The Sixties were a turbulent period in US history — there was the Vietnam War, the hippie movement, the moon landing in 1969, and the media all excited about the Manson Murders. Quentin Tarantino recreates the era with such loving and meticulous attention to detail that the sights and sounds come alive — the films, TV, music, commercials, radio jingles, costumes, and in Hollywood, a Gatsby-ish hedonism, explained in a few pithy words by Steve McQueen (played by Damian Lewis), a guest at a Playboy Mansion party, studded with intoxicated celebrities.
The two protagonists are Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), former star of cowboy Westerns, and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who is reduced to being chauffeur, gofer and confidant to the alcoholic actor. Past his prime, Rick gets work as the ‘heavy’ in TV shows, and the man, once a hero, has to submit to humiliating beatings that is the fate of the villain. His downfall causes him to burst into tears, which, he considers unmanly.
Next door lives Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), her husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and ex-fiance Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch) in a companionable ménage. Rick hopes he will be discovered by his neighbour, then a rising film director, and be saved from the ignominy of doing spaghetti Westerns in Italy.
The sardonic stuntman gets a look at the ranch where Charles Manson runs his hippie cult, when he gives a girl a lift. He does not realise then, what his show of aggression on the old location of the cowboy movies, will lead to. Meanwhile, on the set of a pilot, forced to paste on a Zapata moustache and fake tan, Rick gets a lesson in professionalism and kindness from an eight-year-old, terrifyingly precocious child actress (a fabulously cool Julia Butters).
The film is a series of vignettes, the carnage that the real-life Manson cult was involved in gets a Tarantino twist. But those unconnected episodes — like Sharon’s visit to a theatre playing Dean Martin’s The Wrecking Crew, in which she has a part as a “klutz”, or the by-now much-talked-about thrashing that Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) gets at the hands of Booth — induce pure and joyous nostalgia.
The astonishingly rich production design by Barbara Ling and rich retro costuming by Arianne Phillips, shot brilliantly by cinematographer Robbie Richardson, contribute hugely to Tarantino’s buddy movie, using a subversive tone that somehow also manages to be part tribute to and part parody of Hollywood.
Even though it is plotless and disjointed, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, is a pleasure to watch. It is fun to watch a parade of cameos by stars playing some real and some fictional characters, so that there’s also a mental ‘who’s that’ guessing game going on, while the movie runs over 161 mesmerising minutes.
