Of all the years that Tarantino could have chosen to show in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he chose 1969. This was the height of the counterculture movement. While Brad Pitt drives in his convertible Cadillac on Hollywood Boulevard, he can see the hippies splashing the landscape, for example, and hear that the Vietnam War still continues without an end in sight. It is also the year that the Beatles give their last live concert on the rooftop. They are tired of their popularity, disputes and internal struggles too. In a particular scene, when Brad Pitt gets up on the roof to repair a broken antenna, we get a flashback and a flashback inside the flashback that shows the global fatigue of a man who has seen it all. Right now, all he does is take off his shirt, light a cigarette and sunbathe from California. It is a great scene; One who plays to the gallery. It is a scene that shows us that living in the moment is all you can do at this moment.
1969 is the year Led Zeppelin made his self-titled debut. The band would change rock music, which in turn would have a great influence on Hollywood movies so much that it would be called New Hollywood. The edition that would mark such films in the 70s would be more artistic, instead of simply being used for greater continuity, as was the case before. It is an idea that would be used in the films of the future of Tarantino, including this film: consider the scene that shows the alcoholism of Leonardo DiCaprio and how much has happened to him, personally and professionally. The edition of the Tarantino firm is not only evident there, but also in how it compares and contrasts the path downhill from Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), a specialist, and Roman Polanski, the city director. Two men from different strata, the two who are in the cinema and yet the two pranks after the night are so different. While Polanski has fun at the Playboy Mansion with who is who (there are Steve McQueen and Mama Cass to name two), Booth loves movie theaters or, better yet, being at home and watching television. However, they are bound by their shared love for the car and speed.
1969 was also important for a particular film genre: the western one. While this genre would generate Academy Award nominations (for example, True Grit) and films that won the award (for example Unforgiven), the genre would never have the popularity or numbers it enjoyed in the 50s and 60s. The stars that would define the Western genre stopped making those films (Randolph Scott) or began making the transition to others (Yul Brynner comes to mind in science fiction movies, especially Westworld). Rick Dalton, of Leonardo DiCaprio, is one of those Western heroes, whom Marvin Schwarz of Al Pacino tells him is now entering the territory of a state. Tarantino, the writer, takes us through the emotional and mental turmoil that such actors may suffer in that moment of transition. Take the fantastic scene between Dalton and the precocious child actor Trudi Fraser (Julia Butters). Outside a room, in two rickety chairs, feel these two actors (Trudi doesn't like the term, actress) and read two different books. Then it rises to a halt when, through the books they read, they reveal their aspirations, hopes and, in Dalton's case, fears. Such is the power of the story, and the written word, that Dalton decomposes in front of an eight-year-old boy. What happens next is a show of empathy, the kind that is generally not openly seen in the director's work. The writer in Tarantino stages the following scene perfectly when he shows that empathy has great rewards, as they give us one of Dalton's best performances (and DiCaprio) in his life.
While Westerns often displayed vast tracts of land that humans had not yet conquered (the beautiful extreme shots that used to be their standard feature), 1969 was the year that man stepped on the moon. Such was the magnitude of the feat that the mind refused to believe it was not just a camera trick. While the debate is still going on if the cameras available at that time, two of them, 16 mm in black and white and 35 mm in technicolor, find a mention in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, they were good enough to fool us, the cinematography of this film by Robert Richardson deceives us by transporting us to that year. The way the camera stops at the characters: Pitt almost always shows himself as a waiting god and DiCaprio's eyes almost always tell a story, and about the environment, like the scene he presents to the Manson Family, it's really A sight to behold.
1969 was also the year that Charles Manson and his family brutally murdered Sharon Tate. Taking this idea and convincing ourselves that it could be a great cinema is what makes Tarantino one of the best storytellers we have at the moment. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino, the screenwriter, borrows the style of his favorite screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Notice how he introduces the two different characters, Dalton and Booth, the actor and his specialist. The best is reserved for what is possibly one of the scenes of the year when Booth visits the Spahn Ranch where the Manson family resides. The framing, the staging, the tension it generates, the use of music, the dialogues ... Oh, how I wish Tarantino made a horror movie like his swan, if the next one were the one.
But, again, what will the Tarantino swan be? After his neo-noir trilogies, he undertook action, war, western (twice) and now, a drama, and has almost always expanded (and sometimes, changed) what genres have represented. However, with each movie after Inglorious Basterds, you can feel some world fatigue that has almost leaked into its filming. The languid nature of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might not satisfy the tastes of the traditional Quentin Tarantino fan, but it is amazing to see Tarantino become increasingly meditative with every movie that passes. I will miss Tarantino's cathartically violent film after his tenth film, the kind that only he can provide (this is his least violent film to date). You have to ask yourself, maybe, just maybe, could you sign with a musical, in true Hollywood style?
NAME: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino
DIRECTOR: Quentin Tarantino
RATING: 4/5
0 Comments