LONESOME TRAILS
MORE THAN ANY FAIRY TALE, OR A SERGIO LEONE film, the title of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth stand-alone feature suggests an elaborate yarn that might take a while to tell. Not so very elaborate but indeed a tall tale of sorts, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is set in a familiar fantasyland and era—the perennially mythologized late ’60s, with its dashing of hopes, fall from grace, bummer wake-up from a beautiful dream. Or, as focused through the lens of Tarantino’s characters: at the apparent end of the road for a TV actor named Rick Dalton, and by extension his stunt double Cliff Booth. Beginning its timeline in February 1969, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood introduces us to Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) side by side with Cliff (Brad Pitt), the two explaining their trade in a black-and-white behind-the-scenes interview on an anonymous Western set. Rick plays cowboys, Cliff plays Rick on horses and in mid-air; both enjoy making up fun stuff for our entertainment.
What follows surprised many at the ballyhooed premiere in Cannes this past May, and not settles into a loose-limbed, sunny buddy routine with an undercurrent of nerves, before paths begin to diverge. Rick anxiously takes a gig playing a Western villain, with Cliff as his rock-steady support system but also wandering off on his own as whatever you call the laid-back stand-in to a potential has-been. And for a third and vital strand (as ever in Tarantino’s long-game loop-back storytelling), there’s the “real” figure of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her husband, shit-hot director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), zooming around town, hanging out, being desirable. That despite the small matter of the gruesome Manson Family murders somewhere in there on the historical record…
