I am a huge fan of the way Tarantino tells stories. I don't think there is anyone quite like him making films. This is a masterpiece. Growing up in the 1960s was the era when Westerns and American TV programmes were the staple on both TV channels. The visual texture of this film feels so spot on and the way the cinematography is lit and captured make it a feast for the eyes. Anyone who has been along Sunset Strip, driven past the iconic Capitol Records Tower or toured the Hollywood Hills will have recognised many of the famous sites.
The fact that this film is a realist fairy-tale referencing and featuring many of the characters of the period only adds to, the at times, almost documentary feel of the film. Tarantino takes facts and real Hollywood characters, puts them in a bag and shakes them up, and then empties the bag, representing them in a jumbled retelling of the final years of Hollywood's golden era. It is literally as though Tarantino makes a memory dump onto the screen and arranges the images with a connecting narrative. Simply amazing.
Whilst the film captures the excesses of the times in its portrayal of drugs, sex and the rock and roll lifestyle, even featuring a scene at the Playboy Mansion, it also contains characters and acts which demonstrate great virtue. Whilst most of the characters in the film seem to be out to get whatever they can, Brad Pitt's Oscar winning character Cliff Booth oozes a cool strength and courage whilst being loyal to his friend and employer Rick Dalton played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Booth is however also capable of great violence - a not so virtuous trait. In the film Cliff Booth is rumoured to have killed his wife although he was never charged with her murder - surely more than a passing reference to Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner?
The innocent beauty of Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate wafts through the film punctuating it with a feeling akin to walking into a air-conditioned building when it's hot outside. The menace of the Manson gang holed up at the Spahn Ranch foreshadows the soon to pass Tate murders. After a six month spell in Italy shooting Spaghetti Westerns, Dalton returns to Hollywood with an Italian wife who is a conflation of Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and other Italian sirens of the period. The way in which this film interweaves fiction and reality, and then presents each as the other is extremely clever.
The fickle nature of celebrity which is an integral part of Hollywood is explored from many different angles. The whole premise of the film is that Dalton's career is waning and Booth's work as a stuntman has all but dried up. They feel disconnected from a Hollywood they no longer recognise. We see an emerging Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) at the height of his game and even Mama Cass (Rachel Redleaf) and Michelle Phillips (Rebecca Rittenhouse) from the Mamas and the Papas.
This film offers a unique portrait of Hollywood in 1969. It is very cleverly conceived and Tarantino's screenplay and Direction are phenomenal. The casting is spot on even if many of the first choices either didn't pass audition or were unavailable through other projects. There is a huge and interesting exploration of the film on Wikipedia - well worth a look. As you may have gathered, I enjoyed this trip back to my childhood. Thank you Quenten. I'll give it 8/10.
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