Movie Night: ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD

Some thoughts about ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD, after the trailer:

 I don’t know how to feel about this movie.

For much of its running time, ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD is a quiet, even moving meditation on aging and ephemerality. The movie is littered — like so much of Quentin Tarantino’s output — with references to other movies, but this time you don’t really have to be a film buff to get them: There are movie posters and marquees galore, on walls and signs and everywhere, filled with movies and TV shows that all but the hardiest film buffs (again, probably QT) have forgotten. I watch a reasonable number of classic movies, and I was unfamiliar with many of the titles on display. All the money and effort and ego goes into producing creations that mostly have a short shelf life. Look upon my movies, ye mighty, and despair!

Leonardo DiCaprio’s arc as Rick Dalton, a semi-washed up former TV star, is compelling in the same way: He was famous and now he is less so, called upon to give a lift to rising stars instead of rising himself. (Leo, the babyfaced former child star who used to be in Tiger Beat-style magazines, is 45 now. I had no idea.) This is middle age for many of us, realizing that our accomplishments will never be as great as we hoped, that perhaps our best work is done and yet … we still have a life to live. How can we make the most of it?

Also: Margot Robie is fascinating and fantastic as Sharon Tate watching herself on screen, delighting in the audience’s reaction to her, alive with being famous.

On the other hand: There’s all the violence.

(Spoiler) In the end, Leo and Brad Pitt kill the Manson murderers who — in real life — actually killed Tate and her friends. Tarantino has done this “film revenge for real crimes” thing before, notably in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. It was clever then. Less so now. But mostly it feels A) like a separate movie from what’s come before and B) the violence that Leo and Brad commit is so over-the-top, so horrifyingly explicit. I’m not a prude. Or maybe I am. But the gleeful violence against the bad guys feels like an invitation to feel the same thrill that the real murderers had when committing the real murders.

I don’t believe for one second that watching this makes me more violent. I am smart enough — humans are smart enough, usually — to distinguish between fact and fiction.

But I don’t feel good about having seen this movie. I would give you a different opinion if it had ended, somehow, 15 or 20 minutes earlier than it did. 

The movie that rocketed QT to real fame — PULP FICTION — was renowned for its violence, but it ended with our anti-heroes choosing not to commit an act of violence. And not in a “he’s not worth it” way, but in a way that signaled some hope for the redemption of everybody involved. QT isn’t obligated to stick to that message, of course, to satisfy my latent Mennonite sensibilities. But when you consider the real-life context and facts of Manson family murders against what we see here on screen, the result doesn’t feel like vengeance, even of the fantasy style. It just feels nihilistic.