Review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Review of Once Upon a Time In Hollywood

The Good, The Bad and the Careerists

“A longtime ago being crazy meant something, nowadays everybody is crazy” -Charles Manson, Interview with Diana Sawyer

“Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on” Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?

Quentin Tartentino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (OUATIH) is a paean to the entertainment business in Los Angeles in the late 60s. It would be difficult to think of a more perfect union of the director’s oeuvre with this era of tumult and violence. Now the creator of the martial arts styled Kill Bill could deliver Bruce Lee in the flesh. The auteur behind the WW II inspired Inglorious Bastards could show the star of The Great Escape poolside. The writer/director of the dystopian Pulp Fiction could give his portrayal of Charles Manson and his family roaming LA looking for prey. Ironically the burden of telling an inside story of his forebears clouded Tarantino’s vision. His brand of action requires taught storylines and moral clarity. OUATIH is an interesting 85 minute film buried in a meandering 2 hours and 41 minutes of gossipy sidetracks. Tarantino put a great deal of homework into this feature and it shows. There is a heavy carefulness to all the lightness and horror. Behind the wonderful acting, exacting set design and costuming is a script that never settles on a direction. Is this a film about Hollywood? Is this a buddy film? A commentary on the past? A parable about success and/or failure?

OUATIH is brimming with wonderful sequences that recreate the TV shows, promotions and tableaux of the era. Who doesn’t enjoy DiCaprio’s character yucking-it-up with the Hullabaloo Dancers or the recreated scenes of the nearly forgotten TV Westerns Bronco and Lancer. There are also many fun filled joy rides and walks through the airport while a superbly curated 60s soundtrack blares. He chooses the magical Jose Feliciano take on California Dreamin’ rather than the universally familiar original version. Unfortunately Tarantino tries to shoehorn a couple of actual linear narratives into the mix. For those who remember the times it is fun seeing Steve McQueen gossiping about Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. The director shot at the real location, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. It is all pitch perfect, yet somehow out of tune. How can anyone, connoisseur or novice, latch on to these colorful recreations? The conceit is that Tarantino wants to raise the offscreen shenanigans to the fever pitch of low budget melodrama.

In truth Hollywood in the 60s certainly had its share of “action.” Tarantino has adapted the darkest horror moment, the Manson killings, and replaced the senseless carnage with his interpretation of a “happy ending.” All the self-righteous justice of the TV cop shows and spaghetti Westerns is channeled to right the wrongs. The bad guys are the ones who are butchered and incinerated. The ingenue and her entourage, including her unborn child, are spared. The long-struggling B movie hero Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) is freed from the purgatory of commonplace stardom. He and his loyal companion, stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), now have entree to the A-lister, Polanski, whose wife they have rescued. The only problem is that Tarantino forgets that heroes or anti-heroes need to be heroic; or at least their journeys must include meaningful quests. The classic feature All About Eve, the definitive statement on reaching for the stars, has characters who put their “goodness” on the alter of fame. OUATIH, by contrast, brings to mind the Springsteen lyric, “its just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.”

The most morally compelling figure is Pitt who, literally, takes the fall for DiCaprio. In addition to being a loyal sideman he, unlike the rest of the cast, shows his chivalry on many occasions. He refuses sex with an underage Manson devotee. He tries to come to the aid of an elderly friend he feels is being taken advantage of by the Manson crew. He puts an arrogant movie star, Bruce Lee, in his place by physically defeating him and never complains when he is fired for Lee’s transgression. Strangely, Tarantino includes a plot point that undercuts all the warm fuzzy admiration the audience feels for this embodiment of brute force and justice. We learn in a flashback that Pitt is guilty of killing his wife for being annoying. The fact that Dalton sees uxoricide as a small blemish in Pitt’s character plays out in his treatment of his trusted confidant. After finding redemption as a spaghetti Western hero, Dalton replaces his buddy with an Italian spouse. The new found financial security doesn’t spare Pitt a pink slip. This is a world where everything revolves around being on the right side of the “in” and “out” crowd. This attribute makes all the players unsympathetic pawns in an abusive hierarchy. It starts to narrow the divide between those who worship a sociopathic cult killer and those who build their lives around the whims of studio executives.

Everyone, from grimmest slovenly hippie to the slickest Kung Fu icon, is a hustler with an agenda. Tarantino’s fails to slide these misfits into the entertainment rubric of “good guys” and “bad guys.” The scenes at the Spahn ranch are supposed to evoke the white hatted cowboy against the mob. Despite wonderful performances from Bruce Dern, as the demented Spahn landlord, and a truly terrifying rendition of Squeaky Fromme by Dakota Fanning, the set up fails to inspire anything other than passing fits of horror and glee. Spahn is getting laid. Fromme is accredited leadership status by her guru. Pitt meanders on main street, a pale ghost of Charles Bronson in Once Upon A Time In The West. It is fun to see Pitt kick ass after his car is vandalized, but what is at stake? A creepy errand boy beating wayward cult member does not make for high drama. Sadly it doesn’t make for low drama either. Whose side are we on when Bruce Lee picks a fight over, literally, nothing. There is a quick burst of adrenaline while Cliff takes down the egotistical jackass but, like the rest of the film, it never grabs the heart. The zeitgeist of pulp fiction, Tarantino’s dramatic muse, relies on simple plots and clear victories.

The moment of where one feels a heroic note is when Dalton is struggling as a guest actor on the downhill slope of stardom. He interacts with a child actress. The little girl is a monster of the overly-efficient, almost robotic, future. She is ALL BUSINESS and mean beyond her years, almost a parody Sammy in the devastating indictment of show business, Bud Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? DiCaprio is vulnerable and brilliant as he digests the hard-core professionalism of the child-upstart. In spite of the endless banter and the unfortunate sharpness of the child, one feels the pain of the over-the-hill star and his outdated simplicity. It is worth the price of admission to watch Dalton tear up his trailer after woefully blowing his lines. DiCaprio’s recovery scene, in which he hurdles the child to the floor, shows the star (and the man playing the star) on the top of their game. After “cut” is called he apologizes for being rough with the she-devil of efficiency. She actually thanks him as she knows a good performance when she sees one. Dalton’s brilliance isn’t about money or status but…. dignity. He wears his own white hat and shows us how it is done.

Unfortunately even in this magnificent sequence one feels DiCaprio’s Dalton battling choices made by Tarantino. The interaction with the child could have been half the length and made twice the impact. The humiliating scene where he flubs his lines is carefully played opposite a nemesis, an actor who is rising in the ranks due to scoring the lead role. The comeback would have been more effective if DiCaprio’s brilliant retort was played against this spiritual rival. Instead Tarantino was locked into the original TV show script, which demanded a cameo. No doubt it was fascinating to see Luke Perry in his final performance but sticking to the other actor would have made Dalton’s recovery more poignant. Furthermore there is an odd amount of camera time spent on the fact that the lead actor leaves the set on motorcycle. This references the original star’s tragic motorcycle crash which left him without an arm and a leg. This fact is never covered in the film leaving yet another layer of clues for the experts of the era. All this extra padding works against the thrust of the action. It is as if Tarantino is a telling a story and constantly turning his head to gossip about inside-baseball minutia. The director sacrifices smooth clarity to the static of being cool and clever.

Tarantino is never is able to step over his narrow conceptions of the era. It is hard not to avoid the misogyny label when you make the good guy in your film a wife killer. But it goes further. Aside of the annoying child, the film is devoid of powerful actresses. That era had many important female leads, not to mention a burgeoning women’s rights movement, but Tarantino is only interested in a relatively obscure starlet whose fame is based on being butchered. Margot Robbie gives a great performance but her contributions to the films are limited to giggling in a movie theater while gauging the audience’s reaction to her work. More importantly she buys the novel Tess of the d’Ubervilles for her husband, Mr. Polanski. It is not covered in the film but he went on to create a much heralded feature based on the book. Of course that detail is exclusively crafted for those who have more than a passing interest in Hollywood.

OUATIH is not made for the general public but rather industry insiders who get the extra layer of jokes and messages. Tarantino’s denouement of the actual story, after exacting real-life detail for the first 2 1/2 hours, shows a strange defense of his own perceived demons. The Manson family descends on the house according to schedule but decides, rather than attack Tate, they will get Dalton. This affords the director to “righteously” focus his, much criticized, depictions of violence on a “just” cause. It might have been deemed tasteless to record the actual murder of Tate, her fetus and the friends. The real events included the painting of slogans in their blood all over the walls. The director, however, innoculates himself from criticism by turning the savagery on the demons themselves. It is hard to object to someone being roasted alive, or having their head bashed in, knowing the true life actions of these monsters. There is, however, a caveat to all the seemingly justifiable carnage. The director might be using this film as a way to erase his own morally dubious actions.

Tarantino’s Manson monsters have a confrontation with Dalton at the foot of Tate’s driveway. They recognize him as their childhood TV hero. One of them suggests perhaps they should turn their murderous rage on the TV god that “taught them how to kill”. In this light Tarantino might defend his own track record of onscreen violence as merely being the product of an apt pupil. All the gore in his own work has been past down from past masters. His Manson clan are abandoned on the driveway by the very member who made the suggestion to perpetrate VT violence against the TV good guy. The actress playing that part is Maya Hawke. She is the daughter of Tarantino’s former leading lady, Uma Thurman. During the filming his Kill Bill feature the director bullied Thurman into performing a dangerous car crash sequence. She was seriously injured. This obviously put a damper on their relationship as she went public about his abusive, nearly fatal, behavior. But she never took formal legal action against him. Furthermore she tweeted support for her daughter’s appearance in OUATIH. It is reported that her former husband, the actor Ethan Hawke, help secure the part for Maya.

Most people would have qualms casting their daughter in film by a director who nearly killed her mother, your ex-wife. Most children might avoid working for someone that put your mother’s life in danger. Most people would avoid praising the work of someone who nearly killed you. Many parents would think twice about their child being part of the production given Tarantino’s track record. Many people would feel squeamish about appropriating gruesome real life events to buttress personal demons. But these people will never make it Hollywood. It is a land peopled by those who play the parts of rescuers, Calvary riders and good people in white hats. But all this is ON SCREEN. Their real life actions are equally ambitious and shocking, but not melodramatically captivating. Audiences want Superman, not an in depth look at the process of become a cosplay Superman. Tarantino never fully understands that the off screen sourness cannot be excised with clever plot twists, fancy art direction and a wonderful soundtrack. He thinks that his formula of flash and violence will mask the hollow center. It might have worked for 85 minutes. But not for over two and a half hours. Note: more of the dreams; less of the dream factory.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

What are Reservoir Dogs?

I have little regard for an art that deliberately aims to shock because it is unable to convince.
-Albert Camus

    

A director has two choices when faced with the prospect of making a film about robbers. The first would be to follow the successful orthodoxy laid down since The Great Train Robbery was shot in 1903. The second would be to experiment and try to take this genre to new heights (e.g.Goodfellas). Quentin Tarantino, in his debut Reservoir Dogs, does neither. New directors often hide their callow mechanics behind innovative approaches to the subject matter. Unfortunately Mr. Tarantino is not bold enough to be a visionary. He also lacks the directorial command over the medium to produce a conventional gangster film.  The result is a ponderous first feature; amateurish in its obscurity and exploitative in its use of violence and profanity.

Reservoir Dogs is muddled. It is difficult to gauge exactly what Mr. Tarantino, the writer-director, intended. It fails to be a black comedy. This idea, supported by the advertising campaign, might stem from an attempt to mask the absurd plot. There are numerous utterly, unbelievable twists and turns.It is unlikely that any policeman would allow a fellow officer to have his ear cut off and be doused in gasoline before taking action against his aggressor. The dialogue does possess moments of levity but these are far outweighed by the endless sequences of male-bonding and the gruesome bloodletting. This is a "serious" film about male criminals and their codes of friendship and loyalty - a version of Last Tango in Paris but with a robbery, rather than assignation, as the emotional glue. The plot hinges on a mobster who organizes a group of strangers, all professional robbers, to burglarize a diamond store. The group's anonymity is the source of its strength. If one member is caught he would be unable to rat on his friends because they would be, literally, strangers. This works well against the inherent intimacy involved in organizing and executing a complicated burglary. There is an interesting sequence near the beginning of the film where one of the burglars is shot in the chest. He is being comforted by another who is driving the getaway car. Their manner and trust reveals a degree of intimacy reserved usually for the best of friends. Half way through the scene it is revealed that they are using aliases and are ignorant of each other's names. If only Mr. Tarantino had stuck to his guns and explored this interesting dynamic of total strangers in league with each other. Instead he wanders.

The bulk of the film takes place after the robbery has occurred. Each of the gang members is then portrayed in flashbacks. These sequences begin with a title-card featuring a black background with large white letters indicating the character's alias. The awkwardness of this device is compounded by the randomness of what is presented in the flashbacks. "Mr.Blond" is a case in point. This character is a sadistic sociopath whose sanity is called into question by other members of the gang. His actions have led to the murder of a number of bystanders and threatened the lives of his comrades, not to mention the success of the burglary. Unfortunately Mr. Tarantino feels it unnecessary to offer any motivation for Mr. Blond's behavior. Instead the audience is presented with a lengthy scene showing his release from prison and his good-standing in criminal circles. This information is regurgitated in cumbersome exposition in the closing scene (too bad Mr. Tarantino failed use this approach initially but then again first films are a learning experience).  The "Mr. Green" sequence is equally troubling. (The identifying color might be wrong but I am referring to the undercover cop.) There is a lengthy examination of relationship with his commander (a character who never reappears). The young officer is struggling to learn the part to infiltrate the mobster's burglary crew. He is seen rehearsing his lines in visually stimulating settings. The choice of background, (a rooftop with a scenic view of downtown L.A., then a graffiti covered facade of neo-classical abandoned building) is characteristic of Mr. Tarantino's flair for the utterly random. There is no significance to any of these images but then again there is little or no significance to what is communicated in the entire sequence. Essentially we learn he is a scared, young, undercover cop. Once again a line of exposition would have sufficed. Once again Mr. Tarantino feels it unnecessary to explore motivation. Instead of answering questions and opening up the characters, these meandering flashbacks have the effect of making all the protagonists less intriguing. The more they talk in these irrelevant scenes the more boring it all becomes.

Popular film audiences have the mistaken belief that violence and vulgarity are, in themselves, interesting. Mr. Tarantino tries to capitalize on this misconception with a degree of success. Audiences rarely complain that this talky, laborious film is boring. Perhaps this can be attributed to the mantra-like invocation of the words "dick", "fuck" and "nigger". The opening scene is telling. The group sits around analyzing Madonna songs in a restaurant. The word "dick" is uttered every other sentence. The conversation then turns to one of the group's refusal to tip the waitress. "Fuck" comes into play. After a few minutes they all leave. This is all delivered with self-conscious camera work, tracking around the table in close-up, which has no relation to what little is being said. The sum total is dull, but if it wasn't for all the foul language it would have been duller. There is a pornographic sense of enjoyment in listening to screen character's curse. It is the audio equivalent of seeing a gory movie murder. And don't think Mr. Tarantino has forgotten how much we enjoy that cheap thrill. Violence and profanity have their place and can be used effectively. The Last Detail is a wonderful example of how cursing can highlight the ritual of male bonding. A Clockwork Orange shows that violent scenes can speak volumes in illustrating the brutality of protagonists and the twisted values of society at large.  Mr. Tarantino simply appeals to the worst devils in our nature. In the overall scheme of the film was it really necessary to slice off that officer's ear? Was it vital to the telling of the story to show the, dozen or so, gun shot murders?

The empathy felt toward the protagonists is one of the strongest means of evaluating the success of most fiction films. There are exceptions (e.g.Goddard's Weekend), but a vast majority of features rely on an audience investing their emotions in the characters presented before them. Regrettably Reservoir Dogs failed to establish this bond. The lack of such a connection evidenced in the unfortunate ending. It might have shocked the senses but it failed to reach the heart.  This closing scene features one criminal risking his life for a fellow stranger, who in turn confesses to being a turncoat. There was lots of blood but little reason to care. This can be laid to the major structral failure in the script: the film never showed the development of the relationships among the members of the gang. The bulk of the film centers on the group after the botched robbery. The flashbacks concerned themselves with each individual joining the group. But what about the period of the group coming together to do their work? Aside from the less than riveting opening, there is one other scene in which the team is together. In it the mob boss gives out the aliases. It is  mildly amusing but once again, what is the relevance? Why dedicate the entire scene to a secondary character? The burglars themselves and how they react to each other is of primary importance. Unfortunately there are no scenes in which the audience can see how these men react to one another and how their feeling grow. This omission doomed the ensuing conflicts of loyalty. The closing scene becomes strangely emotionally distant. It is difficult to feel for any of the characters. It is easy to react to the brutality of the scene with the same sense of gratification one receives from watching exploitation films. Producers and directors who unabashedly market films entitled Torso and Chopping Mall are more honest than Mr. Tararentino and a great deal less pretentious.

Perhaps an element of realism could have salvaged this film. Unfortunately the shaky hand of a rank amateur was firmly in control. The parlance and dress of all the central characters was contrived. There was an inauthenticity about "moving the ice", meaning reselling diamonds. Audiences haven't heard gangsters talk like that since the glory days of film noire. The costumes were also fake. Their suits and sunglasses seemed more appropriate for a session with an album cover photographer, rather than a jewelry store heist. The most disconcerting device, however, was the implementation of the radio D.J.. This technique has been employed successfully in such films as Warriors and American Graffiti. The idea is to unify the action and smooth over the transitions with a disembodied disc jockey. In Reservoir Dogs it was a meaningless random distraction. There is a certain method behind the madness. The Big Chill won over many audience members by simply blasting out Motown favorites. Why not employ the same gimmick but move up a decade to the 1970s. When was the last time anyone heard Steeler's Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You"? Audiences nostalgically hum along during the mutilation sequence. It is the song, not the film, that has the staying power.

Reservoir Dogs is a particularly apt tag for this picture. Nothing within the film itself offers a clue to the title's meaning. It should come as no surprise that Mr. Tarantino feels it unimportant to explain the origin of the name of his work. Its significance lies in its catchy resonance. It sounds good. For Mr. Tarantino that's good enough.