ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - review


ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - a film review

              Quentin Tarantino’s penchant for western movies and violence is legendary. A celebrated filmmaker of a genre in Hollywood that merges humour with gore, prudence with depravity, Tarantino has given us several commercially successful movies like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill or even Django Unchained not so long ago with similar steaks running through them. In ‘Once Upon a time in Hollywood’, his ninth film, he returns refreshed, with a beautiful period piece set in 1969, Los Angeles. Written and directed by  Tarantino himself, the movie is a tribute to the chimeric golden days of Hollywood and its decline with a shift from glory to contemporary drama and, perhaps, preoccupation with technology.

               It is the miserable story of Rick Dalton, (Leonardo DiCaprio), the star of a TV western series in the 50’s, as his fame and position decline in the web of unpredictability in the movie industry in Hollywood. His stuntman and double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), with a shady past involving the death of his wife, stands by him as his gofer and driver, while Rick falls from the movie-makers’ favour in the industry. Rick tries in vain to salvage his image as a star working in Europe, playing the villain in what he calls “Spaghetti Westerns’, something that he abhors, but allows himself to be reincarnated as a monster with make-up and costume to cover is otherwise heroic features. Rick returns with his Italian wife to his sprawling mansion in Hollywood next to the famous French-Polish director, Roman Polanski and his actress wife Sharon Tate.

                Cliff’s flirtatious encounter with a hippie clan spells doom for both and there’s vengeful carnage Tarantino is so famous for depicting. We sit up for the gore to be unleashed by the once cult leader Charles Manson for slaughtering Sharon Tate and her friends at her residence when she was at her peak. But this is a piece of fiction, not a documentary. And thank God for tha!

              The movie shows quality cinematography and the script is refreshing. The jingle of recurring tunes from old Western movies was captivating enough. Acting by DiCaprio and Brad Pitt was certainly awesome. With not much scope to stand by these two giants, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino & Kurt Russell also make their presence felt.
               If not racism, there was cult-bashing in full force in the movie as Rick shows disgust in the invasion of hippies around town.

                Tarantino has certainly taken some creative liberties with the story-line and characters have been borrowed from the alleys of Hollywood studios, some of them, quite compelling and reminiscent of old legends. His presentation of Bruce Lee with his arrogance was done in the most comic manner, much to his daughter’s resentment, it is said.

                 An ode to Hollywood and the classic era of television and movies, ‘Once Upon a Time …’ is nothing but a nostalgic tribute to Hollywood’s inevitable transformation from its magnificent past to what it is today, and didn’t quite impress me apart from the acting support and dramatics that seemed so engaging.
© Dola Dutta Roy
Sept 1, 2019

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