Review of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) by Jluis_001 — 27 Jul 2019

I can't deny it: I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed because beyond my personal expectations I think this is the first Quentin Tarantino film since Jackie Brown that leaves me feeling empty.

I say this for very simple reasons and it's that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the most simplistic film of the director and it sounds strange to say that about him and his work but it's the truth, at least in my point of view.

I don't know what kind of film he tried to nail down. I don't know what he was trying to say. I don't know where he was pointing but obviously there isn't much to take in. Because if there's something that happens to this film, it's that its plot is practically non-existent and it's just events that are everywhere to try to make this stuff more cohesive.

I must make something very clear and that is that for this story both the Manson family and Sharon Tate are simply collateral elements to reach an end.

I don't know how somebody could try to justify it otherwise, but Margot Robbie is more than useless for the full development of this film. She's only an instrument to construct the conclusion of the narrative and I suppose that this is the reason why she ends up surviving in this story, because it would have been despicable to use her death as a plot resource.

Obviously the film is built on a fairly weak narrative base and there's no way to fix it. That's the way it's built and most of the time you don't know where things are going with either of the two main characters. Both the character of Brad Pitt and DiCaprio are only parts of their environment. They don't have a beginning and obviously they don't have an ending.

Both actors are excellent, I cannot deny that, they're two veteran connoisseurs of their work but their great performances don't justify the whole experience.

As much as I tried to find a meaning, there never was one. The succession of events only occurr to fill the gaps while the climax is being built and when you finally reach that ending, which is a total Tarantino ending, I couldn't help thinking that when it arrived it was already too late and sincerely, as I said in the beginning when that ending comes, the feeling of emptiness begins to make a dent in you.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood it feels as if I had seen a fable without a moral, without direction and sadly kinda meaningless.

I understand that for many people this film represents a tribute from Tarantino to a completely disappeared era. That is a love letter to Hollywood. A love letter to his industry and I guess that is understandable to some extent, but sincerely analyzing the whole thing, I can't take a small thing out of my head, and is that if this is a love letter... well it's a love letter that pretty much says nothing at all.