Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a time in Hollywood” Second-Rate Tarantino Film or A Masterpiece?

“Once upon a time in Hollywood” for me personally is a masterpiece by Quentin Tarantino. I was completely confused by the entire ending scene and I sat in the theater stunned by what I had just witnessed. All I kept thinking was what had I just saw and what was the point of this story? Then it dawned on me as I was watching the credits role and it said the Manson Family. I suddenly realized the entire point of the movie and why it was so important to have a main character such as Cliff Booth played by Brad Pitt. And how Tarantino is able to distract us from reality and create this movie that seemed to be centralized around this fall and rise of a “washed up” actor ,Rick Dalton played by Leonard Dicapro. The entire movie may have featured the relationship between our duo Dalton and Booth but that was nearly a distraction by behind the real life events of the Manson Murders that took place in 1969. In fact each scene was if you payed close attention ,Tarantino was giving the audience hints about Sharon Tate’s Murder and the Manson murder throughout the entire film. Quentin Tarantino into knows how to trick the viewer by having almost two parallel stories into one movie. We see Tarantino mostly use this type of double story telling in other works such as “Pulp Fiction” or “Reservoir Dogs” and he eventually has these stories interweave without the other characters knowing. So how did Tarantino create a fictionalized story of “Rick Dalton” that seemed to intertwine somehow into the life of a real life Sharon Tate?

Tarantino wasn’t going to make a real life documentary or simple retelling of the Manson Murders (that’s not Tarantino style) but rather he would use elements of the story to show the audience an accurate scene yet a fictionalized storyline. (Already confused? Cause I so was! ) The idea is practically simple if you think of this movie as being historical fiction. Historical fiction is defined as any type of book or movie that takes place in the past and may even have true features.To really give this movie justice than you have to acknowledge this movie with being something quite original in the way it chooses to tell a story. I personally feel as being a pretty big Tarantino fan that I did not consider just this movie by itself but rather I had expectations of the film based on what I had previously watched from Quentin Tarantino. If I was gonna describe a Quentin Tarantino film, then I would say it has extreme violence, strong use of profanity and racial slurs, and extremely long monologues! If you are similar to me and those are elements that you would also use to describe nearly all of Tarantino’s works then you gotta exclude this movie from that generalization. Because for the first hour at least you will hardly find an extreme amount of profanity and rather lack of violence and not that long of a political dialogue that typical deals with an issue in society. So if you are expecting a “typical” Tarantino film then I would recommend “Django unchained” or “Reservoir Dogs”. If you wanna see a film that takes us through the dark sides of Hollywood and the evil side of humanity,and an accurate representation of the late 60’s and early 70’s then this film is for you. 

The darkside of Hollywood that Tarantino expressed throughout the film is mainly centered around one of our main protagonists Rick Dalton. Rick Dalton has had really high success but as the times begin to change and the transition of film actor to tv actor seems to be quite a challenge for Rick Dalton. In fact Rick Dalton’s career actually takes a dive when he seems to be able to only be casted in tv shows as the bad guy for that one episode. As the pressure of pursuing acting more on hard work then perceived talent seems to be an uphill battle for our flawed protagonist. Rick Dalton truly wants to have these “successful roles” and he does seem to work hard but due to the self depreciating actions he does it seems he can’t succeed in his ongoing pursuit (that typically involving his alcoholism). We see so many behaviors that lead to his downfall of his career and even Rick Dalton states that because of his drinking to many whiskey sours he couldn’t remember his lines. There is also a scene when “Rick Dalton” has his first day in the makeup trial and meets the director of the show he’s shooting and Rick Dalton  his sticking his face in ice water as a remedy for him still being drunk. Rick Dalton does end up succeeding from this role that later gives him opportunities to make Italian westerns and he does make a bout four movies in Italy before returning home. There isn’t much character development for our beloved Rick Dalton and he seems to still go through his continuous mood cycles of what he considers his fame to be. Cliff Booth is a relatable character who seems to self-sabotage when it comes to working as a stuntman. Cliff Booth prides himself on his own authenticity as opposed to this over exaggerated version of oneself (I think of dramatic Hollywood actors). “Cliff Booth lives in this silver bullet of a mobile home with his muscular built dog (oh that’s important) behind this drive in movie theater. Cliff Booth has his life completely centred around Rick Dalton. Cliff drives Dalton everywhere he wants to go,Cliff is Dalton’s essentially only friend,and Cliff is also his handyman and stunt double when he is allowed.Cliff may not change to much or even really learn a lesson as we watch how his life unfolds but Cliff is similar to the position of the audience. Cliff isn’t affected by the lure of Hollywood(probably because he doesn’t care). Cliff doesn’t seem to have a major alcoholic problem that hinders his job and in fact he holds Rick Dalton accountable on several occasions during the film. Tarantino did make sure that the audience was on Cliff’s side even though he was accused of murdering his nagging Wife.(But the way it was presented it made us feel like we would kill her too. Or is that just me?) Cliff seems to be more of the mindset of an average person and to which he makes sound choices and beliefs in right and wrong. Cliff does have several character flaws but the main I will elaborate on is the dependency on Rick Dalton. Without Rick Dalton who would Cliff Booth even be? We kinda start to wonder this when Cliff drives to the old ranch that him and Dalton worked on a previous tv show about 8 years ago. Cliff ends up going to this Ranch because of a young hippie girl (crazy girl more like it) who lives at the abandoned ranch with a bunch of her “Hippie” friends. As Cliff starts to notice the scenery and wants more information of the owner of the Ranch then things start to take a bit of a turn. As noble Cliff goes to make sure he’s okay it creates huge turmoil between him and the entire cult of hippies. As he finds out the owner is blind and nearly not of sound mind but the owner still makes conscious choices and decisions and as Cliff tries to leave one of the male Hippies (he’s super important later on) stabs his tire and he isn’t able to leave. Well old fashioned Cliff punches the hippie in the face and makes him change the tire for him. Cliff barely misses one of head men in charge on this ranch “Tex” (Also very important scene). It wasn’t until that moment that we get an accurate sense of the time we are in. This scene may be the most important scene of them all because we start to feel and understand the mind of the cult members through their actions and their way of life by having the men be in charge. 

For me it doesnt all come together until the date flashes across the scene and its August 9,1969 and then we notice how the dynamic of the story telling began to change with the use of a voice over that almsot gave the feel as if we are watching flashback or a remake to murder scene(Maybe because we are). And so all the pieces truly came together as we see our favorite hippie “Tex” and three other of his followers make a plan to kill those who “taught them how to kill” based on television and movies they have scene. So they think that that they are going to be able to kill Rick Dalton and all the other well known actors who lived nearby. How could a Tarantino film end without some over the top violent scene! Booth and his massive dog end up killing two out of three of the hippies and the final one gets blow torched by Dalton in a pool. And thats what I talk about a badass murder scene. (In real life events these followers Manson end up succeeding). Even though Tarantino goes away from the actual events and the outcomes that truly happened in the story but he does manage to keep the story truly authentic in several ways. There is several ways that Tarantino created this storyline that was mainly focused on the Story of Sharon Tate and her murder but the majority of the screen time we wore focused on this dynamic duo that Tarantino wanted us to pay attention to so when the final scene came we would almost forget all the important details that he had particular placed in the film and we would feel a since of shock and suspense. Why didn’t Tarantino focus more on the development of Sharon Tate or created a fictionalized background of her character? I personally feel as if that would have been very irrelevant to this film by expanding on Sharon Tate’s life as opposed to the society that Sharon Tate was surrounded by. A way that Tarantino was able to expand on the society was by adding subtle and some not subtle accurate events that did take place. Such as:

1. The hippie Girls in the movie are dumpster diving looking for food to bring back to their home. This may not seem so unusual except for the song that they wore singing one of Charles Manson songs “Always Is Always Forever,”. A fun fact about the food they collected is that the girls had to bring back the food from the dumpsters and give them to the men first and whatever was leftover on their plates the women could have. 

2. Charles Manson did in fact actually show up to Polanski and Tate residence months prior to murdering Sharon Tate looking for the previous resident,Melcher.

3.Tex wasn’t a fictionalized character at all but a rather accurate portrayal of a man named Charles Denton Watson Jr.. Nicknamed Tex who was supposedly was Manson’s right hand man.

4.Some of the cult members made money for the cult by offering to give tourists trail rides who visited Spahn Ranch. Spahn Ranch was the Ranch in the film that Cliff and Rick had filmed many episodes of their Show bounty law on. Now as Cliff and Rick may be fictionalized characters created for this movie but Spahn Ranch also known by the name of Spahn Movie Ranch was popular site for movies and tv-shows of western that would’ve been filmed there.

There are indeed many more details that Tarantino made sure to get right in his film and to show the horrors of this tragic event and in more humorous and light hearted way by giving us a distorted reality.Tarantino is by far the most interesting and unique story teller in all of Cinema. Tarantino doesn’t tell a continuous Hollywood type of story by having a beginning, a middle and an end rather he puts us in a scene and we work our way from middle to end to beginning back to middle. By the end of the movie we have to figure out for ourselves what is the accurate chronological timeline of events and we aren’t only trying to figure that out by we are also trying to find what story is Tarantino really trying to tell. The perspective he chooses to tell a historical tragedy is quite unique, by telling this story through another actor struggling with there career and a stuntman as well. I have never had Tarantino film that hasn’t been so thought provoking that has made me question how I watch all movies.