Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) – 40 minutes long of being a masterpiece

via IMDb

Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie

Seen in theater opening weekend with a good crowd

 

Non-spoiler thoughts

I watched this movie six weeks ago and I’m still getting my head around what I think of it. I definitely like it and it definitely is a good movie (these are two separate things), I just can’t decide how much I like it and how good it is. Because I almost love it and it’s possibly a masterpiece, a label I almost never use. We don’t need to get into film history here, but Tarantino’s long-time editor Sally Menke died in 2010 and all his movies since then were obviously edited by other people and are also all, in my opinion, in need of a more aggressive editor. Great scenes become merely good scenes because they never end. This movie is 2 hours and 41 minutes and I suspect that the same film at 2 hours and 1 minute would be a masterpiece. There aren’t bad scenes that need to be cut. There are only good scenes here. They’re just a little too long and sometimes simply too many scenes that serve the same purpose.

Now there are two counters to this. One, I have no idea what I’m talking about and should be shunned (probably this). And two, while this movie certainly has a narrative, the movie isn’t about the narrative. It’s a hangout movie, it’s an experience. The movie isn’t just 40 minutes longer than it could be, instead it allows us to be in this world for 40 minutes more. And as I said, there are no bad scenes. Why lose good material? I just happen to struggle with hangout movies. I’m beholden to the call of the plot and I want to get to the point. Tarantino doesn’t care what I want.

This movie is a delight to watch. I get a sense of joyful peace merely by remembering watching it. If I liked hangout movies, this is the exact type of movie I would want to hang out in. The look, the feel, the sounds. It’s the embodiment of Hollywood nostalgia. Tarantino and his team cared about getting the little details right, and with its length, were able to get everything they wanted on screen casually and naturally. And of course there’s Brad, Leo and Margot. Movie stars being movie stars. Brad might be the coolest person who ever lived and he effortlessly drips with that coolness in every scene. Even when he’s doing stereotypically masculine things that I personally don’t care for, like speeding in a nice car or working on a rooftop, I couldn’t help but think, “man he’s awesome.” Leo is possibly the best actor working and this is up there with his best roles (Wolf of Wall Street and Django are my favorites by him, if you care). He exudes a sensitivity and fragility I’ve never seen from him. And, appropriately, he’s almost the opposite of Brad Pitt here; he’s dorky and awkward and constantly at risk of being out of place. And Robbie might not have a ton to do in the movie (which I’ll get into below), but she really shines every time you see her. You might go into the movie knowing little of Sharon Tate and will leave believing she was a star about to burst. If you didn’t feel bad enough about what the Mansons did to her, this movie really makes you ache for the life and films she didn’t get to make.

 

Spoiler thoughts

What makes this movie stand out is also what I think was overdone. Tarantino does some incredible recreations of old Hollywood Westerns, both TV and movie. He recreates the sets, the costumes, the TV spots, everything. I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s just so much of it, though. We get long scenes from several shows and from multiple movies. And they’re not 12-second scenes. They’re closer to 12-minute scenes. At a certain point, I got everything I was going to get out of the segment and just wanted to move on with the story. That said, one of the best parts of the movie comes from this. Leo screws up a line deep into a scene, and once back in his trailer he freaks out in self-anger. While I felt like the “filming” part of the scene went on way too long, I also know that Leo’s flub wouldn’t seem as frustrating if we hadn’t just experienced the long single take along with him. Perhaps I’ll appreciate the length and detail of this scene more on a second viewing. Perhaps I wouldn’t be bothered by the length in the first place if I liked the Western genre more (and by that, I mean at all). Either way, some other re-creations and montages have less of a payoff and seem to serve the story with diminishing returns. I think a good 20 minutes of this could be trimmed down with nothing lost. Probably even more.

One huge benefit of this movie taking its time with drawn out conversations and minor set-pieces is that tidbits of necessary information are provided to us by un-obvious means. We found out in roundabout ways that Cliff has likely killed someone before. He’s also just as good of a fighter as Bruce Lee. And his dog is perfectly trained. This information is absorbed so slowly and organically that you don’t consciously register, “hey, this is probably important for later.” We get the info as part of a funny moment or as an explanation for a different problem. But then it all comes together in the climax. So while the climax itself might be pretty ridiculous, it also weirdly completely works and you accept it. How could Cliff stop these angry cultists while high? Because that’s not any harder than fighting the best fighter in human history. Would he be willing to kill strangers? Well, he might have killed his own wife, so, yeah, probably. And his dog would have needed to be super well trained in order to attack like that. And we know he was. Not to mention Leo randomly having a flamethrower in his possession. The climax is notable for multiple reasons, at least it all makes sense in this story. And it’s satisfying because we had all the information we needed without realizing it.

I went into the movie pretty blind and ended up really liking the characters Leo and Brad portray. I would have assumed the parts would be reversed and now I can’t imagine it being any other way than what we got. Brad as the jack-of-all-trades stuntman and Leo as the struggling would-be movie star. Despite their roles, though, Brad as Cliff gets the glamorous “movie star” moments of speeding through traffic, flirting with girls at stop lights, and casually fighting in a parking lot wearing a tuxedo. And Leo as Rick desperately wants to be significant, to be the star, but gets no glamor shots. Instead, we see him as a fool floating alone in his swimming pool, struggling to learn his lines for an industry that barely wants him. We see him breaking down in front of a too-smart child with a bright future. It’s perfect. And I loved the direct symbolism of Cliff the Shadow living in the literal shadow of a drive-in movie screen. A drive-in theater, a once -common establishment has since died out along with the Westerns Rick wants to star in. Good stuff.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how much Sharon Tate is actually in the movie. It’s a movie about her murder, so why doesn’t she have more to do, more to say? But if you’ve watched the movie, you know the movie is a fantasy. She doesn’t die. She lives. So maybe the reason she’s presented here as so unimportant is to illustrate the lasting tragedy of her murder: she’s now only known for her death, not her life. People don’t talk about The Wrecking Crew when she’s mentioned, they talk about Charles Manson. So in this movie, where her legacy is not up to a group of deranged hippies, she doesn’t have to be wrapped up in a Hollywood movie plot. She is allowed to live. And we’re finally allowed to think of her as a normal living person. A beautiful, talented, rich person, sure, but normal nonetheless. She gets to go to a party, to drive through the city with her husband, to plan for motherhood. And this mirrors the rest of the story, the parts about Leo. Was Sharon Tate going to be a mega-star? Who knows. Without the murders, she might have just become another forgotten actor, the exact thing that Leo’s character is worried is happening to him. Of course, Sharon, Leo, and everyone in history would prefer to be a forgotten hasbeen than to be known for your brutal murder. But the characters in the movie don’t know that being murdered is on the table. So while Once Upon a Time in Hollywood didn’t turn Sharon Tate into an action hero or any other type of character real life Sharon might have dreamed of playing, it did let her be a real person for a couple of hours, untouched by tragedy. And maybe people will think of her like that, now, instead. Or at least in addition to.

 

One good thing: Margot Robbie as Sharon watching and miming the movements of real Sharon Tate on screen. So charming. So delightful.

One bad thing: The out-of-nowhere narration to explain a time jump felt cheap and lazy.

 

Should you care? Definitely. One of the best working directors working with some of the best working actors. Even if you don’t like it, I bet you’ll have an opinion about it.

80/100

There aren’t really movies like this, but if you liked it, maybe you’ll like The Sting, or Short Cuts, or La La Land. None of those movies are anything alike.