Quentin Tarantino’s last movie to date is a rich and lovely immersion in the dying days of the Old Hollywood, LA, 1969. The culture clash is defined by the generation gap, and the innocence of 1967’s Summer of Love is already congealing into hard drug abuse and eruptions of violence reflecting the escalating conflict in Vietnam.
In this time and place Tarantino invites us to hang with TV cowboy Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an actor uncomfortably aware that his movie career is on the wane and leading roles may be behind him. Rick’s best friend is his stunt double, Cliff (Brad Pitt), who embodies the manly virtues Rick only acts out on screen. It’s Cliff who happens across the group of dropouts who have taken residence at the old Spahn movie ranch. Meanwhile, Rick’s neighbour Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) appears to be on the cusp of stardom herself…
A film of luxuriant and digressive beauty, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is in no rush to come to climax, but very subtly, bit by bit, Tarantino injects notes of tension and anxiety into his love letter to a bygone era. The movie’s nostalgia is wrapped up in Rick’s midlife crisis, a fear of obsolescence which the director would appear to share.
A tender, rapturous film, both joyous and melancholy, a reverie for a lost past and a door that opens to myriad imagined possibilities.
Stephanie Zacharek, Time
Distinctly elegiac and unexpectedly emotional.
Kenneth Turan, LA Times
Quentin Tarantino
Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Margaret Qualley, Dakota Fanning, Aaron Butler
USA
2019
English
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Screenwriter
Quentin Tarantino
Cinematography
Robert Richardson
Editor
Fred Raskin
Production Design
Barbara Ling
Also in This Series
These movies speak to our times and push the boundaries of the art form — the true modern classics we’re confident will withstand the test of time.
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Certain Women
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Melancholia
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Moonlight
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Lady Bird
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Silence
This sober, probing examination of faith, ego, cruelty and compassion is the most underrated film from the often under-valued latter half of Martin Scorsese's brilliant career; a passion project, about Catholic missionaries in 17th Century Japan.
Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- all great, all successful -- then turned director with Synecdoche, which is a masterpiece and which basically went unseen. It's overdue rediscovery.