Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood grafts a fictional story about a has been television actor and his long time stunt double onto events leading up to the real life murder of actress Sharon Tate and her houseguests by acolytes of cult figure Charlie Manson. The very idea of making a movie like this is extremely tricky and poses some obvious risks of taste and ethics, which is why I am kind of surprised just how much I enjoyed it and that it is in fact, despite the apparent subject matter, one of Quentin Tarantino's more upbeat films.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, former star of a late 50's early 60's NBC western called "Bounty Law". Dalton left the popular show to try and jump start a movie career that didn't work out, now it's 1969 and Rick is a struggling working actor who pays the bill's by doing guest shots on episodic TV, and a producer named Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) is trying to convince him to go Italy and make spaghetti westerns, something Rick is loath to do. Rick's former stunt man turned gopher Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is himself semi-black balled in the industry, owing to a wide spread suspicion that he.... well I won't spoil it. Dalton lives in the house next to the one occupied by the actress Sharon Tate and her husband the director Roman Polanski on Cielo Drive near Beverly Hills, this provides the obvious link between our fictional story and real events. While the film keeps its principal focus on Rick and Cliff time is spent following Sharon Tate, played with wide eyed delight by Margot Robbie.

Unlike the bulk of director/writer Quentin Tarantino's film work, and especially notable given the real world basis of the film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not a particularly tense film until the last hour our so. Running 2 hours and 45 minutes this film is in no rush to get to its destination, and much of the time is breezily paced. Good portions of the film are devoted to characters driving around the Los Angeles of 1969, a city so meticulously recreated it's the closest you'll get to being there outside of a time machine (unless of course you actually visited or lived in Los Angeles in 1969 like the director did). The detail and feeling of verisimilitude is so strong that I found it kind of moving. Tarantino plays tribute to a time, a place, and a mid century American pop culture that he loves unironically, and it comes through as a very affection portrait.

Tarantino films are very uniquely structured, the movie is simultaneously rambling, and extremely well, even tightly put together. The film abounds with satisfying little nuggets, pieces of business, obscure references and homages, several rather notable ones to earlier films in the directors canon. It is loaded with supporting characters, many of them based directly on real people. It is a film not to be spoiled so I won't say much concerning the story, but to me this movie worked on pretty much all levels. I had to see it again on the big screen, full price, about a week after my first viewing, something I very rarely do and have never done for a Tarantino film before. Arguably not one of his greatest movies, those career defining pieces came earlier in the career, but perhaps this is his most personal film. I highly recommend it if you have an appreciation for Hollywood history and aren't too squeamish. ****