The quickest way to review this movie is to say it’s pretty good but some people are going to very legitimately hate it. That’s because it really isn’t a story in the conventional sense that all QT’s other films are. It’s a slice of life, a series of amusing anecdotes about a collage of characters, all pointed in the vague direction of the Manson family murder of Sharon Tate. I had a feeling this was going to be the case, you could sense the trailers searching around for a way to describe it to you in vain, and eventually just settling on “ah hell it’s got DiCaprio and Pitt, just go see it.” But I’m astonished how many people didn’t notice that and went in looking for a crime caper in line with “Kill Bill” or “Reservoir Dogs.” Those people were probably fairly baffled by this thing.
As long as Tarantino has been a working filmmaker, he has been obsessed with the “hangout movie,” and he’s indulged that fondness to varying degrees throughout his oeuvre. Sometimes, like in “Reservoir Dogs” and “Jackie Brown,” he gets away with it, and the fat enhances your feel for the world. Other times–cough “Death Proof” cough–it blows back in his face. But “Hollywood” is where he finally drops the charade and makes what he’s clearly been longing to make: two plus hours of straight, uncut hanging out.
Does it work? Sort of. It’s never boring per se, but it does drag. There are long stretches where it lights on fire and you can’t take your eyes off it, and then it loses you for a while. By the time it’s over you’re almost used to that rhythm. The lead characters played by DiCaprio and Pitt are spectacularly compelling; If QT had found a three-act story to put them in, I think he’d have made a classic. But then Margot Robbie shows up as Sharon Tate, and (through no fault of her own) the pace hits a brick wall. There’s a scene in a movie theater that even the “hangout” genre can’t justify, it’s just boring, full stop. Then we take a tour of Spahn Ranch and Tarantino creates some of the best suspense of his career. And so it goes.
Are you going to like this movie? If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to go on a brief rant to answer that.
I have a theory that there are basically two kinds of movie fan: fans of craft, and fans of expression. Fans of craft evaluate movies like a carpenter looks at a table. They focus on story structure, set up and payoff, efficiency of exposition and pace, technical excellence, clarity, universality. Fans of craft admire disciplined storytellers who focus more on the effect they want from their audience than something they’re trying to express about themselves. Self-disclosure still happens, but it’s almost unintentional, it arises from the method as much as the substance of the final product. People in this group tend to love Spielberg, Hitchcock, Park (Chan-wook), Nolan and so on. David Fincher is their god, he’s practically a story engineer.
Fans of expression, on the other hand, are more interested in being invited into the mind of an artist they admire. They get attached to the obsessions and quirks of a given filmmaker, and they want to experience them richly. For these people, authenticity and originality are the center of everything. Craft is important, sure, but it’s just a vessel for the good stuff, and craft without a soul of powerful truth is hollow. These people want their filmmakers to express themselves as fully as possible first and foremost, and the ultimate crime for them is repeating what others have done. The folks in this category obsess over Lynch, Malick, Godard, Tarkovsky, and the like. When you think of Coppola, craft people go to “The Godfather,” but expression folks jump to “Apocalypse Now.”
(By the way, I can think of only two filmmakers that BOTH camps would try ardently to claim: Steven Soderbergh and Stanley Kubrick.)
Most people are not one or the other of these, but a mixture of the two with one more emphasized than the other (I personally favor the craft side, probably 60-40). My point in all this is that “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is Quentin Tarantino defecting from Craft-ville to Expression-town, or trying to. For all his artistic flourishes, QT has always confined himself rigidly to genre stories that require strict rules. Now he wants to just bop around in his own head. He’s no less committed and fanatical about what he’s doing, but his principal focus has changed.
If you like expression, I think you’ll latch on here, assuming you’re into Tarantino’s whole… thing. If craft is your bag, though, “Hollywood” will come off as not just bad but inscrutable. Watching it will be like waiting to meet someone for lunch who never shows up. It will not satisfy the basic requirements of what you think a movie is supposed to be.
I don’t really mind Tarantino venturing into expression, but I don’t know if he belongs there. First of all, his fanbase are craft people, and they’ve been good to him. Secondly, QT’s best work happens when he marries artistic indulgence with tight genre storytelling. The friction between those two forces makes fire. When he’s un-moored from the confines of a revenge quest, or a mission to kill Hitler, suddenly all his quirks are just kind of floating in front of you pointlessly. They’re still charming, but they’ve lost their velocity. Everyone loves the Christopher Walken watch scene from “Pulp Fiction,” but that’s because of the odd way it juts out of the tight coil of storytelling it’s been shoved into. The watch scene for two hours straight is a lot less charming.
This is a very long-winding, esoteric way of saying “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is a fun, interesting, flawed movie that’s going to drive some people crazy. I’m just guessing here, but I think the people who hate it are going to do so a lot more ardently than those who love it, which will ultimately mar its legacy and strand it in the back half of Tarantino Top Ten lists. It may get rediscovered down the road. I’m fond of it, but I wouldn’t stick up for it.
Either way, the Bruce Lee scene is worth the price of admission alone.