Tarantino’s blinkered view of 1969
Tarantino’s latest film beat my (admittedly not very high) expectations. I spent an enjoyable 160 minute watching it — although it might have been an even more enjoyable 95 minutes. Patience was rewarded with a late twist which I found both clever and suitably grand-guignolesque.
While I don’t have a problem with the plot, I do take issue with Tarantino’s take on his own art. The movie is supposed to be a homage to Hollywood as it was in 1969. That year was pivotal. It saw the release of not just Easy Rider, but also Arthur Penn’s Alice’s Restaurant, Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses Don’t They, and Woody Allen’s Take the money and run. John Schlesinger won the Oscars for best director and best picture with Midnight Cowboy.
In short, a new generation filmmakers — inspired by the home-grown counterculture movement and by the French Nouvelle Vague — came to the fore in 1969. Older masters, such as Elia Kazan and Sam Pekinpah, reinvented themselves as auteurs — with The Arrangement and The Wild Bunch respectively. Over the next few years Jerry Schatzberg, Bob Rafelson, Stephen Spielberg, Peter Bodganovich, Alan J Pakula, Hal Ashby, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorcese, William Friedkin, John Boorman and others would change way movies as made and seen.
Yet you see none of that in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The only nod to the cinematic revolution that was underway is the brief appearance of the character of Roman Polanski — but only as a great man who happens to live next door to the main protagonist. Much more is made of Polanski’s wife, the tragic actress Sharon Tate whom we see rapturously watching herself in the spy-comedy The Wrecking Crew. The other titles spotted on marquees in driving shots throughout the film are equally forgettable.
The alternative culture that swept through California at the time is similarly absent from the film: its only representatives are Charlie Manson’s psychopathic killers. The soundtrack is not much kinder to the spirit of the time: Simon and Garfunkel do make a brief appearance, but their voices are drowned out by Roy Head & The Traits, the Village Callers, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and the Buchanan Brothers. No Hendricks, no Janis Joplin, no Alvin Lee, no Joan Baez, no Neil Young, no Rare Earth, no Doors, no Credence Clearwater Revival, no Grateful Dead, no Frank Zappa, no Jefferson Airplane, etc.
You may object that this is the whole point. The title Once Upon a Time in Hollywood says it all: the film is a nostalgic tribute to the golden years of the the studio system and other forms of mass-produced entertainment that were then on their way out (Tin Pan Alley, Motown). The film is a middle finger flicked at the self-important art-house radicals who made a point of despising popular culture.
Fair enough. Tantantino has every right to regard any episode of Bonanza as a worthier representative of the Western genre than Little Big Man, or to prefer Neil Diamond to Iron Butterfly. But if the film is an elegy, you might expect a sense of the threat that hangs over the things you extol. Singin’ in the rain, a fond evocation of the silent movie era, does mention the talkies. American Graffiti, a tale of the lost innocence set in the early 1960s, ends with ominous references to the Vietnam War.
Furthermore, Tarantino owes more to the 1969 revolution in films than he admits. The advent of the director as a creative demigod is the reason why he has been given carte blanche to indulge in his marathon epics.
Having said all that, I reiterate: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is enjoyable. It’s not up there with Pulp Fiction, but then few films are. I suppose I’m just disappointed that Tarantino has used his considerable talent to eulogise movies and music I don’t particularly like. In my dreams he would write a remake of Easy Rider — improving on the original with a plot that actually makes sense and actors that can act, while religiously keeping Steppenwolf and The Band in the soundtrack. Fat chance, I know…
