Butler's Cinema Scene

Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Al Pacino

“ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD”  My rating: B+

161 minutes |MPAA  rating: R

Crammed with alternately bleak and raucous humor, a palpable affection for Tinseltown’s past and peccadilloes, and enough pop cultural references to fuel a thousand trivia nights, “Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood” is a moviegoer’s dream.

Here writer/director Quentin Tarantino eschews his worst tendencies (especially his almost adolescent addiction to racial name-calling) and delivers a story that despite many dark edges leaves us basking in the sunny California sunshine.

Each scene has been exquisitely crafted with every element — art direction, costuming, cinematography, editing, acting — meshing in near perfection.

In the process Tarantino rewrites history, blithely turning a real-life tragedy into a fictional affirmation of positivity. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

The heroes (??) of this 2 1/2-hour opus are Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a star of TV westerns who now (the time is 1969) sees his career circling the crapper, and his stunt double, the laconic tough guy Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who not only steps in to perform dangerous feats on the set but serves as Rick’s best bud, Man Friday and chauffeur (Rick’s had one too man DUIs).

Tarantino’s script finds the  alternately cocky and weepy Rick (DiCaprio has rarely been better) lamenting his fading status in the industry (he’s been reduced to playing villains in episodic TV) and contemplating the offer of a semi-sleazy producer (Al Pacino) to make spaghetti Westerns in Europe.

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate

Cliff, meanwhile, picks up an underaged hitchhiker (Margaret Qualley) who takes him to one of his old haunts, the Spahn ranch, an Old West movie set now occupied by one Charles Manson and his family of hippie misfits.

Newly arrived at the home next to Rick’s on Cielo Drive is director Roman Polanski and his beautiful actress wife, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Tate is a sweetheart, an all-American beauty radiating an almost angelic innocence and positivity. But we can’t help twitching in anxiety…after all, everybody knows that in ’69 she and her houseguests were the victims of a horrific murder spree by Manson’s brainwashed minions.

Leonardo DiCaprio

For a good chunk of its running time “Once…” seems to be happily going nowhere in particular.  It bobs in and out of trendy watering holes, dips into a party on the lawn of the Playboy Mansion, and of course visits numerous TV and movie sets.

Famous people like actor Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) and singer Mama Cass Elliott (Rachel Redleaf) drift on and off screen. In fact the film is a virtual Where’s Waldo of thespians: Dakota Fanning, Timothy Olyphant, Kurt Russell, the late Luke Perry, Emile Hirsch, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Lena Dunham.

Tarantino effortlessly weaves into this tapestry snippets of films and TV shows in which Rick is a featured performer, as well as flashbacks to Cliff’s er…colorful past.  Industry scuttlebutt is that Cliff murdered his nagging wife; meanwhile he’s been banned from many sets because he had the audacity to beat loudmouth martial arts star Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) at his own chop-sockey game.

At one point Sharon Tate sits in a movie theater with a paying audience to see her own performance in the Matt  Helm movie “The Wrecking Crew” (somewhat audaciously, Tarantino employs footage of the real Tate, and it’s kinda heartbreaking).

The film is filled with classic Tarantino moments, scenes that may not necessarily advance the plot but say volumes about the characters and the milieu.  There’s a funny/lovely moment on a set where Rick, outfitted in droopy bad-guy ‘stache and Western duds, shares his career fears with an 8-year-old actress (Julia Butters) who already displays more maturity than Rick will ever muster.

There are also several brilliantly edited (by Fred Raskin) montages. One, in which the laid-back Cliff prepares dinner for himself and his pet pit bull, is like a crash course in how to use cutting to develop character, depict a setting and generate humor. In another, Rick berates himself in his on-set trailer for blowing his lines; it’s part comedy, part tragedy.

Speaking of tragedy…because he’s introduced us to both Charlie Manson’s hippie/thugs and Sharon Tate, their inevitable victim, Tarantino creates an undercurrent of dread that provides a sobering counterpoint to the film’s general tone of amusement. Even as we revel in the film’s warm glow, we cringe knowing what may be coming.

And it’s here that Tarantino pulls one of his most amazing tricks ever. Yes, the film ends in a bloodbath, but…  (I’ll say no more, except that fans of Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” will nod their heads in appreciative wonder.)

My main beef about Tarantino has been that despite the brilliant moments in all of his films, he almost never goes deep.  He’s much more entertainer than philosopher; his artistry is skin deep.

But if you’re going to be superficial, it doesn’t get any better than Tarantino at his best. And “Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood” is definitely that.

| Robert W. Butler