Review of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) by Hnestlyonthesly — 07 Oct 2019

Once Upon a Time is top form Tarantino. Still in our opening weekend, I’ll put up the big spoiler warning for this one right now so that we can talk more openly about the film after the jump. There was some controversy about whether showing his film at Cannes would ruin the twist for future movie goers, which apparently led Friend to investigate and make the friendship-ending decision to share his newfound spoiler with Wife and me before leaving for his European vacation. Since then, we’ve been picking up the pieces and trying not to think too hard about what circle of hell he’s destined for. But if you’re reading this far down, you are aware that we’re looking at an alternate history story in a similar vein to Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, but also strangely enough with an indie film, Yesterday, currently enjoying some love.

The film is structured neatly into two parts with a decisive and unexpected time break. Tarantino is enamored with recreating genre television of the 1960s, whether it’s the cowboy Westerns that are Rick Dalton’s main fare or cheesy celebrity cameo commercials, FBI action adventures, or World War II nostalgia. Tarantino’s talent for blurring the lines between the real and the cinematic is at work, ambient music gives unexpected flavor to some of the most tense scenes of both halves of the film.

Little details like the length of Cliff’s drive to his trailer in the sub-suburbs of LA or the little moment of Cliff’s polite decline to pick up the hitchhiking hippies on their second meeting do wonders in fleshing out a friendship with weight and deep loyalty. Both Cliff and Rick are given the requisite nice guy scene with a young child or a cute animal in order to solidify their status as top notch goodies. Likewise, Tarantino’s villains are given a long runway from which to take off: they are equal parts alluring, enigmatic, grotesque, clownish, and damaged. On that last note, Once Upon a Time is stuffed with veiled critiques of Hollywood, wrestling with the unpleasantness of historical facts coupled with contemporary morality.

Tarantino feels to me like someone who has escaped for the most part the baggage of past associations of Harvey Weinstein despite some potential landmines, like the pressure Uma Thurman felt to do dangerous stunts on his set while being manhandled by a powerful executive producer. Thurman’s daughter, Maya Hawke continues a storied partnership between the director and the Thurman into a new generation and seems to validate Tarantino’s character. Tarantino’s other films have always struck me as interesting because of their tendency to elevate strong, fully-considered female protagonists and antagonists. Once Upon a Time has lots of roles for actresses in the springs, summers, and autumns of their careers. Even if the film is a bit of a bromance, it finds ways to tell other stories in the process: Sharon Tate’s storyline is obviously given a lot of attention and Tarantino deals with blending footage from her work with Margot Robbie’s smart, quirky, and apt depiction.

Dana Stevens over at Slate has taken a stab at trying to draw some comparisons to Tarantino’s previous work in a glowing and funny review, but I think I’ll need a second viewing before I have more decisive opinions.

UPDATE (Aug 5): I’ve been reading a lot more about OUATIH and ended up seeing it again by myself on Friday after starting a new job last week. Joelle Monique and Sam Adams have dueling essays about the gendered subjectivity of Tarantinian violence that’ll keep your mind going for a bit. Monique convinced me that I would absolutely hate Jackie Brown and then when I offhandedly mentioned the article and that film as the epitome of Tarantino’s callous fridging of female characters, a friend of mine wrinkled his brow and said it was a classic, which made me think I better go and see it for myself. THR had two takes that I noticed: Richard Newby did a nice close read of the film and its influences and Ciara Wardlow kind of split the difference between Monique and Adams in the feminist debate while placing the film in the context of the amazing trailers that preceded the movie by women directors and directors of color (“Harriet, Jojo Rabbit, Queen & Slim, and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood“). To that list, I add the ones that rounded out my second viewing: Knives Out, King’s Man, and Charlie’s Angels’ reboot. Alison Willmore is doing God’s work at Buzzfeed with a diachronic look at women in Tarantino films.