Author Topic: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood  (Read 7095 times)

colonel_mexico

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #20 on: December 04, 2019, 12:15:00 AM »
Tarantino’s insistence on violence exposes him as the most conservative auteurist today. The alternate reality still must satisfy our and his bloodlust of young, virginal hippie women. Kinda like how De Palma insisted in his documentary that people wouldn’t find rape and murder of men nearly as dramatically compelling as rape and murder of women. Tarantino truly lacks a feminist perspective. I think feminist critics will not be kind for him in the future in their re-evaluations. I also think there’s too many critics (mostly male) that give him the benefit of a doubt through armchair psychology of what he’s trying to say (when it really isn’t all that deep). He really does feel like one of those comedians complaining about PC culture to me.

Dave Chappelle is pretty damn funnythough
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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #21 on: December 05, 2019, 08:16:03 PM »
Tarantino’s insistence on violence exposes him as the most conservative auteurist today.
Gave this some thought on a rewatch. I still say Clint Eastwood holds tightly to this title. I can't tell how much Tarantino buys into a conservative mindset. I still see him as the nerdy outcast who fell in with the cool kids. On one hand, you put him in an interview room with DiCaprio, Pitt and Robbie and he stands out as the uncool one. However, they come off as cool because of the way Tarantino has them filmed, the clothes they wear, the material they respond to, the presence they have. This may be the ultimate movie where the best moments are just these people hanging out.

To your comment, this particular time and place is populated by people whose conservative/liberal positions are on extreme ends. So I see our heroes being more conservative than we usually see in a modern movie, but it's in reaction to all them dangerous hippies. Cliff Booth even displays characteristics similar to the hippies and doesn't seem to mind their existence, but once they become a threat (which happens twice) he retreats to his more conservative nature. By contrast, among the other stuntmen, he's the outsider who makes people nervous, much like the hippies do to Rick Dalton.

Will

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #22 on: December 10, 2019, 06:40:54 PM »
I honestly keep thinking back to Armond White's and Melissa Tamminga's takes on the film (below). Armond White notes that this is his only good movie primarily because so much of it is left "undigested". But that lack of digestion reveals Tarantino to be conservative in so many ways (as former regular Melissa notes). Personally, I don't see how anyone can claim how backwards GREEN BOOK is while simultaneously praising just how subversive this is. It feels nothing more than wish fulfillment back to a day and age where women (as Melissa notes) fit in the Madonna/Whore dichotomy and men (specifically straight white men) were the ones who decided their fates.

This is the part where someone claims "well, it's Once Upon a Time which denotes a fairytale like story so it can be reductive of gender norms" but out of all of the possible scenarios, this is the one Tarantino chooses? In that way, I agree with Armond White and K. Austin Collins and many others that this is Tarantino at his most naked, but is that truly worthy of praise when the creation feels not out of line with Trumpian politics? The fact of the matter is that a great deal of the critical population is straight white men and their adoring reviews have exposed them of overlooking certain sociological implications. I wish I could call out a few of them but I think it would land on deaf ears. Is there anything that would wake them?

TL;DR - Roger Ebert called Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY fascist then proceeded to give it a positive review. Huh?

ARMOND
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/tarantinos-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-is-his-best-film/

MELISSA
https://seattlescreenscene.com/2019/08/20/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-quentin-tarantino-2019-2/
« Last Edit: December 10, 2019, 09:11:41 PM by 1SO »

1SO

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #23 on: December 10, 2019, 09:26:15 PM »
I like the part where they destroy the hippies.


(*sarcasm*)


But seriously, I'm agreeing this is a conservative film, more for the way it uses nostalgia to look back fondly on a more conservative time (as Melissa writes) then for any amount of digestion, which is a connection I don't make.


When I saw The Hateful Eight, I hung in there until the scene where we see the former owners of the haberdashery get killed. These were kind, likable people and Tarantino gave them gruesome deaths that bothered me far more than that female assistant in Jurassic World everyone gets upset about. It put the film on a path of nihilism and grand guignol theater, but it got me thinking QT doesn't know a more responsible way of portraying death. This is why I was so apprehensive of what we all initially thought this film was headed towards. He's simply the wrong man for the job. However, we're treated to evil hippies that move like the possessed beings of Evil Dead, attacking our "heroes" who are more than capable of handling themselves. In fact, the tone allows them to unleash their sadistic side, something hinted at in the brief flashback to Cliff Booth on the boat with his wife and the scene at the ranch. You can argue it goes too far here, and I wouldn't argue against that opinion, but compared to Hateful Eight I appreciated having bad people behaving in a more menacing manner.

Now I wonder if the climax would bother me more if I hadn't seen Hateful Eight. I think it would.

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #24 on: December 10, 2019, 09:50:34 PM »
I don't need a movie to share my political values for me to get something out of watching it, so its conservatism (a charge I won't argue against) doesn't really mean much to me. I still do think it's doing something more complicated than you seem to be giving it credit for in its portrayal of Tate, but I think I've already explained that here. What's interesting is that there was another similarly written female role in a movie by a big auteur this year and that one seems to be seen in a better light than this one does. Perhaps it is Scorsese's record of writing more compelling women than Tarantino's record of the same, but the fact that there is a difference is pretty interesting, I think.
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Will

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #25 on: December 11, 2019, 05:20:06 PM »

When I saw The Hateful Eight, I hung in there until the scene where we see the former owners of the haberdashery get killed. These were kind, likable people and Tarantino gave them gruesome deaths that bothered me far more than that female assistant in Jurassic World everyone gets upset about. It put the film on a path of nihilism and grand guignol theater, but it got me thinking QT doesn't know a more responsible way of portraying death. This is why I was so apprehensive of what we all initially thought this film was headed towards. He's simply the wrong man for the job. However, we're treated to evil hippies that move like the possessed beings of Evil Dead, attacking our "heroes" who are more than capable of handling themselves. In fact, the tone allows them to unleash their sadistic side, something hinted at in the brief flashback to Cliff Booth on the boat with his wife and the scene at the ranch. You can argue it goes too far here, and I wouldn't argue against that opinion, but compared to Hateful Eight I appreciated having bad people behaving in a more menacing manner.


No one gets out alive in THE HATEFUL EIGHT. That's the main reason why I am more favorable to it than ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD where the dormant desire appears to be prolonging the "innocence" of 1969 through the reaffirmation of white male supremacy.

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #26 on: December 11, 2019, 05:29:08 PM »
I don't need a movie to share my political values for me to get something out of watching it, so its conservatism (a charge I won't argue against) doesn't really mean much to me. I still do think it's doing something more complicated than you seem to be giving it credit for in its portrayal of Tate, but I think I've already explained that here. What's interesting is that there was another similarly written female role in a movie by a big auteur this year and that one seems to be seen in a better light than this one does. Perhaps it is Scorsese's record of writing more compelling women than Tarantino's record of the same, but the fact that there is a difference is pretty interesting, I think.

Similar how? Similar in how they're underwritten? That's a fair point, but I'd argue both serve radically different purposes. Sharon Tate's womanhood is central to the plot of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD whereas Peggy's womanhood is not. Sharon Tate presents the Madonna, the fair maiden who must be saved from the Whores (seriously, read Melissa's piece, I am just summarizing it). She is presented as the male idea of the ideal woman with her only "flaw" being that she snores.

Peggy's womanhood, on the other hand, is presented as incidental. Her narrative purpose is that of an audience surrogate. She's horrified by Frank's violent tendencies, creeped out by Russ, and in awe of Hoffa. She is our guide throughout the film. Could she use better characterization? Absolutely, but I don't think her characterization is as sexist as the one for Sharon Tate.

This is all backed up by the fact that Peggy had a difficult relationship with her father. Sharon, by comparison, has a pretty detailed backstory that is all erased in exchange for a very reductive characterization. We never get to know her because she's not a character, but a symbol for conservative aims while Peggy operates as a symbol for an objective view of the men within the story.

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #27 on: December 11, 2019, 07:26:00 PM »
the dormant desire appears to be prolonging the "innocence" of 1969 through the reaffirmation of white male supremacy.

For me it's that moment when you grow up to the point where your rowdy boy friends can't be as much a part of your life anymore. The film hits me in the heart when they return from Italy and Rick and Cliff understand their lives are now on different paths and they can't just hang out with beer and pizza like they used to. The finale is part of the last night of their bromance, and they go out in a big, rowdy way.

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #28 on: December 11, 2019, 07:29:39 PM »
Similar how? Similar in how they're underwritten?
Similar in how there's been a fuss made over the number of lines of dialogue they're given when the performance is all about their presence in the room and what they're saying without words.

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Re: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
« Reply #29 on: December 11, 2019, 11:03:33 PM »
Yeah, that. I've read Melissa's essay, too, and found it to be a compelling reading even though I found the film to be doing more with and for the Tate character than she ultimately does.
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