Anyhow, been a busy day, was snappier than I meant to be earlier.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
mostly, yeah the pacing. It lacks the chapter format of a lot of his other works that gives them a more tied together arc by arc structure. I feel like for the first half of the movie if you didn't tell me it was a Tarantino film, it might've taken me a few guesses. There's a very distinctive lack of style in some of the scenes. So many scenes have no music at all, no goofy snappy dialogue back and forth, no catchphrases, it's just like...drama, people talking to people, talking almost pretty normal. One scene ends and the other begins.
But I think that's purposeful in that Tarantino is showing a lot of restraint from his usual Tarantino-isms in an effort to make a more mature piece that feels stepped right out of the 60s era. I remember when I saw Hateful Eight I felt Tarantino had kinda calmed down a bit and it was a move towards a more classy maturity in filmmaking than snappy Clerk-isms. I feel like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood continues that growth as an older and more serious filmmaker.
That being said I feel like the second half has more Tarantino-isms and the ending pretty much jumps back into a 100% old-school Tarantino film. The conversation between the Manson kids in their car after Rick Dalton (with the hilarious blender drinking) yells at them and they're sitting in the car and it's cutting between them as it gets more and more goofy is super old-school Tarantino. The whole ending action scene for sure too. So he's not abandoning his style, but he's generally restraining it to save it for when it counts and I think that's a good thing. Like I mentioned on the last page I feel like every film Tarantino's made has been unique and I like that he's continually growing as a filmmaker.
Speaking of restraint, this is also probably the least violent, least fucked up, least cursing, etc... most happy & wholesome film he's made. In the end the story is about this horrible awful even that really happened and had a major impact on Hollywood and these people's lives at the end of the 60's and so he tells a fairy tale of a "What if..." about a fictional actor out on his luck, a "washed up" has-been as he Dalton says who gets wrapped up in the manson killings story and diverts it and instead of this horrible awful thing happening, what if it all had a happy ending and instead of the manson killings murdering Sharon Tate and her friends, it saves Dalton's career and strengthens his friends, his marriage, and is the catalyst for something good instead? Wouldn't that be a nice fairly tale story for all the older Hollywood types who lived through that in the day.
As I mentioned, since this is a character development piece about Dalton (and Cliff too, but Cliff, although awesome and probably one of Pitt's best roles/performances, is not the main character of this story), a lot of the scenes exist just to show Dalton's life. All the cowboy acting stuff is a lot, but that's his life, his career falling apart, himself as an alcoholic, his struggles to try to stay relevant as he ages. Di Caprio gives an fantastic performance showing all the aspects of Dalton. The way he stutters and lacks confidence when talking to people like Pacino's character. His conversations with the little girl. He's the opposite of the dashing star actor, he's incredibly flawed, but he's also trying and just trying to get through life which leads him to commercials, Italian movies, and planning to sell his house and downscale into a condo. In the end he gets a fairy tale ending. Hell, he even gets to be a hero and use a flamethrower (which was fucking hilarious).
Through the movie there are tons and tons of little touches, even little stuff like in the credits when it lists "The Gang" aka the Tarantino regulars like Michael Madson, if you look it says Tim Roth.....(cut). The way when Mrs. Robinson is playing on the radio, once it's about to cut to the chorus everyone knows the scene cuts away (if he kept doing this it'd be annoying like Godzilla 2014's cuts, but doing it once was just cute), all the red herring stuff I talked about earlier, the acid cigarette, the bruce lee fight, even all the sharon tate stuff is essentially a red herring.
One scene for example I really liked is when they bring up did Cliff kill his wife they cut to a flashback on a boat and it cuts away at the point where he could've just pulled the trigger and shot her...or maybe that's not what happened and he wasn't responsible for her death. It's really clever that the film doesn't tell us because telling us either way would color the audience's view of Cliff. For the rest of the movie as the audience is watching, he'll either be the guy that killed his wife and got away with it, or the innocent man who was unjustly framed and treated by everyone as a wife-killer. Instead Tarantino is saying, judge Cliff by who Cliff is in this movie and come to your own conclusions.
Now one of the flaws besides pacing I'm on board with is Sharon Tate's character. While everyone else in the movie gets like one scene because they're all just side characters in the journey of Dalton's life, Sharon Tate gets a lot of scenes. Margot Robbie does a great job with her performance, and while as I said, Tate's character really exists mainly to throw the audience off and create this perfectly perfect person who is the greatest tragedy when they are violently and horrible murdered, Tarantino still should've given her more development. There was a bit there when she goes to pick up the book and shows that she's well read and intelligent, but then the rest of it seems like her just kind of going along and being nice. Her at the theater seeing how people react to herself in the Wrecking Crew and enjoying the reactions, she listens to music and dances and is nice to everyone even when they are basically degrading her "stand next to that poster so people will know who you are" or in the restaurant and feeling awful but having to keep up appearances. There's definitely some development of a character there, but Tarantino should've taken some steps further and made her more of a person. Or maybe that's just a criticism he's making on the time period that women, even famous actress who are smart and good people had to just put up with everything and smile because women didn't have more say/power than that at the time in Hollywood.
Still, the surprises and way the film subverts expectations and keeps you guessing is great. My favorite scene and I honestly feel the best scene in the entire movie is when Cliff goes to the ranch where the Manson family commune is staying. When Cliff decides he's going to go check on Ernest despite protests, the tension gets insanely good. I honestly haven't seen a scene that intense since I first saw Ti West's House of the Devil. It's tense because even though we're only halfway or 2/3rds through the film, the audience is thinking "oh shit, is Tarantino going to kill Cliff off right now??" and this because Tarantino's earned this with his unpredictability and killing off characters on a moment in past films. Other directors the tension wouldn't be there because you'd assume Cliff wouldn't just suddenly drop out of the movie. But Tarantino? Yeah, that is totally plausible. So the way that whole lengthy and drawn out sequence plays is impeccable because every minute is more and more tense. It's like a classic western standoff, is someone going to die?
So in the end, I wrote a lot on this, but it's been a while since I've seen a movie that is so packed and fun to digest. Is it flawed and could Tarantino have put together a tighter cut with some better character development? Sure. But we live in an imperfect world and when a movie's this good and interesting I'm happy enjoying all that's there rather than pick on the few things it's missing. It goes without saying that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a love letter to an era of Hollywood, it's a neat story set on a nostaglia rose-tinted fairy tale glasses stage. It shows a grown up Tarantino that's willing to restrain his edginess to create something different and something great. Even if I don't consider this his best film, I think Tarantino's only getting better and better as a writer and filmmaker every feature. Even if irl he's a weird foot kissing douchey guy, weird fucking people often make the best art, so hopefully he'll keep making fun films for film nerds for the rest of his life despite his silly 10 film career comment.
