"Once Upon A Time in Hollywood"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

Two men, one woman—one real-life, two fictional. One at the beginning of a career, one at the end, and one without much of a career at any point. Seemingly disparate stories intertwined by fateful history. Or, rather, they could have been intertwined, if only in the “what if?” part of our imaginations.

Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a famous TV cowboy. Or, he was. Now his career is faltering and he’s stuck with short-lived appearances as a villain whose inevitable fate is to be quickly offed by the good guys. He’s stressed about it.

One thing Dalton has maintained, if not his stardom, is his friendship with his longtime stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Booth doesn’t double much anymore—mostly just drives Dalton around after the latter’s license was suspended due to one too many DUIs. Booth also does handyman work for Dalton. As Booth blithely admits, he is Dalton’s “gopher”. He’s fine with it.

Then there’s Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). THE Sharon Tate. Roman Polanski’s ethereal, hippie wife. Unlike Dalton, she’s just getting going in Hollywood—playing major, if not starring, roles in some of the biggest movies of the era. She’s pretty excited.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is almost three hours long. So you might think there would be plenty more, plot-wise to fill in here. But not really. This movie saunters along at a leisurely pace. It’s not a quick-cut, high-octane bloodbath like many of Tarantino’s movies. Nor is it a showdown-at-the-O.K.-Corral movie like Dalton’s westerns. There are some of these things. But it’s more like Polanski’s “Rosemarie’s Baby”—a slow burn if there ever was one—only with a hint of lighthearted, playful zest.

Dalton continues to stress over his sputtering career. Tate goes to her own movie to soak up the audience’s reaction. Booth feeds his dog.

Gradually, though, these stories begin to come together. On a random trip to a commune, Booth discovers a potentially sinister side to hippie culture. Dalton and Tate discover that they are next-door neighbors. For those who remember the gruesome events of late-summer 1969, with Tate, her friends, and Charlies Manson’s freaky “family”, there is a foreboding, a tension, an inevitability lurking in the shadows.

Except Tarantino does what he wants with historical details (remember, for example, when the Inglorious Basterds assassinated Hitler?). So there’s no telling how this one will end.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is part charm, part tedium—which is perfectly encapsulated by Brad Pitt’s feeding his dog, or driving around, or walking, or just looking pretty for sizeable swaths of the movie. In this movie, things just kind of happen. A little bit here, a little bit there. No pushing the story along too fast. The movie just wants to show you around a bit—to let you say hello, and get to know, some interesting characters.

Until the end, of course. But that’s a whole other thing.

That “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” is a slow burn isn’t, in itself, damning, or even particularly problematic. I’ve got nothing against slow, methodical character development. But slightly more worrisome is that a lot of this cinematic scenery begs the question, “What for?” Like, why do we need to spend four minutes watching Pitt make Mac n’ Cheese? What’s the point? Were these scenes—their length, in particular—supposed to be amusing? Or informative? Or useful to the plot?

This isn’t a very tight movie. There are loose ends, and diversions, and side stories that don’t really go anywhere. And a lot of seemingly superfluous action.

But it is also a charming movie, with charming characters, and funny little vignettes, and real human feelings and emotions. And, oddly, the ending—which is only like a 20^th of the movie—may just make the whole thing worth it.