Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s Revenge Fantasy for the Golden Age of Hollywood

Spoiler warning for the ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Like many others, I was concerned when Quentin Tarantino announced he was making a film based around the infamous 1969 Tate murders. Tarantino’s notoriously gleeful approach to violence seemed like the worst possible way to depict a real-life tragedy and I was gearing up for some uncomfortable exploitation.

Except, that’s not exactly what happened. Tarantino’s 1969 isn’t the real 1969 but an alternate reality in which the Manson family are foiled and Sharon Tate survives. Our two leads, fading movie star Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth, are Tate’s next-door neighbours who end up being targeted by the Manson family instead and - through Tarantino’s typical, borderline slapstick goriness - come out on top.

So, that’s alright then? Tarantino doesn’t depict the murders, doesn’t revel in their morbidity and doesn’t exploit the deaths of actual human beings. Which, yeah, I guess that's true. But the ending he goes with instead still opens up some... interesting implications.

Despite Tarantino's reputation, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood only really gets violent in the last fifteen minutes. For the preceding two and a half hours the film indulges primarily in nostalgia. Tarantino loves 1969, or at the very least he loves what he thinks 1969 is. He was 6 at the time so his image of the era has almost certainly been shaped posthumously. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood he constructs a detailed period setting but it's one primarily founded in popular culture. The fabulous soundtrack weaves together '60s pop hits, groovy acid rock and cheesy radio adverts to create a vivid picture of what we think 1969 sounded like. Similarly, the slick cars, stylish posters and rich film grain evoke the late '60s in a highly retrospective fashion.

The result is, as the title implies, a fairy tale version of the period, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if you're attuned to this particular aesthetic, as I am, there's a lot to enjoy in Tarantino's lavish appreciation of it. However, it does raise questions about the film's meaning when the period it spends almost three hours in didn't necessarily exist in the way it's represented.

Crucially, this isn't just Once Upon a Time in the '60s, it's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Tarantino isn't feeling nostalgia for the year in general but the movie industry specifically. The context of the Tate murders is therefore vitally important in understanding why Tarantino is making this film. Widely credited with bringing an end to Hollywood's golden era, their impending approach haunts Tarantino's nostalgic escapism. The spectre of the murders looms over it all - every diner, every movie set, every Playboy Mansion party. Without being aware of this context, the film is two and a half hours of meandering self-indulgence in service of a fifteen-minute adrenaline rush at the end. With this awareness, it's a fascinating example of how to wring tension out of dramatic irony.

Wrapped up in all of this is Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton. Dalton was a huge TV star a decade earlier but, after a mixed attempt at becoming a movie star, he's found himself in a decline, taking bit parts on TV and having to seriously consider starring in - *gasp* - Italian movies. Inside the broader end-of-an-era atmosphere is Dalton's character having to face the fact that his career is on a downturn. This unavoidable hurtling towards the end is what defines Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Then it reaches that end and the inevitable doesn't happen. The murderers are defeated and the victims survive. Rick Dalton's career is saved at the last minute as he's invited over to Tate's house for the first time, granting him the opportunity to connect with her superstar director husband Roman Polanski. So, the question arises, what was the point of all that?

It appears to me that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is essentially a vehicle for Quentin Tarantino to enact his revenge on the Manson family for ending Hollywood's golden age. In order to process his grief at the passing of this period, he's created a fantasy in which not only did it endure but those who attempted to destroy it have been brutally punished for their crimes. The delight with which he depicts Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth beating the absolute crap out of them certainly supports this theory (and as Nate Jones points out in his piece for Vulture, of course Tarantino, champion of unsung cinematic heroes like the stuntman, chose Booth to carry out his vengeance).

But is this good? I'm not sure it is. Whilst it's an interesting subversion it's also probably the most self-indulgent thing Tarantino could do. Of course, it would have been good if the Manson family had been stopped but not for the reasons presented.

The problem is that Tarantino doesn't seem to care about Sharon Tate as a person. Her portrayal here feels very superficial, hardly speaking or having any substantial dialogues with the other characters. Even when she's the main subject of the scene it's like we're only observing her from a distance. It's as if Tarantino's treating her as a symbol, a representation of the golden age of Hollywood, an accumulation of all the iconography of the lost era he's mourning. As a result, her survival isn't a triumph because a human being didn't die, it's a triumph because Tarantino's fantasy land didn't die.

This is where the issue with Tarantino's representation of the era comes in because the survival of Hollywood's golden era isn't necessarily a good thing. Sure it was a great time for the rich white men who starred in the hit films but it was nowhere near as great for the less privileged. But Tarantino's 1969 ignores all of this. With the exception of Vietnam, which is only ever brought up by characters dismissed as "f***ing hippies" who then turn out to be murderous cult members, this mythologised Hollywood is a glossy safe space from any of the actual problems of the era.

So, where does that leave us? Is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a good film? Mostly, yeah, I think it is. Tarantino is a talented and at this point mature filmmaker and that's very evident here, especially during the two and a half hours in which he's not bloodily beating hippies to death. But it's also a film in which nothing's learned. Rick Dalton doesn't have to adjust to his fading career and Quentin Tarantino doesn't have to accept the passing of the era he's worshipping. Ultimately, it's hard to say Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is anything more than wish fulfilment for Tarantino, his revenge fantasy for the golden age of Hollywood.