Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Considering Quentin Tarantino’s fascination for older movies, it was almost inevitable that he’d end up recreating Hollywood history sooner or later. With Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, he gets to recreate 1969 Los Angeles in his own idiosyncratic fashion, playing up the iconography but avoiding many clichés along the way. In some ways, it’s a less overly experimental film than many of his previous ones: the direction remains grounded most of the time, and the film doesn’t overuse splashy effects. On the other hand, it’s still Tarantino and that means it’s quite unlike most other movies at the multiplex: it eventually becomes an alternate-reality drama, it has fun with narration, it plays off its actors’ career and it makes copious use of very long sequences that play almost in real-time. At times, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is less of a story and more of an immersion in a reality fifty years distant, taking in the mundane sights and sounds of a specific time and place. It’s quite a bit of fun even when it multiplies the obscure references of its day-in-the-life style, and the actors look as if they’re having fun. Brad Pitt has a terrific role as the guy who’s usually smarter than anyone else in the room and Margot Robbie is luminous as a Sharon Tate saved from her real-world fate (a justifiable historical inaccuracy) but the real winners here are the viewers for a quick trip through a time machine.