Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the perfect amount of typical Tarantino charm with an exciting twist. Set in 1969 the film is a rewritten story of Sharon Tate’s death, but is focused on a struggling movie star, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The dynamic of these two gives a delightful contradiction to the characterization throughout the movie. And of course, Sharron Tate (Margot Robbie) is Rick Dalton’s neighbor.
Admittingly, this movie is slow in the beginning, but it is a story about a movie star’s death and if there was a movie about me being killed, the beginning would be pretty slow as well. I mean, I am no movie star by any means, but I am sure that the beginning of the story would be me making my coffee, lying in bed convincing myself not to fall back asleep – pretty boring, right? So, I appreciate the realistic, melancholy beginning of the story.
After Cliff Booth passes a free-spirited hitchhiking girl multiple times throughout the story, he decides to take back to her ominous “home”. Tarantino does a wonderful job in making the viewer feel like something is wrong but were not sure what. This is the first time that we see the Manson Family who are going to make another appearance later into the story.
Rick Dalton is struggling to find work in America, so he takes a role in an Italian Western. After this montage in Italy, Rick and Cliff are on their way back to LA. They decide to end their work relationship due to Ricks failing career. When they drunkenly get back to Rick’s home, Cliff takes his dog on a walk while smoking an acid laced cigarette. Four people in a beat-up car are sitting outside of Rick’s house (which we slowly find out is the Manson family, gaining the courage to kill Sharon Tate.) Rick, irritated by the loud car, goes out to yell at the Manson Family members and aggressively tells them to leave. The members park down the street and decide to change their plans to kill Rick. High on drugs, they convince themselves that western movie stars are the ones that teach society to kill due to the westerns’ gory nature. Three out of four of them proceed with the plan.
This is the start of the most exciting scene of the movie, the scene that makes the movie worth watching. Cliff gets back from his walk, tripping on acid, and the Manson family breaks into Ricks house. Cliff and his dog stand there seemingly unphased as the blood thirsty family are ready to kill. Cliff recognizes them from the ranch that he visited earlier and there is a morbid humor in this scene about how Cliff is high off of acid, laughing at the Manson family while close to death. After his time of taunting the family, he nonchalantly clicks his tongue to command his dog to attack. At the same time, Cliff attacks which makes a violent segment of the story (if you are sensitive to blood, maybe do not watch this movie.)
Rick is still relaxing in his pool at this point with his headphones oblivious to the fact that his best friend and girlfriend are fighting off the Manson family in his own house. One of the members eventually stumbles out into the pool. Rick leisurely grabs his flame thrower from one of his westerns and engulfs the flailing girl in flames.
That’s it, that’s the end of the movie. The simple conversation at the end between Rick and Jay Sebring gives a certain amount of resolution because it shows in a short (yet action-packed) scene that everyone’s life went on from there; Sharron Tate never died and we have to assume how the snowball effect of these changed events impacted the rest of the world as we know it.
The story line is obviously amazing, but the soundtrack makes you feel as if you dove into a time machine and traveled back to 1969. The sounds of the breaking, unpopular tracks from the 60’s makes you feel less of a viewer and more of a traveler. The cinematography is everything that you want in a Tarantino Film, smooth transitions, vibrant colors, and all of the gory elements that you can think of. If you are a fan of Tarantino’s movie Inglorious Basterds, I highly suggest watching Inglorious Basterds as well purely for the plot’s twist on history.
It is hard to deny that I appreciate this film more because I have seen seven out of nine films that Tarantino takes full credit in creating but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood can interest many people who like history or fantastic cinematography. I want to stress that this movie can be enjoyable to someone who has never seen a Tarantino Film, but it is definitely more captivating to a fan of his previous work. And for anyone who isn’t necessarily a fan of Tarantino, I still recommend this movie for the cinematic elements and the thought provoking changes of history in this movie.
