Quentin Tarantino attempts to suspend a dying Hollywood era in time.

With Disney’s ever-tightening stranglehold on the film industry, there is a changing of the guard currently underway in Hollywood. The age of the franchise film is quickly pushing out indie and auteur filmmakers. Quentin Tarantino is one of the few directors working today who is still capable of making a nationally-distributed original film with the full backing of a major studio. But even Tarantino seems to know his time as a filmmaker is winding down as rumors swirl of his impending retirement. This is not the first time a major disruption has transformed the Hollywood system, and Tarantino’s new film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood documents the last time the sun set on a major Hollywood era. The late 1960s saw the decline of traditionally-produced studio pictures and the dawn of the New Hollywood auteur revolution. With his film Tarantino creates a loving yet stagnant snapshot of this changing era and, through his singular storytelling style, attempts to suspend it forever in time.

The dwindling Old Hollywood is embodied by Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an aging former star of TV westerns now relegated to guest spots playing villains on other shows. DiCaprio once again collaborates with Tarantino to deliver one of the best performances of his career. Affecting a barely-suppressed stutter, DiCaprio plays Dalton as a fading celebrity struggling to retain relevance while being torn down by his own insecurities. Propping up his ego is his long-time stunt double and best friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), an aging ex-stuntman with Steve McQueen machismo who personifies the exact kind of swaggering Old Hollywood hero that Rick plays on TV. No longer in-demand on set, Cliff has settled into the role of Rick’s babysitter. He spends his days driving Rick to and from the set, propping up his confidence, and doing chores around Rick’s Hollywood Hills mansion. Incidentally, Dalton lives next door to director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) – toast of the town in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby –  and his wife and up-and-coming star Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). A visit to the Polanski home from a spaced-out hippie named Charlie (Damon Herriman) heralds the arrival of that other era-shattering event: the Tate murders by members of the Manson family.

It is during one of his errands for Rick that Cliff’s story intertwines with the Manson family, drawn in by a waifish hitchhiking siren who leads him back to their tumbledown Spahn Ranch commune. Tarantino chooses to place his focus on the women of the Manson family – the influence of Manson himself in the events of August 1969 is sidelined considerably. The skinny teens are depicted as dreamy-eyed temptresses led by the sinister Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Dakota Fanning) with Tex Watson (Austin Butler) serving as the muscle. It is in these characters that Tarantino’s particular brand of misguided white male feminism is most apparent. By downplaying Manson’s involvement and painting the girls as exercising more control over the events of the murders than they did in reality, Tarantino seems to believe he is giving the Manson girls – and women in general – a larger supply of agency. He depicts the Manson girls as sober participants in the crimes of The Family instead of the acid-fried and emotionally abused teenagers they really were. This depiction lets Manson off the hook for the psychological manipulation and sexual exploitation he exacted on young, vulnerable women. Giving women equal opportunities in media is not the same as giving female characters an equal share of the blame for the crimes of their male abusers. As Cliff leaves the ranch, dozens of snarling Manson girls crowd around spitting insults at him. A sea of women’s anger is directed at this personification of old-school masculinity. They could just as easily be on smartphones tweeting #metoo, another modern Hollywood revolution. 

The dawn of the Me Too era was the ending of another for Tarantino, abruptly severing his relationship with long-time producer and friend Harvey Weinstein. In the film, Cliff is similarly ostracized from Hollywood due to an “open secret” about his past, yet Rick brushes off the accusations and stands by his friend. It is impossible to watch these scenes without being reminded of Tarantino’s relationship with Weinstein. Rick’s support of Cliff in the face of the accusations seems to be Tarantino’s acknowledgement of the years he and countless others spent enabling Weinstein’s abuse. But he also appears unwilling to disrupt the rose-colored nostalgia of his story by confronting these issues or examining them more deeply. Once Upon a Time is a love letter, not a confession.

Tarantino’s sentimentality for the era he is depicting results in one of his most unfocused and rambling films. In Once Upon a Time he has created more of a documentary than a drama – a snapshot of the lives of three people in various stages of their careers during a time when their respective worlds were about to disappear. Tarantino seems desperate to freeze these characters in time so they don’t have to fade away into history. This battle against change leaves the film feeling aimless, and I found myself more invested in the fake Westerns Dalton was filming than the stagnate plot of the film itself. The ending is an act of desperation, an effort by Tarantino to use the magic of Hollywood as a means to save it. In doing so, he attempts to also save his own career in an industry that seems just as poised to ride into the LA sunset.