ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD’S BIG SURPRISE
How Quentin Tarantino’s latest is a touching tribute to Sharon Tate…
The day before Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Quentin Tarantino published an open letter imploring attendees to keep schtum and preserve the “journey of discovering a story” for future viewers. Setting aside the mildly insulting notion that any journo with a modicum of common sense would blurt out major spoilers months before release, it’s easy to understand why Tarantino – to a greater extent than ever before – wanted his film’s biggest secret to be preserved.
That secret (and now’s the time to turn away if you’ve yet to see Tarantino’s latest) is that Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate isn’t murdered by the Manson family, as she was in real life in 1969. Instead, Manson’s followers knock on the neighbouring door of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), where his capable stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and Cliff’s very good dog Brandy viciously ensure these particular acolytes can’t fulfil their
heinous destiny. It’s a gratuitously violent sequence, but deeply cathartic, giving Tate the happy ending on film that she was never afforded in real life.
Tarantino has re-written history before, of course, by obliterating Hitler in Inglourious Basterds. But that felt like an arch-provocateur’s cheeky punchline. His alt-history here is a bittersweet, disarmingly sincere lament for a blindingly bright light tragically snuffed out before her time, and the abrupt end of Hollywood’s golden era that Tate’s murder symbolised. It’s a moment that Hollywood builds towards meticulously. The film belongs to Dalton and Booth, but the Manson family’s unwelcome encroachment on their story, and the brief, but impactful, cutaways to Tate, build a queasy tension throughout.
Often Tate’s required to do little more than dance blissfully while men look on longingly – a simple, but effective, way of conveying her infectious vitality. But a crucial scene in which a lonely Tate turns up at a cinema to watch herself in The Wrecking Crew, only to be greeted by a ticket seller with no idea who she is, before anonymously basking in audience adulation, concisely conveys a vulnerable inner-life for Tate that has never been portrayed on screen. Not since Jackie Brown has Tarantino worn his heart so transparently on his sleeve – it’s a style
that suits him.
‘IMPACTFUL CUTAWAYS BUILD A QUEASY TENSION THROUGHOUT’