“He did it again,” the guy sitting behind me said with a kind of undisguised admiration, as soon as “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” ended and the credits went. And at first I really wanted to agree with him. But still, in this film, Tarantino not only showed what he was able to do before, but also something new.
There is a genre of “slice of life” in online fiction. It is usually translated into Russian as "everyday life" - and it is best suited to describe what is happening in Hollywood. For two and a half hours, the viewer is simply shown several days from the life of the heroes of the picture, without giving, it would seem, any specific plot that ultimately unfolds in the final. And something in it subtly resembles “Fiction reading” - though the films are spiritually far apart, like Shanghai is from Larnaca.
Rick Dalton, the fading Hollywood star played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is trying to cope with his fading position. Two pleasures in his life - his own house, not rental housing, and a stuntman, friend, “more than a brother and a little less than a wife” by Cliff Booth performed by Brad Pitt, who will fall from his horse and fix the antenna and in the evening will drink beer with him. Most of the film is even such a road movie, where they alone or individually move from location to location, and the road here is almost more important than the destination. Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, live next door to Rick; they, unlike Rick, enjoy life and success.
It’s 1969 in the courtyard, and the film is still based on the case of Charlie Manson, his followers and their terrible murders. But Tarantino deals with real historical events in a peculiar way: he carefully, to the smallest detail, copies the entourage of the era, even produces short movie passages to paste into TVs, and the basis of history for him, on the contrary, is not indestructible. This has already happened, for example, in Inglourious Basterds, where Hitler was stuffed with lead from a machine gun in the director's corporate style. His emphasis is a bit biased: it could be a film about Sharon Tate, but in the end it is a film about Sharon Tate’s neighbors.
In network slang there is the term “cinnamon roll” - they call them a charismatic, charming, lively character who for some reason is not very lucky in life, but he causes sincere sympathy among the audience and does not consider him a weakling for his character traits. In Tarantino’s creation, such a bun is just Rick Dalton: how he experiences his career problems, how he rejoices at success, how he persuades himself, cheers, howl literally two seconds sobs in the shoulder of a friend, and then, spitting on dirty asphalt, nervously tightened by a cigarette, sniffing sniffly at the nose - all this makes the character surprisingly human and real. Maybe I just watched a bad movie for a long time and didn’t meet a high-quality acting for a long time, and so Dalton performed by DiCaprio struck me so deeply and caused such deep feelings that sometimes I just wanted to wrap it in a blanket, put it by the fireplace and solder it with margaritas, telling stories - but somehow he immediately became my friend.
The world around the characters "in this city" can change at the click of a finger, some pool party can become fateful, where someone accidentally meets someone. The main feature of the picture is the spirit, atmosphere, light mood of eternal summer, the soul of Hollywood, not yet shocked by the bloody massacre, where life is simpler, more measured, and films were shot better.
And in this measured, sunny world-holiday, there is a place for horror moments in which Cliff Booth shines (and in his image, Brad Pitt, rather, does not look like Brad Pitt, but Steven Tyler, who sang well), and these moments do not arise from out of nowhere, the viewer is neatly brought to them, gradually increasing alarm and bringing it to an absurd intensity. But Cliff is a character who has the role of “cool” in the film, and therefore with problems, whether it is a crowd of unfriendly residents of a distant ranch, a broken antenna or a flashy fight with a kung fu star, he copes effortlessly, as if it's just another day on the set, where you need to risk a little life.
Against the backdrop of all the viscous summer extravaganza, there is a nostalgic longing for the bygone golden age of Hollywood. Sharon Tate goes to the cinema, watches how the audience reacts to episodes with her, and is happy if she can cause a smile. Rick Dalton resigns himself to the fact that he is already at the margins of history, agrees to a passing role, but puts all his skill into it, because he is “Rick, his mother, Dalton” and cannot do otherwise. Cliff Booth, standing on the roof without a T-shirt, recalls that a couple of hours ago he again spoiled his career a little, but it was fun, so why get nervous?
The whole film is one great mood, assembled from a mosaic of small individual emotions and episodes that seem to be some kind of routine, calm, but together make up an interesting mixture in which the bitterness of a ruined past interferes with the unwillingness to forget this past The most important thing in "Hollywood" is not a juicy meat grinder, which is not classical for Tarantino, but the spirit of the city, the director seeks to prolong the days of fame and prosperity.