In the end I thought this was really very good. Nowadays a new Tarantino film is cause for mixed expectations but actually Once Upon a Time in Hollywood strikes me as being somewhere near the upper echelon of his films.[*]
The dynamic between DiCaprio's fading Western movie actor Rick Dalton and Pitt's stuntman/offsider Cliff Booth is charming and their perambulations through 1969 Los Angeles are drawn with a texture and warmth that goes beyond mere pastiche; it's a movie version of LA for sure, just as are the threads following Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate and her social circle, but that's all actually of a piece with the film's interest in old school notions of heroes and villains, and cinema's role in creating and sustaining those notions, as well as with how we now look back on and interpret the 1960s and especially the late period when the Manson family and murders came to signify a darkness which was then said to have always been there.
However much he intended this - and I'm inclined to give him credit for self-awareness about it, if not necessarily for any particular clarity in political or social critique - he depicts a Man (that would be Cliff Booth) who lives by an old-fashioned code of honour and could be, depending on how you look at it, a heroic figure by the end. I think there are enough clues in the film to point to this being a critical perspective, or at least not an uncritically approving perspective, and in this respect the director's signature over the top violence comes to be not gratuitous after all, if its purpose is to punctuate the deep flaws within that hero (or anti-hero) figure ... the Western genre itself having played no small part in creating it. I don't think the nasty way in which the hippie antagonists of that lifestyle are depicted takes away from the rottenness of that 'hero' archetype and the beliefs that sustain it - which in turn raises interesting questions about the film's implied perspective on the Hollywood elite who move through its action and ultimately emerge unscathed and even better off than when they started, with Dalton's symbolic invitation into the new Hollywood represented by the house next door occupied by Tate and previously Polanski.
Also, it being Tarantino - it's impossible to escape his directorial presence - there are plenty of baubles and delights along the way: the dry humour, the precocious eight year old method actor, various 'blink and you'd miss it' cameos, the sure hand with keeping things interesting even when not much is happening.
So, sure, probably genuinely 'problematic' in any number of ways - I haven't dug much into the commentary but I'm not totally convinced that it fails Tate or should be criticised for its treatment of women by not giving her a voice (I think in this case it's artistically defensible) - but all round pretty impressive.
***
[*] Given we're talking about Tarantino, it would almost seem remiss to not attempt a listing:
1. Kill Bill vol 1
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Inglourious Basterds (which has improved in my mind over time because of the forcefulness of its central meta-cinematic metaphor, the having of which it has in common with OUATIH as well as its historical-revisionistic plotting and possible justification for its gruesome violence, but might drop down a bit if I rewatched it)
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (?)
5. Jackie Brown
6. Reservoir Dogs
7. Kill Bill vol 2
8. Django Unchained
9. The Hateful Eight (bottom by a long way)
And having made that list, it's apparent how actually consistently high quality his films have been, with every single one of them except The Hateful Eight and maybe Django Unchained (the most recent two before OUATIH) being at least very good.
The dynamic between DiCaprio's fading Western movie actor Rick Dalton and Pitt's stuntman/offsider Cliff Booth is charming and their perambulations through 1969 Los Angeles are drawn with a texture and warmth that goes beyond mere pastiche; it's a movie version of LA for sure, just as are the threads following Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate and her social circle, but that's all actually of a piece with the film's interest in old school notions of heroes and villains, and cinema's role in creating and sustaining those notions, as well as with how we now look back on and interpret the 1960s and especially the late period when the Manson family and murders came to signify a darkness which was then said to have always been there.
However much he intended this - and I'm inclined to give him credit for self-awareness about it, if not necessarily for any particular clarity in political or social critique - he depicts a Man (that would be Cliff Booth) who lives by an old-fashioned code of honour and could be, depending on how you look at it, a heroic figure by the end. I think there are enough clues in the film to point to this being a critical perspective, or at least not an uncritically approving perspective, and in this respect the director's signature over the top violence comes to be not gratuitous after all, if its purpose is to punctuate the deep flaws within that hero (or anti-hero) figure ... the Western genre itself having played no small part in creating it. I don't think the nasty way in which the hippie antagonists of that lifestyle are depicted takes away from the rottenness of that 'hero' archetype and the beliefs that sustain it - which in turn raises interesting questions about the film's implied perspective on the Hollywood elite who move through its action and ultimately emerge unscathed and even better off than when they started, with Dalton's symbolic invitation into the new Hollywood represented by the house next door occupied by Tate and previously Polanski.
Also, it being Tarantino - it's impossible to escape his directorial presence - there are plenty of baubles and delights along the way: the dry humour, the precocious eight year old method actor, various 'blink and you'd miss it' cameos, the sure hand with keeping things interesting even when not much is happening.
So, sure, probably genuinely 'problematic' in any number of ways - I haven't dug much into the commentary but I'm not totally convinced that it fails Tate or should be criticised for its treatment of women by not giving her a voice (I think in this case it's artistically defensible) - but all round pretty impressive.
***
[*] Given we're talking about Tarantino, it would almost seem remiss to not attempt a listing:
1. Kill Bill vol 1
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Inglourious Basterds (which has improved in my mind over time because of the forcefulness of its central meta-cinematic metaphor, the having of which it has in common with OUATIH as well as its historical-revisionistic plotting and possible justification for its gruesome violence, but might drop down a bit if I rewatched it)
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (?)
5. Jackie Brown
6. Reservoir Dogs
7. Kill Bill vol 2
8. Django Unchained
9. The Hateful Eight (bottom by a long way)
And having made that list, it's apparent how actually consistently high quality his films have been, with every single one of them except The Hateful Eight and maybe Django Unchained (the most recent two before OUATIH) being at least very good.
