More than reviewing the film, I want to write about it, unpack it, dig into it, so I'm going to first give a one paragraph assessment, and then I'm going to unload, unconcerned with Spoilers. You were warned.
---Review---
"The 9th Film from Quentin Tarantino", (as it is billed -- QT considers Kill Bill one film, even though his singular cut has never been released) is overlong, frequently distracted and surprisingly languid, until it isn't. It's denouement certainly fits the "Tarantino-esque" bill but is also way out of step with the rest of the film, in a manner that is upsetting, absurd and unearned, the antithesis of the pensive and exploratory rest of the film. But then QT doesn't do anything without purpose. Sometimes that purpose is simply his "just for me" attitude. The film has a uneasy obsession with driving sequences that will make people squirrelly in their seats, and could desperately use an edit to trim its lengthy 161 minutes down by about half an hour. Which is all to preface that this is a good movie. It's not great. It's not one of QT's best, but it is good It features spectacular performances from its leads Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate (yes, even with only 12 lines of dialogue she acts the hell out of this film) and it's meandering nature leaves a lot to chew on after its over.
---Spoilery time---
Let's get into it.
This is a long, long movie. Unnecessarily long (like this write up will be). I checked the time at least 5 times throughout the screening, and I would guess that most of those were during driving sequences. Those driving sequences are Tarantino's epic love memos to moving through Tinseltown, with the city's neon and blinkybulb lights streaming in the background. Either modern Hollywood was covered up with amazing CGI or it has remained unchanged for half a century (I latre learned a lot of edifices were constructed), because it looks unfailingly like 1969 in this picture, not a single anachronism stuck out to me (though, no doubt they are there). As romantic as one can get towards a city, the point is captured the in the first drive (which even then is overlong, giving the opening of Manos: Hands of Fate a run for its longstanding title of most tedious driving sequence) and each subsequent motoring through LA is such a drag.
The film is as much flashbacks and asides as it is a straightforward story. It feels (and may very well be) that half of the first hour of the film is cutaways to things DiCaprio's aging actor Rick Dalton has starred in. And they're not 15 second comedic asides like you would see on, say, 30 Rock, but instead long-playing fleshed out excerpts of Dalton's movie and TV performances (I don't know that I needed 2 minutes of hearing DiCaprio sing Jim Lowe's "Green Door", but it's honestly no worse than the original). This gives Tarantino ample opportunity to flex his stylistic muscles as he can genre jump between film and television styles of the 50's and 60's. These sequences, as engaging as they can be, are also distracting and divergent from the story at hand, yet I sense these are as much the point of the film.
I suspect QT -- a man who adores film and television, idolizes character actors, and fetishizes the aesthetics of past cinematic eras (not the actuality of that time, the man trades exclusively in artiface) -- uses these to stoke not just his own desire to recreate sets that he was never able to participate in, but also to give the audience a sense of Rick Dalton's journeyman actor's past. Dalton is a stand-in for the type of actor Tarantino just loves to work with -- a performer who elevates the genre work he's been pigeonholed in, or who has fallen out of Hollywood machine and can't find his way back in.
Dalton's journey is John Travolta's, it's Pam Grier's and Robert Forster's. It's David Carradine's, it's Kurt Russel's and Mike Meyers'. Rick Dalton is QT's childhood idol, and, one can sense, there's nothing more the writer-director of the picture wants to see than Rick getting his due. A sequence mid-way through the second act finds Rick on set, performing his heart out, but slowly losing his focus, then his confidence. He goes to his trailer and proceeds to berate himself for minutes on end. The next time we see him, he delivers a performance that has his scene partner (an 8-year-old actress who, earlier, provided him deep inspiration at a time of great weakness and doubt) saying "That was the best acting I have ever seen in my entire life." Granted, she is only 8, but it's a tremendous thing to hear if you're someone as vulnerable as Rick is at this time.
Careers in the 1960's are not like careers today. The avenues for one's continued existence as an actor, especially a Hollywood leading man-type, were limited to the dozens of movies and 3-channel network television produced then. The idea of going to another country, Italy key among them, to act was seen as denigrating, the mere suggestion dispiriting. DiCaprio, now 45, is likely finding the more desirable roles he would chase a decade ago are now just outside his reach. He seems to connect with Rick as his potential future, and he gives into that reality and vulnerability. I have not been much of a fan of DiCaprio over the years, but I think I've just warmed to him with this role. Of course, modern Hollywood provides ample opportunities for big names, and DiCaprio has money and power to get things done himself in the medium of his choice should he choose.
But Dalton is only one third of the movie (or one quarter, if you add in the Manson Family to the mix). His stunt double/valet/personal assistant/best friend Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt, is the other half of a very charming and tidy on screen duo, even though they spend the majority of the film on their own, the connective tissue is felt. Booth's a man who is completely comfortable with his place in the world. He's been to war and prison and everything outside of that, especially in his mid-50s (though still a very handsome and svelt mid-50's... at one point we see him with his shirt off --because of course we do-- and he's got a wild array of scars intoning a rough life lived) is all just sweet gravy and biscuits. He has simple pleasures, like his pit bull, television, Kraft mac and cheese, and the occasional acid dipped cigarette.
I'll say this about Cliff Booth, he's a Quentin Tarantino character for the "#metoo" era. QT doesn't do anything in his films unintentionally. So here we have an utterly affable character played by the endlessly charismatic Brad Pitt who we learn, early on, murdered his wife and got away with it. There's is ever so slight room to dispute this, as the flashback cuts away from a teeteringly drunk Cliff with a harpoon gun in his hand indirectly pointed at his wife who is in the middle of a berating tirade on a boat in the middle of the ocean rocking and knocking heavily back and forth. There is possibility that the death was accidental, but there's actually never, ever any dispute. As far as many people in the film are concerned, Cliff killed his wife, and got away with it. Neither Cliff nor Rick even defend against the accusation.
Cliff also picks up Pussycat, one of the Manson family acolytes, after a few prior failed attempts. She offers to give him a blow job but he questions her age first. It's not that he's chivalrous, nor lacking desire, but, as he said, he's avoided jail for some time and he's not going back for her. When he takes her to the ranch, an old Hollywood Western film lot, and sees that its obviously a cult, he's not as concerned about the teenaged girl he just befriended, or the countless other girls getting taken advantage of at the scene, but instead he's worried about the lot owner, an old acquaintance.
Then there's his extreme act of violence against one of the Manson family intruders at the film's end. He bashes her face into object after object, the brutality so relentlessly unreal I flinched and looked away. Sure, Cliff was on acid at the time, and who knows what his trip was (well, QT does but he fails to provide Cliff's pov) but it's the culminating factor in turning the likeable film star (Pitt) into a questionable woman abuser (Cliff).
Its as if QT is facing his own criticisms -- his defense of Roman Polanski years ago (which he apologized for), his coaxing Uma Thurman into a dangerous stunt on Kill Bill (they're good, her daughter is in this picture), strangling Diane Kruger on the set of Inglorious Basterds (she said he didn't do anything she didn't allow him to) -- as if to note that the bad things men do hang over them, but does that mean they should be deleted, that there's nothing left for them to contribute? It's a tough statement to make, for sure. I don't think QT is giving Cliff a "pass" on his transgressions as much as challenging the audience with complexity. I think somewhere in there, QT is thinking about legacies (maybe even looking at Polanski, a bit character in the film as Rick's neighbour), how deeds can define a man, overpowering their art, yet the art does survive, but what will be the legacy, the art or the misdeed?
Sharon Tate is the axis upon which the film spins. The film begins days before the real world murder of Tate and her house guests by Manson family acolytes, the aftermath of which was a turning point for Hollywood, and surely redefined Tate as not an actress but a victim. In spite of her few lines, Robbie as Tate is a force of nature, a veritable omnipresence, as she smiles and charms and dances. QT re-contextualizes Tate, as a warm, giving spirit, a brightness that was just starting to make Hollywood shine. Robbie as Tate is meant to personify QT's perception of the golden age of Hollywood. Acting isn't just about saying words, it's movement, expression and attitude and Robbie delivers it, but not with the megastar wattage of Margot Robbie, but with the humility, energy and excitement of a young Sharon Tate, just starting to break out in Hollywood.
If the film is out of step with anything, it's the expectation that a modern audience would he familiar, nevermind knowledgeable enough about Tate's murder that they would identify the time period right away. This film doesn't exclude a younger audience intrinsically but it assumes foreknowledge that I think a millennial crowd just wouldn't have. Hell, without having read up on the film beforehand I don't think I even would have connected that this film was leading up to the Manson murders, which is a central conceit to QT's thought exercise. I have very limited knowledge even of those events, and I wonder if they are even on the radar at all of someone younger than me.
So if you don't know Sharon Tate, or the Manson family, then this film leads you into it. But if, like me, you weren't really aware of the effect Sharon Tate's murder had on Hollywood then the fact that QT pulls another Inglourious Basterds trick and revises history is almost meaningless unless you do the research to is contextualize it. This is the crux of the film, the thesis QT is after. The Hollywood machine changes after the Manson family murders, and here, following Rick around for 2 hours, he lays out what that machine looks like and leaves the audience to think about what may have been if it hadn't been shocked out of its complacency.
Here, Rick's house get attacked instead the Polanski residence and is successfully defended by Cliff in an extremely brutal fight sequence. It's queasy and, honestly, cartoonishly extreme. As I said, it doesn't fit the film, but it's an intentional breaking point from reality. It's to say "this is where facts turn to fiction". The film as a whole, in a meta sense, is where QT can say that cinema has the power to recreate a time, a feeling, and even (or rather, especially) rewrite history and create its own.
The film ends with Rick getting his introduction to his neighbor, Sharon Tate. She lives, she gets to be a mother, her star continues to rise and shine. Polanski doesn't go on to be (at least publicly) a total creep, and makes more acclaimed pictures, perhaps with Rick Dalton as star, resuscitating his career like Tarantino has done for others a few times. Hollywood continues to shine and sparkle.
I've read that people interpret this as QT's wishful thinking. That he's saying he would have liked for that golden age of Hollywood to continue this way, unsullied by Dennis Hopper hippie types. It's a false conclusion though and the film itself tells you why. The in-movie ads and era-specific pop-culture references QT plays throughout the film are really weird deep cuts. They're not the popular cinema, but the outliers, the weird stuff. QT's career has been built on those seeds that live outside the Hollywood limelight. He's obsessed with the stuff that fizzled and burned by daring to be different, outside the norm. His venturing into extreme Tarantino-esque violence in the finale is his conclusion about how he wouldn't fit in with the golden age of Hollywood. He may be wistful for that classic age of filmmaking, but without the death of Sharon Tate, cinema doesn't go to Grindhouse or Blacksploitation or make way for the hippies to turn the craft into art.
I think it all comes together as a very personal reflection for QT...where does he fit if things don't change? Things are changing today with the golden age of television and streaming poised to kill the cinema.... Does QT, like Rick, wonders if he still has a place?
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