Guest Voices: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

"In this town, it can all change, like that."

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino's love letter to a bygone era of movie stardom. It's indulgent, but also complex and fascinating, and offers an utterly unique experience for those willing to embrace its meandering charms.

It looks at two men who embody the dichotomy of Hollywood, and tells a fractured fairytale about the city of dreams with a blend of fact and fiction. It's Tarantino's warmest movie since Jackie Brown.

It's also a kinder, gentler film than one would expect from the master of gut-wrenching graphic violence and bloodshed. It's imperfect, erratic and even infuriating at times. But it is nearly impossible not to love.

Tarantino has a reputation of being a man of many intense passions, but this is the stuff he really cares about, we can clearly see and feel that in every single scene, and it inspires some of his most quietly effective filmmaking.

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino found an ideal project to focus his fixations, fantasies, fetishes, and concoct a brilliant recipe of Hollywood fairytale. One of the best part of the movie is that it forgoes telling us how much Tarantino loves films, and simply lets us feel it, almost like being on a ride of 1969 Hollywood Boulevard with him.

Talking about the actors involved, Brad Pitt has one of the coolest movie roles he's yet played, Leonardo DiCaprio gets to show off all manner of acting chops, and Margot Robbie gets to enjoy pretending to be the Sharon Tate we never got to see.

It's also a heavyweight acting match between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. If it were up to me, I would hand the belt to Pitt, along with an early Oscar nomination. Their whole dynamic, which was beautiful and brotherly, reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Now that's a heavy comparison!

It's funny, sad, perversely nostalgic, and it's Tarantino's obsessive ode to a lost Hollywood era that's packed with visual verve, pop-culture riffs and cinematic pleasures.

It's both the most and least Tarantino film in a very long time. 

 

Rahul Menon was born and raised in New Delhi, India, and currently lives in Illinois. He is an assistant director, screenwriter and occasional actor, as well as a computer science engineer who worked as a software analyst and in advertising and marketing prior to entering the film industry. His screen debut was as screenwriter and assistant director of Saayanna Varthakal (Evening News) in 2018. He is currently pursuing a masters degree at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Facebook, Instagram, IMDB.