Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Am I the only person who loved all the driving shots? Even some people who like the movie have criticized them. Personally, I love the marriage of the music and the shots of the characters driving through the recreation of 1960's Hollywood. Not to mention that they probably take a grand total of 2 of the 141 minutes of the movie.

No, you're not the only one that enjoyed them.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

What would be the point without Tate? That 1960s TV and Italian movies were pretty cool? How would that be a fairy tale? Where would the menace be? Where would the dark cloud hanging over the end of the 1960s be? What would these characters be escaping?

There's menace without Tate. I call her a red herring because her presence creates tension based on what really happened - we know she's doomed and that adds to the drama.

However, in this film, she experiences a different fate, one that renders her a superfluous character.

Tate creates drama solely due to her real-life fate. As a movie character, she serves little purpose independent of those events...

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Never ending, and self indulgent?

Michael Bay maybe, not Quentin Tarantino.

I don't think Bay ever made a movie as self-indulgent as this one. QT is a much better filmmaker than Bay, but he's got flaws, and one comes from his willingness to indulge in his own fantasies and preferences.

Sorry, but the endless "Lancer" shots and recreations of circa 1969 elements exist because QT loved 'em, not because they served the story.

This movie could lose an hour of content and not sacrifice any actual character or story material...

 

[Colin Jacobson]

He is most definitely self-indulgent. This film does seem primarily directed at a "Hollywood" crowd and meant to tell them "I love you."

He does have a serious case of navel gazing with this film, even in his interviews discussing it, and certainly did not consider that most people today likely have ZERO knowledge of all the old TV and movie stuff he is referencing. It is in this way sort of amazing that he was even able to make it.

The picture is not really plot driven but none of his films are.

No, but the others didn't engage in superfluous moments to the same degree. The others could go on detours but they still felt like they were building toward something.

I'm genuinely puzzled by the love for all that "Lancer" stuff or the shots of Dalton in "Great Escape" or the like. These are self-indulgent to an extreme!

 

[TravisR]

I'm genuinely puzzled by the love for all that "Lancer" stuff or the shots of Dalton in "Great Escape" or the like. These are self-indulgent to an extreme!

I find those scenes so well-acted, funny or sad that I enjoy them. Also, I like Rick so I like spending time with him and spending more time in the movie's world.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Being self-indulgent, making his films for an audience of one, him, is what makes him the filmmaker he is. He certainly does not sit around thinking "Is the audience going to get this?" and having a committee rework his films...I see that as a good thing.

It can be, as QT often finds greatness in his personal choices.

Cripes, the very first scene in his very first movie is self-indulgent - the diner scene in "Reservoir Dogs" could be repurposed in a shorter, more efficient bit of exposition - but it works because of QT's cleverness and wit.

I just think his choices failed him for this movie. 15 minutes - or however long - of "Lancer" might be fun for a very small segment of the audience, but I think most people got bored after 3 minutes, and there's too much other extraneous material in the movie...

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I find those scenes so well-acted, funny or sad that I enjoy them. Also, I like Rick so I like spending time with him and spending more time in the movie's world.

If people enjoy them, that's cool. Different strokes and all that.

I just think they slow an already sluggish movie to a crawl. Maybe when I see the movie a 2nd time I'll discover charm/nuance I missed, but I doubt it.

I like/respect QT as a filmmaker, and I really wanted to love this movie. I don't hate it, but it does become a massive disappointment because it just doesn't have the payoff it needs for the investment it requires...

 

[Robert Crawford]

I find those scenes so well-acted, funny or sad that I enjoy them. Also, I like Rick so I like spending time with him and spending more time in the movie's world.

Yeah, I love those scenes too, but whatever, people are different when it comes to what they like or don't like.

 

[Worth]

Oops.

 

[Bryan^H]

There's menace without Tate. I call her a red herring because her presence creates tension based on what really happened - we know she's doomed and that adds to the drama.

However, in this film, she experiences a different fate, one that renders her a superfluous character.

Tate creates drama solely due to her real-life fate. As a movie character, she serves little purpose independent of those events...

He made the movie he wanted to make. If you don't like it, fine.
I had no problem with Sharon Tate, Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, etc.
I loved each and every scene in the movie including the magnificent "Lancer" scene.

 

[Bryan^H]

Sorry, but the endless "Lancer" shots and recreations of circa 1969 elements exist because QT loved 'em, not because they served the story.

What are you talking about? The Lancer segments were part of the movie because that is the series that Rick Dalton is guest starring in.
The scene gives us insight to the character, his struggles with alcohol, his connection with a young actress ("Poor Easy Breezy")and establishes how he is regarded in the spectrum of television/movies at that time by the director, and actors.

Without those minutes of the movie the character of Rick Dalton would be anemic.

 

[MartinP.]

There's menace without Tate. I call her a red herring because her presence creates tension based on what really happened - we know she's doomed and that adds to the drama.
However, in this film, she experiences a different fate, one that renders her a superfluous character.
Tate creates drama solely due to her real-life fate. As a movie character, she serves little purpose independent of those events..

In my opinion, you have totally misunderstood this aspect of the movie.

As for those complaining about long endless driving scenes...?...reminds me of this I read about another movie:

"The movie quickly gets mired down in the process of Lawrence traversing the desert, which takes over an hour. This is problematic in that it looks good in terms of having technically great cinematography, but exceptionally low plot or character development. While the film might accurately paint a portrait of what it is to traverse long sections of desert, the longer it stretches on, the purpose becomes increasingly murky. In other words, because the film is so preoccupied with how Lawrence is crossing the desert, the viewer forgets why he is doing so."

 

[Colin Jacobson]

What are you talking about? The Lancer segments were part of the movie because that is the series that Rick Dalton is guest starring in.
The scene gives us insight to the character, his struggles with alcohol, his connection with a young actress ("Poor Easy Breezy")and establishes how he is regarded in the spectrum of television/movies at that time by the director, and actors.

Without those minutes of the movie the character of Rick Dalton would be anemic.

Ha ha - yeah, we need 15 minutes of shots from a TV production to understand the character!

Some of the "Lancer" stuff is fine. We don't need the whole length QT gives us - not by a long shot.

A three-to-five minute version would deliver all the necessary character information. As it runs now, the "Lancer" stuff is self-indulgence on a supreme scale...

 

[Colin Jacobson]

In my opinion, you have totally misunderstood this aspect of the movie.

Could be. Maybe I'll see something in the depiction of Tate when I watch the movie again.

Right now, though, I'm sticking with my impression...

 

[WillG]

There's menace without Tate. I call her a red herring because her presence creates tension based on what really happened - we know she's doomed and that adds to the drama.

I will say the use of The Rolling Stones “Out of Time” near the end but before the climax did seem a bit on the nose.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

There's menace without Tate. I call her a red herring because her presence creates tension based on what really happened - we know she's doomed and that adds to the drama.

I don't see menace in the film without the Tate section being there. The Tate and Manson family portions are connected here and serve as connective tissue between the parallel stories of Dalton and Tate. If you remove the Sharon Tate aspect of the story the Manson portion goes with it. You are citing only one aspect of how Tarantino utilizes the Sharon Tate line, in that it automatically brings the menace and suspense because we know she was one of the victims of that heinous slaughter. So, yes, Tarantino is going after the audience's foreknowledge of what happened to Tate and using it against us but that's not her only purpose in the film.

Tate creates drama solely due to her real-life fate. As a movie character, she serves little purpose independent of those events...

I'd say this is completely false.

He is also writing a love letter to Hollywood and she represents the joy and excitement of being a part of it. He also is smart enough here that he does not need to portray that through dialogue...he just shows us her joy. Tarantino embraces that completely. It may be one of his most honest representations of his own emotions and feelings he has ever committed to film. I was truthfully sort of astounded he was capable of it. I think this picture is Tarantino more openly expressing his own emotions and feelings than he ever has. His other films are about his love of oddball pictures from the past but they are his own little goofy nerdgasms. I've seen all of his pictures, I've never seen him do what he does here and that Tate character, he calls her the heart of the film, is really his heart on display. Tarantino is that awkward geek that just feels pure joy at the idea that he is now part of the community that makes motion pictures.

Why does he feel so emotional about Tate? Because he completely identifies with her and he sees it as horrific that was all suddenly taken away from her and she was slaughtered...senselessly. It was all on the table for her when she was killed. Tarantino got to fully live the fantasy, Sharon didn't. She glimpsed it and then lost it all due to a bunch of crazed psychopaths.

Through the Tate character he is showing us what was lost, and what was lost to Tarantino was not just a beautiful gentle young woman and her unborn child, all the things he takes the most joy and pleasure from in life were lost as well. A career making motion pictures and all that means to him. She is the light and the joy here and the Manson family is the darkness attempting to take that light and joy away.

If you are calling her a red herring, I would have to agree you should revisit the film and consider it a bit more. She is not a red herring, she is an important part of the message of the picture and really represents some of his most nuanced and heartfelt work.

I believe this is why he took such offense when he was asked at Cannes why he did not give Tate more dialogue...the woman clearly did not understand what he was doing with that character.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I don't see menace in the film without the Tate section being there.

Sure, there's still menace. Even if Tate never appears on screen, we know what's going to happen. We don't need to see her to feel dread about where the Manson story line will go.

The tension would be just as thick if the movie dropped the Tate scenes and just kept those with Pussycat and the other Mansonites.

Of course, anyone who sees the movie without foreknowledge of real events will likely feel none of this anxiousness because they don't know real-life Sharon was slaughtered. They probably wonder why the movie spends so much time with this lady who has little connection to the lead characters!

 

[TravisR]

I believe this is why he took such offense when he was asked at Cannes why he did not give Tate more dialogue...the woman clearly did not understand what he was doing with that character.

There was an absolutely hilarious piece in a very famous magazine/website (which I'm not going to name because I won't give them the clicks) where the author counted all the lines of dialogue from women in Tarantino's movies in an effort to, I guess, show that Tarantino was a sexist piece of shit or something because men have more dialogue in most of his movies than women. The funniest thing is that they deliberately left out Death Proof from their count presumably because the cast is 90% female and that would have messed up the results that they clearly set out to get.

There was enough people calling them out on Twitter for omitting Death Proof that they were embarrassed into being honest and including that movie in an update.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

No, but the others didn't engage in superfluous moments to the same degree.

I would have to say I disagree here. In my opinion his most self-indulgent streak where he was basically just masturbating on screen was his run from Death Proof through to The Hateful Eight. These were films so loaded with superfluous moments it was fairly hilarious...but as always with Tarantino he was displaying his love of writing crazed dialogue and so the films were fun.

I would call Once Upon a Time in Hollywood his least self-indulgent picture in terms of the writing and how he made it. It is really, I think but I've only seen it once, his most impressive and assured work as a writer/director/filmmaker. It kind of is, at least as I think of it right now, his masterwork. Which is sad because just as he seems to be taking a huge step forward as a filmmaker, he claims he is going to call it quits. That's a shame because he seems capable of so much and after seeing this film I am excited to see what he might do next.

To me Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seems to take all of his years of filmmaking and many of his themes and repeating ideas and refines and hones them all. As if he is showing us what he learned. He does not just write a series of big dialogue scenes and asides and stitch them together with pop music and funny stuff here. I think this may be because while in all his other films he was indulging his love of genre and characters here he has real emotional attachment to the subject matter.

He has never made a picture with this many scenes of characters not talking. Of showing them thinking, remembering, contemplating, not just spewing dialogue that amuses him. It really allows the actors to have to sink in to who they are and deliver physical performances...that is really Tarantino trusting his actors to deliver here and not by just saying the words he imagined putting in their mouths.

 

[Bryan^H]

There was an absolutely hilarious piece in a very famous magazine/website (which I'm not going to name because I won't give them the clicks) where the author counted all the lines of dialogue from women in Tarantino's movies in an effort to, I guess, show that Tarantino was a sexist piece of shit or something because men have more dialogue in most of his movies than women.

Oh boy. I'm glad you didn't mention them. I would say that is crazy, but we are in the "Look at me, I have something outrageous to say without any proof to back it up. Credability, and integrity means nothing. It is all about views, who needs fact checking?" phase of journalism.