Columbia Pictures
Actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, left) and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).
Unrealized dreams, forgotten triumphs, and careers tragically cut short form the core of Quentin Tarantino’s delightful new comedy, Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood.
The “time” is 1969. The old studio era is dead, and the golden age of the 1970s had not yet broken through, but Hollywood is a factory town, and the factory still churns out product. We follow a trio of industry workers: an actor on his way down, a starlet on her way up, and a disgraced stunt man trying to get by.
Tarantino grew up in Los Angeles, and he clearly sees the era of his youth as a time of wonder — of legendary heroes, imperiled princesses and terrifying monsters. He was six during the timeline of the film, and the textures of 1969 LA were clearly etched into his brain. The detailed recreations of the freeways, skylines and marquees of his youth are so exact that it looks like he filmed this movie using a time machine.
Used right, movies can vicariously transport us throughout history. Tarantino wants to go one step further by fixing history. He has spent the last decade answering the question “What would you do with a time machine?” He punished the Nazi high command in Inglourious Basterds. He slaughtered slave drivers in Django Unchained. With Hollywood, he explores a more localized history.
If you don’t know events of the era, you might be wondering where the movie is going, but if you do, there is a tension as this shaggy dog story meanders to its destination. It takes a long time to get there, but the movie is so briskly paced and so well-tuned and funny you hardly notice the 161-minute run time.
Most of the movie takes place on a single day as the three leads go about their separate business. Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an alcoholic actor poorly masking a nervous breakdown on the set of a television Western. Cliff (Brad Pitt) is his stunt double, handyman and drinking buddy who wanders into a hippie dystopia.
And then there’s Rick’s neighbor, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who spends the afternoon reckoning with her own half-fame. She is big enough to get her name on the poster. She’s good enough to be loved by audiences. Yet, she is most famous for being the wife of celebrity director Roman Polanski. What you know about Tate’s real-life fate will color how you feel about the climax, which proves to be Tarantino’s most controversial move since Mr. Blonde’s torture dance in Reservoir Dogs.
The wonder of Hollywood is Tarantino’s seamless fusing of fact and fiction. Sharon is real. Rick is not. He stars in real TV shows with fake versions of real actors. “Sharon Tate” goes to see a Sharon Tate movie, and Tarantino shows the real Tate performing. Meanwhile, the film dashes off references to other Hollywood controversies. A mysterious death on a boat mirrors Natalie Wood’s demise. A teenager propositions Cliff — and he wisely turns her down — echoing Polanski’s notorious crime from a few years later.
In Tarantino previous works, the characters chatter in the director’s stylized, pop culture-laden style. (I won’t fault him for this. It was a big draw of his early work.) In Hollywood, it’s different. There are still layers of arcane references, but they aren’t used to impress the audience, but to add realism. When Cliff and Rick talk about Mannix or The Green Hornet, they’re not talking hip, they’re talking shop.
Tarantino seems to have realized that the things that first made him great have atrophied into crutches, and the greatest risk this career risk-taker can take is changing his style. Hollywood feels entirely new, while still plainly being Tarantino. After all this time, the old wunderkind is still learning — and still teaching us how to watch movies.
