Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Review: You Like It... Or You Don't

Have you seen Édouard Manet’s "Mademoiselle V… in the Costume of an Espada"? The painting is of a 30-ish French woman dressed up as an espada, a participant of the Spanish-style bullfighting. It's an important piece of modern art for two main points: the shoe, and the woman's figure.

The shoe appears to float from the ground. And the woman seems more like a cut out image than a flesh-and-blood figure standing in the real bullfighting which happens in the background. These create an illusion of time and space: is she standing in the corrida? Or, is she posing against a theatrical backdrop in the artist's studio? 

Mademoiselle V. . . in the Costume of an Espada is an oil-on-canvas painting by Édouard Manet.

Quentin Tarantino's 9th feature, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is just like that Manet painting. He masterfully blends fiction with the real-life murder of actress Sharon Tate in the last 40 minutes. I wouldn't spoil it for you but there is a brilliant coup de théâtre at the end of the movie which makes it one of Tarantino's finest works. For a brief moment everyone got what they deserved.

Austin Butler as "Tex," and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate.

But to fully understand the movie you ought to know what happened on August 8-9, 1969. Otherwise, you wouldn't be "getting it," and then you'll complain about it being too long (2h 40m).

On the night of August 8, Tex Watson, accompanied by three women—who are infamously known as Manson family members—drove to the 10050 Cielo Drive, a quiet neighborhood of L.A., and broke into actress Sharon Tate's house. 

Tate's husband, Roman Polanski, was away in Europe for a project that evening. The other three occupants of the house were Tate's ex-boyfriend, her husband's friend and his girlfriend.

The Manson family brutally killed all of them. How brutal? Tate's husband's friend was stabbed 51 times and his skull was repeatedly hit by a gun's butt. The other two were shot. They didn't even spare Sharon Tate, who was over 8 months pregnant at that time.

Tate begged to spare her unborn child's life but those hippies-turned-homicidal-maniacs didn't listen to her. They stabbed her 16 times, then hung her with nylon rope and before leaving the place scrawled the word "pig" on the front door with her blood.

This is what actually happened in real life. 

But in the movie Tarantino makes a much needed ending. It's not exactly an alternative ending, but one which makes sense when you consider the title, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. The film is essentially a fairy tale where the good guys always win, and a love letter to 1960's Hollywood from Tarantino. He grew up there and was a kid when the Manson family murder occurred.

Sharon Tate's sister, who approved of her depiction in the movie, cried watching it in the theater, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Plus, in a scene where the Manson family is preparing for their act, Tarantino makes fun of those who say his films promote violence ("If you grew up watching TV, that means you grew up watching murder"). The logic is funny to be honest.

QT once mentioned this to the legendary film critic Roger Ebert at the premiere of Pulp Fiction at Cannes. He said, "When I'm writing a movie, I hear the laughter. People talk about the violence. What about the comedy?"

Here the joke is on the viewers, of course. How we don't laugh—not me, at least—when a man whips a can of dog food into a intruder's face who happens to be a woman, but we do laugh when the dog bites one man's crotch. The former was tagged as violence against women by some critics and went as far as calling Tarantino a women hater.

Anyway.

The main plot of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is centered on the declining career of Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who is better known as bounty hunter Jake Cahill, and his stunt double Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt). Rick's career is reduced to just the bad guy roles on TV shows while Cliff hasn't been a stunt double for over a year. 

Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton

Rick is afraid that the audience would've psychological effects for seeing him only in the heavy roles. So he goes to Italy with his stunt double, starrs in some B-grade Spaghetti Westerns, marries an Italian co-star, and comes back to Hollywood with mid-level fame and money on August 8. As a side note, notice how Rick has a sort of hippie hairstyle when he comes back, which he was reluctant to do when the TV show director asked him.

On the other hand, Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie), who lives next door to Rick Dalton, is over 8 months pregnant and completely unaware of her terrible fate that night. Her husband is filming in Europe, and the other occupants who will be staying at her home that night are his former boyfriend, his husband's friend and his girlfriend.

The movie is shot beautifully. The bright colors of 35 mm film is an acid dipped cigarette for my eyes. Cinematographer Robert Richardson perfectly captures the '60s atmosphere. (He is a three-time Academy Awards winner for a reason.)

Also, look for the sequence where Tex is riding on horseback, through some trees, back to the ranch. That scene mimics the early motion picture device, mutoscope, where viewers could watch moving pictures by means of a geared-down hand crank.

Besides, there are plenty of jump cuts in the movie. Watch for the moment when Rick Dalton meets James Stacey for the first time; Tarantino used jarring cuts to depict a vapid relationship between the two. However, these types of cuts are absent when Rick is talking with Cliff.

Consider Quentin Tarantino's audacity giving Margot Robbie's character so few lines. Did he actually learn the art of sparse dialog as Roger Ebert advised in his review of Django Unchained? Numerous critics criticized Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for this depiction, to which my reply would be: acting is more than lines. When a New York Times reporter asked Tarantino about this he said, "I reject your hypothesis." 

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Although, she delivers some tasty lines like "Hey, beggars can’t be choosers." She says it to a hippie girl from the Manson family—not one of the four who went to kill her—while giving a ride to Westwood Village.

For some reason I didn't discuss Brad Pitt's character initially. He is the coolest person in the movie. He is the real cowboy which his boss plays on TV shows. He is a good friend to Rick ("More than a brother but less than a wife.") Oh, and did you get your content idea for r/SuddenlyGay subreddit? Happy karma farming!

Cliff is also a damn good stuntman. He nearly beat the sh*t out of fictionalized Bruce Lee on set. This, again, is a very controversial topic; but my opinion is that it's just a case of creative liberty. For those who don't agree, chill dude; Cliff got what he deserved: he got kicked out of his job. And now he is ruminating about this incident while fixing the TV antenna at the roof of Rick's house.

This sequence was followed by the coolest moment in the whole movie. I'd spare you from the details. Watch it on your favorite streaming service. I want you to enjoy the moment right then-and-there.

One thing likers and dislikers, alike, would agree is that there is not much plot development in the movie. It all revolves around the people of the film industry. The characters rarely interact with any outsiders except for the hippies. But this doesn't mean the script is poorly written. I read it just after watching the movie, and, boy, Tarantino should compile it into a novel. Oh, wait, he has already published a novelization of the movie. Gotta check it out later.

That said, I consider Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as one of my top 10 for two reasons: traditional Tarantino flairs, and a stand-out film when all the big studios are financing either a Dark Knight protégé, or a remake of a film franchise with a new cast… which surprisingly happens to be box office success.