Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) Review

Quentin Tarantino is obsessed with drinks. His films always make sure to mention what exactly it is the characters are enjoying. Tasty sprites, $5 shakes, Polynesian pearls, bloody marys and all types and grades of coffee. The list is endless, figuratively speaking.

In that sense Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a long drink, made to be so incredibly strong it makes you wince and revel in its sheer pomposity in equal measure even if its measures aren't quite equal. Glug of fitful brilliance, a few fluid ounces of old school panache and pop culture obsession, shavings of rambling incidental dialogue, a dash of racism, a sprinkle of sexism and a lots of obscure 60s records smashed up to be used as ice cubes. Always to be served with a slice of violence against women and a little umbrella marked ‘insensitivity’.

Obviously, not all of those ingredients are things you would ask for on their own but that is part of the experience of a Tarantino film. You stick it all in a shaker, throw it around a bit and then gurn incessantly whilst sampling the resulting cinematic fluid. All the things that make his great work great are present here but all the things that make his tedious, self-congratulatory junk so unbearable are also present.

The film sees our two principles cruising around the streets of 60s Hollywood. DiCaprio is fantastic (shock horror) as the fading star who once had it big but now, through a succession of poor career moves, has been relegated to chewing scenery as bit-part bad guys in Western tv show pilots. Pitt is his long suffering stunt double, who doesn’t seem to do much in the way of stunt doubling (?) these days instead settling for being relegated to the role of DiCaprio’s de facto chauffeur and odd jobs man. Pitt is good as well, thankfully harking back to the essence of his stoner character from True Romance rather than the head in hands terribleness of his Nazi baiting Inglourious Basterds turn, but this role is hardly a classic.

What is classic is the atmosphere the director has managed to capture. Quintin and his cinematographer Robert Richardson frame everything beautifully and the mise en scene is unfailingly gorgeous. The relative sparsity and sandy wind, red hot heat of California is captured nicely. The boulevards are wide, the houses are big and the palm trees sway in the LA zephyrs. As ever his curation of music is irreverent and awe inspiring in its crate digging credibility, leaning heavily on retro freak wurlitzer and hammond grooves and dust-bowl anthems rather than jangly pop. He brushes off acetates that even the people who recorded them have surely forgotten. Most everyone in sight is styled like a kooky type of cat with flared jeans and trousers or tiny denim shorts, long hair, vibrant colours and good vibes. The cars are retro classics, a Coup de Ville, a Galaxie and an MG TD. The catalogue of references are voluminous, DiCaprio’s character is even seen act in what was a genuine show of the time as well as The Great Escape. That sounds made up. It isn’t. He is literally dropped into The Great Escape.

The dialogue waffles and wibbles as you might expect. Tarantinian babbling in one of his scripts is revered by some as the sign of his genius and by some as unnecessary and deflating indulgence that results in long passages of dead air where your intrigue is lost and your goodwill abused after being made to suffer incessant chit chat that means nothing and goes nowhere. Both are true and both viewpoints will feel their cause has been enhanced by some of the fayre on offer in this film when in reality the same has been true of virtually all of his films. Aimless riffing has been central to much of his oeuvre. Like the man himself he has his characters wander off into daydreams, pseudo-philosophical slants and wallow in the beauty of just making conversation. As ever the rhythm of the dialogue here is great, it ricochets around with energetic frisson and DiCaprio and Pitt in particular have great chemistry. Likewise Al Pacino’s oddball asides when he appears are highlights. However, as ever, everyone ends up talking like Tarantino does. There’s a specificity of detail that goes beyond quirky or charming and falls into Alan Partridge talking about his supple leather driving gloves territory. Scenes drift into listlessness, hazing into soft focus before suddenly the pertinent thread is picked up again by one of the characters and you are shook back into proceedings. I’m not against his style of writing but it can begin to gnaw at your patience after several hours especially when so much of it is obviously entirely expendable but left in only as a stylistic marker for the auteur directing the picture.

Despite all that there is prominent character who says very little, Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. This has been the subject of some speculation about Tarantino’s sexism, that he’s not interested in giving a woman an interesting part just exploiting her looks and whilst that’s not entirely true, given the likes of Pam Grier, Jennifer Jason Leigh and, most obviously, Uma Therman have all been given great roles by him in the past, the camera leers at her in this film and little else. The depiction of her teeters. What is supposed to come across as a portrayal of a sweet, naive, happy-go-lucky young actress who stares at the world she inhabits with wide eyed disbelief it very often borders on presenting her as an airheaded blonde cookie cutter dullard who adds the female sex appeal. However, to what degree her character is that prominent is up for debate, the views of others who have seen the film will no doubt vary from each other but I was disappointed Robbie had so little to do.

Tarantino is obviously an ideas man but rather than consistently follow one and establish some coherency he goes for a little bit of them all. This is most evident in the structure of the film. Famously Pulp Fiction tore up convention in popular cinema at the time with its deliberately non chronological set up. That was postmodern flair, this is pure self satisfaction, he’s drank too much of his own heady cocktail and someone needs to put him in a taxi and send him home. With The Hateful Eight he decided to have interludes and random moments of narration, fanboy conceits that added nothing other than encouraging disappointed sighs. Here the conceit is that the action all takes place over two days, a snapshot from the lives of our characters and whilst that largely is the case he eventual does give in to his darker impulses and starts fucking around with things. We’re thrown forward in time and random narration punctuates the movie at various points. It’s the voice of Kurt Russell, who also plays a stunt co-ordinator. Why is it there? Why is he there? Because it’ll be ‘cool’, no doubt. We spend a few hours in the company of characters only then to have the final act of the film hinge on things we’re rushedly told by a narrator in 5 minutes over 100 minutes into the film. Why? It’ll be ‘cool’, no doubt.

As per with Quentin’s work the film descends into unapologetic violence. That’s to be expected so I won't even comment, rather, just draw attention to the fact this is a man who had Hitler killed in a Parisian movie theatre in one of his previous films and that this one involves the Manson Family. He has jumped himself jumping the shark in that regard. Adding further bloviation to that sphere is pointless at this stage. He does what he wants, because it’s ‘cool’, no doubt.

Is this a classic? No, it’s nowhere near even his own best work but it probably is the best thing he has mustered for at least ten years. As ever, all of his unique calling cards are played and all of them have the ability to delight and frustrate in equal measure. That’s the filmmaker he is and the filmmaker he probably always will be. Simultaneously visionary creator and gaudy peddler of base pleasure intended to do nothing but provoke the ‘woke’. He’d love that description almost as much as he seems to love the idea of himself as the grand provocateur. That being said he has propagated the idea that he will quit directing after a 10th movie. Go out with a bang Quentin, do an earnest study on the life and times of Bruce Lee, your own voice can interrupt the proceedings part way through to set up a scene where Lee is killed by Tim Roth or Christoph Waltz or whichever one of your other favourites failed to make it into the final cut of ...Hollywood. That’d be really ‘cool’, no doubt.