene where Tate gets to watch herself on a cinema screen with an audience who adored her was the time or place for Tarantino to flex the fact he can shove feet into any shot he wants for his own fetishising reasons. The amount of feet-focused shots have been exaggerated by online chatter, but they’re often distracting and out of place.

There’s a certain repetition with how Tarantino sours his own work. In most of his movies, his signature explosive gall is exactly what we’re looking for. So when the sometimes offensive – and often bold – scenes roll they work in tandem with what the film is doing tonally.

“There’s a fine balance of drama and comedy, but the film could have benefited from slight tipping of the scales in favour of more earned emotion.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, however, is probably his most “about something” film, and it’s clear it’s new territory. This was a difficult story to navigate, even for a veteran director.

Jackie Brown fans will be pleased to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood takes the scenic route, with a more laidback character-focused approach. It’s just not as nuanced or piercing as I had hoped for. I felt for the mushy and humourous Rick Dalton a lot, but what could’ve been a touching ode to bygone stars is often traded for comedy.

Even though Tarantino’s appreciation of the craft of filmmaking is still represented through Dalton’s trials and tribulations, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seems more wanting of laughs than having you bask in the soft glow of Hollywood has-beens and the end of an era. There’s a fine balance of drama and comedy, but the film could have benefitted from slight tipping of the scales in favour of more earned emotion.

The revisionist history we’ve all heard so much about is all over pretty quickly and is best described as a comedic set-piece. I’m not going to be one of those people who’re all “I can’t believe Cliff hurt the murderers!”, but it feels as if the violent finale lacked thought and that Tarantino simply wanted a loud, roaring ending to reward us for sitting through dialogue-heavy car rides.

“The female characters in this movie are coded rather predictably: you feel sorry for them, hate them, or are supposed to eye them up.”

As much as Tarantino strays from his usual scripting here, his tendency to say a whole lot without really saying anything hangs over the film. It could’ve been so much more.

I would’ve liked to have spent more time with the film’s women. Even if only to see some evidence of just how much Manson’s girls had been corrupted. The female characters in this movie are coded rather predictably: you feel sorry for them, hate them, or are supposed to eye them up. The young men making sexual hand gestures in the seats next to me during one scene certainly thought so.

Tarantino feels fine condemning the awful girls belonging to Manson’s cult, but he’s still gonna throw in lots of ass shots so we don’t have to analyse further past the idea of ‘hot and bad’. We’re to hate them, but we’re also supposed to want to fuck them because they’re hot – probably underage – teen girls. That’s not complicated at all, right?

And remember, as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood so deftly implies, it’s hard to know a girl’s age. She either looks older than she is, or she’s promiscuous and lies about it. Manson was a statutory rapist, FYI – not unlike another man in this film.

I walked into Once Upon a Time in Hollywood fully expecting to love Rick and Cliff’s bromance. I did like Rick a lot, but have no idea what Cliff was meant to represent or be. And the half-assed implying of him having maybe killed his wife (another comedically framed moment of violence) was meant to make me like him more, apparently?

“I couldn’t help but notice how well Tarantino had researched what happened that night and had gone so far that he knew of these small details – ones that were perfect choices to change.”

Again, the men in my theatre seemed to enjoy this more than me. In fact, when Cliff’s wife’s shrill complaining continued while she stood in a bikini in front of a well-placed spear in Cliff’s hand, they all burst out laughing at the mere idea of the said spear piercing her flesh. Was she annoying? Yes. Was it funny? Kind of. Is the idea of Cliff doing that enticing for a female audience member? Absolutely not.

His whole character seems to be based on two pillars: loyalty, and the fact he’s great in a fight. Rick, while mostly there for laughs, seems to have more of a personality and purpose outside of the final act’s twist.

I wanted to learn about what it feels like to be past your prime in an industry that values peaks, but unfortunately, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is quite literal in the pursuit of what the trailer actually seemed to capture perfectly. If it’s not spelt out in a heartwarming scene between Cliff and Rick, it’s not really there.

When Cliff takes down Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel after they invade Rick’s home, it’s not cathartic because they’re bad people who want to start a race war and hurt innocent people. It’s supposed to be great ’cause Cliff’s the wrong man to fuck with and doesn’t mind bashing skulls in. A statement is lost within this.

It’s not all ruthless and one-note though, watching Maya Hawke as Linda Kasabian speed away in the group’s car after pretending to leave her knife in the backseat was a genuine moment of comedic relief. In real life, Kasabian stood outside while the murders took place and claimed to not want to participate in the slayings. I couldn’t help but notice how well Tarantino had researched what happened that night and had gone so far that he knew of these small details – ones that were perfect choices to change.

“It’s frustrating because Tarantino is so very almost there, and his impressive approach to the material only makes me want more from it.”

I wish this version of the night was real. I wish Manson’s buddies had run into a solid stunt man instead of a house full of Sharon Tate’s friends. Who were stabbed countless times before Sharon pleaded for her unborn baby’s life. I wish she got to live, I wish all of them had gotten to live, but they did not. So why does the subversion here feel so meaningless? I’m not sure.

The issue isn’t that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a quiet slice of life film – until it’s not. It’s that the things it tries to represent and rewrite are done so in a manner that fails to get to the core of anything.

And usually that’d be fine, movies don’t always have to be soft and aware of everything and how it’s all being framed. But this felt like the perfect opportunity. It’s frustrating because Tarantino is so very almost there, and his impressive approach to the material only makes me want more from it.

This may be a half-baked fantasy, but I did for the most part like it. Still, I think there are missed opportunities here. It’s a great film, Tarantino just mishandles it a bit and loses some potency. I wanted to really feel this one, but I didn’t.

What Tarantino is saying is that he misses old Hollywood and that Sharon Tate deserved better (and oh how she did). Two very simple things that had they been handled with a more thoughtful screenplay would’ve hit home in a way that would’ve won me over completely.

“What Tarantino is saying is that he misses old Hollywood and that Sharon Tate deserved better (and oh how she did).”

None of this takes away from technical merits though. The time and place are brought to life wonderfully. The cinematography is warm, the editing (although at times disjointed) does a great job at much-needed pacing, the costumes, sets and music are lush.

I could’ve watched another hour of Sharon roaming around. The runtime flew by so casually that I didn’t even notice sequences other viewers had criticised for being sluggish or excruciatingly long.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a complicated movie with complicated problems, but generating discussion is far from a bad thing. I guess it would’ve been out of character for a Tarantino outing about real tragedies to be perfectly measured, free of gratuity and without annoying drawbacks.

I hope I can eventually take a step back from this one and try to appreciate it for what it is rather than what it isn’t, but something tells me that’ll be impossible. It’s such a captivating idea to join two stories like this together, and I suppose I wanted more for these characters in the same way one might want more for a beloved friend. For now, I’ll leave the expansion to my imagination – which thankfully isn’t hard because of how alive Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is.