Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Tarantino’s most recent film was very good. Please donate to my Patreon, thanks.

***Spoilers!***

I kid, but only about the latter part. Once Upon a Time does a great job of capturing movie magic, both of itself and of the many clips that are seen within the film itself, while still pondering the joys of acting and the foundational hierarchy of Hollywood. There are many angles from which to analyse the movie as well – from a position of controversy, as historical fiction, as a critique of masculinity, or perhaps as a shameless endorsement of it. The former is well explained in this Vox article https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/15/20759084/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-controversy-bruce-lee-sharon-tate-women-explained-tarantino, for those interested. What I want to write about however is a touch of the latter two, and more, as a technique, the means of immersion within what makes movies so entertaining.

To get the first stuff out of the way, Pitt’s character Cliff is the height of Americanized masculinity: he’s shredded, poor, disdainful of annoying women, willing to put people in their place and stand up for injustice (with violence), honorable enough not to have sex with an underage teenager, lovably fond of his dog, unshakably loyal to his best friend Rick Dalton, and perhaps most importantly capable and willing to stand up for himself when threatened. The only thing he’s missing is a gun!

This trend of glorified poverty has generally seemed to have passed, but it was definitely present in movies from a few decades ago, such as in Toby Maguire’s Spiderman movies. Today, there is still certainly an ideal blue collar worker, someone who understands the struggles of the impoverished life style, that is ‘real’, and who continues to work hard in spite of all the obstacles. Someone with grit, integrity, and machismo to spare.

Taking all this into account, it’s no surprise that Cliff is kind of written in as the real worker behind the scenes – he’s the one that does all the dangerous stunts while Rick Dalton acts pretty, and in the end is the one who does all the hard, dirty work of dispatching the Mansonites while Dalton relaxes in his pool. This is further emphasized with Rick’s heightened, by contrast, emotions – a tendency to cry, and fairly quick to anger and frustration with himself. Cliff is the juxtaposition – calm and cool and always composed, even in the most dire of circumstances.

What is interesting too is the way Cliff embraces his own lower position, comforted perhaps by the knowledge that he is honorable and loyal, and so doesn’t mind the terrible pay or unsung hero-like aspects of his career. He just does his job, and is a good friend, and so ultimately is endearing.

Now, as for the counterpoint to this portrayal of masculinity, there are two major things that come to mind. First, the likely possibility that he murdered his wife: a clip is shown once this is revealed to the audience where Cliff sits on a boat with his wife and takes a barrage of verbal abuse that serves to justify the apparent outcome. To be honest, I read that as a fairly blunt admittance of the crime, and it does explain how casually he engages in violence throughout the rest of the film. Isolated from the rest of movie history, this kind of nonchalant attitude towards murder, in which someone being an annoyance is rationale enough to kill them, is one of those things that only really holds up in the fantasy of the movie – few people really want that in somebody they know in real life, because what happens if you become that annoyance? This is the curious intersection that Tarantino employs that I want to explore more in depth later, where he embraces movie tropes, and then lets them speak for themselves about their significance culturally and contextually. With the rest of movie history in mind, the trend of masculinity to equate itself with this sort of sexist generalization of certain types of women stands out like a sore thumb, and, intentional or not, highlights the issue. All that being said, within this movie fantasy, the humor and logic of the movie makes this somewhat forgivable – and that’s part of the point. Movies will forgive Cliff for being hyper-masculine, even if that’s not really a desirable real-life trait. Similarly, although I suspect this is a very personal opinion, I could not help but cringe during the final murder spree at every gruesome smack of the Manson hippie against various platforms and walls around Dalton’s house. It works in the movie, but despite the way Tarantino stylizes his violence, still is very intense. Hugely entertaining and morbidly hilarious, and yet in your face and disturbing.

Now, Cliff aside, this brings up the question of the lengths, as a director, you want to immerse yourself in this movie magic. This includes humorous violence and hyperbolic American ruggedness – these can make a movie, but at a cost. Entertainment can be highly influential, although not to the degree to which some might claim. Media can never be the sole major contributor to any level of violence within a population, but it can alter mindsets that emerge over time and in conjunction with a plethora of other influences and variables. So the qualms with sexism and racism and so on about this movie are valid – however, there must also be taken into account the way a movie is constructed as a whole, and sometimes the vision with which it is made is embedded within these issues, because that’s the point. Once Upon a Time is about recreating an era, and this era had issues, so part of representing it accurately is about engaging with them in the way they were represented. There are different ways to do this, but I don’t think that a direct critique or blatant parody is the only option. Sometimes, it’s just about showing, and making a damn fine movie in the process.