Lucidno
Bergan on QT
Not a review. Just a few random thoughts.
Once upon a time in Hollywood... is a late example of post-modern cinema, edging towards its sell-by date. It's a pretty playful, self-indulgent, referential, reverential homage to the popular culture of the period - just as intertextual and not much deeper, but better made, than the Austin Powers movies. Q T obviously enjoyed himself making pastiches of '60 movies and TV series. However, the film itself is a pastiche within a pastiche. It's a reconfiguration of a buddy-buddy movie. A fine bromance, with no kisses; A fine bromance, my friend, this is. Surprisingly (and thankfully) there are no obligatory fucking sequences.
You don't have to be a feminist to notice how shallow is the treatment of women. The only females that have any character are the child actor and Brandy, de Caprio's dog. The portrayal of Sharon Tate is as profound as a carboad cutout. Her one sustained sequence is when she unconvincingly goes to see herself in a lousy Matt Helm/Dean Martin secret agent movie. According to Mike Myers, 'Helm and/or Martin was a man of the '40s and '50s, thrust into the context of the '60s and having to deal with all these liberated young people.' It reminded me of the scene in Vivre Sa Vie when Anna Karina goes to the cinema to see The Passion of Joan of Arc directed by Dreyer, a fellow Dane. Q T may have thought of it being someone who knows and admires Godard. Q T assumes that the audience, most of whom were not yet born in the '60s, will get most of the references. I was there. (Yes I know that if you remember the '60s you weren't there.) Q T also takes for granted that audiences of whatever age will know about the Tate murder. The ending is amusingly self parodic. There's one hint in a cryptic sequence when Brad Pitt visits the Manson ranch where hippie girls gather like Hitchcock's birds. It's quite droll to realize that macho stunt man hero Pitt had a stunt man for his stunts.
What next? Once Upon a Time... in Europe.
Ronald Bergan
August, 2019 (published on facebook)
