Review of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) by Nightreviews — 15 Sep 2019

Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood is one thing and one thing only; Quentin Tarantino’s beautifully crafted dreamy love letter to cinema!

With his newest feature, the current master of cinema’s vision reminds us why movies are cool again. For the first time, in a long time, there’s a film that begs to be seen, not in the comfort of your own home, not on your Netflix cue on an airplane, but in front of a silver screen, with an audience and you damn right…some popcorn. Once Upon A Time is less a film and more an experience; one where the bustling hot summer days are corrected by the high intensity air conditioning of the multiplexes; one where the theatres are a safe haven for summer love and first kisses, an experience where going to the movies is as magical as popping your cherry. That’s what a Tarantino film is like; just like when I first went to go see his Grindhouse experience for the first time, Tarantino is a visionary old soul, hell bent on sharing his memorable cinematic experiences of his past, with us today. If you are a cinephile and don’t know about Quentin Tarantino’s work, most, if not all people will tell you that you should just quit now, but I digress. Tarantino worked at a blockbuster in Hollywood, California in his early years, consuming as much cinema as possible. One of his most revered quotes to date about film is his famous line that “When people asked me if I went to film school I tell them no. I went to films”. Funny enough, this quote captures the essence of Tarantino and his canon; an individual who entered the world of cinema out of the sheer love of watching films, just like myself.

As an artist myself and lover of film, I never went to film school also. Hopefully, as someone who would eventually love to make their own films one day, I feel that this is one of the many reasons why I admire, as well as, so heavily identify with Tarantino. I also learned about films by watching them. Just like myself, the influence in Tarantino films is wide ranging. His largest inspirations draws from the New Wave Gangster pictures of France, crafted by the likes of Jean Pierre Melville, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. All of the names listed are absolute giants in celluloid and contributed in my opinion the most to modern cinema that features, as Godard would say, “A girl and a gun”. According to Godard, that is pretty much all that is necessary to making a good motion picture. Other notable Influences on Tarantino would be essentially any film from the 1970’s because that is the era when he began to understand and study cinema, an era of films by Don Siegel, Sergio Leone and George Roy Hill.

Yet while many are quick to label QT as a scam artist and artistic thief, I feel like it is my duty to rectify that notion. Before continuing on, it has to be said that art copies art, inspiration inspires and according to Mark Twain, there is no such thing as originality, only levels of authenticity. Therefore, it is my extreme pleasure to introduce and name QT a master of authenticity for his cinema. Just like when Sergio Leone remade a Kurosawa picture and developed it into the Dollars trilogy, or when Christopher Nolan gave his interpretation of the Dark Knight recently, or when Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar for remaking a Japanese film and later naming it The Departed, art is not our subject, WE are its subject. Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood is the iconic director’s masterful indulgence in everything that he loves about movies and everything we should love, too! Aside from Taratino, Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood isn’t just one man’s magnum opus, but a collection of so many talented artists, starting with its cast. The film opens with Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt going for a cruise to a watering hole. Dicaprio stars as Rick Dalton, a good ole’ boy from Missouri who drinks for hydration and smokes for oxygen. Once the leading man in television and film, appearing in western serials, one aptly titled Bounty Law, Dalton is on the tail end of his acting career. The Midwestern-American cowboy style Dalton knew all too well, is being suffocated and changed, no thanks to the foreign influenced, free-loving hippie movement. While DiCaprio’s Dalton emits a certain swagger that charms many, the audience comes to realize that this ‘swagger’ is less a personality trait and more a clearly stubborn, unchangeable style and resilience to the conforming of the times around him. According to Rick, Rick Dalton is still big; it’s the pictures that just got small. While it may be hard to argue this notion, DiCaprio’s riotous as the comedic force of the film. Blending well with Tarantino’s signature writing style for a second time, DiCaprio’s Dalton stutters, stammers and then collectively pulls himself together in front of a camera.