(An essay by John Burke, August 21, 2019)
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No one would be surprised to learn that Hollywood films have a problematic relationship with violence. Such violence is so ubiquitous it hardly bears mentioning any more. Of late, there has been an emerging trend in cinematic violence that seems to be both deliberate and disturbing. In the context of the Me-Too movement and the racial awakening of the past few years, violence against women, African Americans and First Nations peoples has been thankfully curbed. (1) With fewer classes of people available to abuse, some filmmakers have thought it a bold creative choice to inflict their violent fantasies on teenage girls. They go through great lengths to justify placing these outrageous scenes in their movies; scenes that, in isolation, would be instantly and openly condemned. I first became aware of this watching Kick Ass (wr. Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn/dir. Matthew Vaughn), an unremarkable comic book movie that gained a lot of controversy in 2010 because of the language used by Hit-Girl (played by then-12-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz).(2) What I found far more disturbing was a scene where the antagonist, Frank D’Amico (played with cartoonish menace by 6’-2” Mark Strong) is straddling the twelve year old and beating her senseless. It’s hardly the most graphically violent scene ever filmed, even in that movie. But there had to be a moment on set where somebody must have thought: What the FUCK are we doing?
This is hardly the only instance of such questionable scenes finding their way into movies. Even as far back as 1994, Léon: The Professional (wr./dir. Luc Besson) featured a pre-pubescent girl being indoctrinated into a world of extreme violence, where Matilda (a then twelve-year-old Natalie Portman) is armed with weaponry that would break her wrist if she tried to fire it for real. But even the threat of gun play isn’t enough and, inevitably, Matilda is subjected to an oddly sexual threat from Stansfield (played by Gary Oldman at his menacing best) as he strokes her hair with the barrel of his — very phallic — pistol.
In 2011, Zach Snyder made a passion project called Sucker Punch, (wr. Steve Shibuya and Zach Snyder/dir. Zach Snyder) where the entire movie featured nothing but sexually imperiled scantily clad teenage girls being subjected to a two and a half hour orgy of threatened sexual violence. Mr. Snyder even thought it was a clever idea to portray their dissociative states of mental trauma as ‘fantasy sequences’. Surely somebody must have read the script before giving him the money for this, but no one had a problem with it until the movie hit the theatres with a dull thud.
These are hardly the only instances of such scenes in movies, where the threat of sexual assault and violence against pre-teen girls is used to motivate the audience’s sympathy
These are hardly the only instances of such scenes in movies, where the threat of sexual assault and violence against pre-teen girls is used to motivate the audience’s sympathy and justify the inevitable destruction of the ‘bad guy’. I’m certainly not suggesting those threats are not the reality of an unfortunate number of teenagers. But perhaps the expenditure of so much energy by older white men in graphically depicting such violence against teenage girls for the entertainment of predominantly white male audiences needs to be re-examined.
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To the surprise of absolutely no one, and to the dismay of many, Quentin Tarantino has recently upped the ante on this particular trend with his release of Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood (wr./dir. Quentin Tarantino) (3), a hybrid comedy-drama set in Manson-era Los Angeles at the end of what Tarantino describes as the ‘golden age’ of Hollywood. (4) Charles Manson and his merry band of murderers allegedly brought this idealistic era of filmmaking to a close when he arranged the murder of actor Sharon Tate, who was then pregnant with Roman Polanski’s child.
Despicable characters like plantation owners and Nazis are an easy choice when searching for bad guys …
This movie is the third of Tarantino revisionist history films, after Django Unchained (2012) and Inglorious Basterds (2009). (5) Despicable characters like plantation owners and Nazis are an easy choice when searching for bad guys, especially if the objective is to inflict as much tortuous pain on the bad guy as possible without risking protests. I personally think it’s incredible lazy, relieving the writer of never having to explain exactly why the bad guy is bent on destroying the world. I’m guessing, in Tarantino mind, the Manson family is almost on the same level of evil, though the idea is as preposterous as the ending of his movie. To suggest teenage girls indoctrinated into a violent cult are in any way on a par with the genocide of Hitler and slavery is as reductionist as it sounds.
I have a sense that a film like Django Unchained (wr./dir. Quentin Tarantino) was created for the sole purpose of filming black people under brutal subjugation, or maybe just so Tarantino could justify using the word ‘ni**er’ more than any other film maker could otherwise be allowed. The copious use of that word in his scripts suggests the hyper-annuated mind of a little boy who has just learned a dirty word. A case could be made that filmmakers should never shy away from depicting atrocities, especially when such incidents were historically glossed over. But to present these same atrocities in excruciating, fetishistic detail sometimes has the opposite effect. Will Smith allegedly turned down the role of Django (eventually played with a certain underlying bemusement by Jamie Foxx) because Tarantino refused to ascent to his request to allow the character to kill Calvin J. Candie (played with disturbing relish by Leonardo DiCaprio). It’s possible that artistic arrogance played a part in this decision, given Tarantino reputation of refusing anyone even the slightest creative input. But it clearly had something to do with the fact Dr. King Shultz (played with appropriate over-the-top conviction by Christoph Waltz) was white. What exactly was Tarantino point on insisting that the white saviour trope play such an overt part in the resolution of the story? Who knows? I sometimes think he can’t help himself. The inevitable result was a two and a half hour exercise in emasculating most of the male black characters.
The inevitable result was a two and a half hour exercise in emasculating most of the black characters.
Personally, the most satisfying catharsis would have been for Broomhilda von Shaft (played by a frustratingly underused Kerry Washington) to stop the evil plantation owner’s reign. After all, wasn’t she the one that was wronged the most? But it would never have occurred to the predominantly male filmmakers that she should be the hero of her own fate. Washington’s passive role of the victim somewhat mimics Sharon Tate’s in Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, waiting for a man to save her. For all his bombast about respecting women, Tarantino definitely gravitates toward these female victims as a default, especially after the untimely death of his long-time film editor Sally Menke. (6)
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Tarantino alternate-history approach to the story of the Manson murders is a film buff’s wet dream, with so many references to 1969 Los Angeles that it takes many viewings to catch them all. The scenes at Spahn Ranch are a Hitchcock-level master class in building suspense and in how to use character and silence to ramp up tension. Certainly my favourite of many scenes was the confrontation between Cliff Booth (played with rugged confidence by Brad Pitt) and Bruce Lee (a thoroughly convincing Mike Moh). It’s telling that the major criticism with the film was that it sought to tarnish the considerable reputation of actor/writer/producer Bruce Lee, a man whose legendary physical prowess is so cartoonish, you know it can’t possibly be real. When viewed in the context of some of the archive interview footage of Bruce Lee fully displaying his arrogance, the characterization seems to be spot-on.
It’s telling that the major criticism with the film was that it sought to tarnish the considerable reputation of actor/writer/producer Bruce Lee, a man whose legendary physical prowess is so cartoonish, you know it can’t possibly be real.
For the most part, the writing was exceptional, with even the most minor characters lavished with intricate details. As usual, Tarantino was able to attract a stellar cast, even in the smaller roles. It was wonderful to see Bruce Dern’s resurgence continue in the role of the delightfully grouchy George Spahn, the owner of the movie ranch where the Manson clan squatted for years. (7) Even the dog, Brandy, got to play a charming domestic bit (a speaking part?) with Brad Pitt, to the jealousy of many female actors in Los Angeles, I’m sure.
There was little to quibble about the look of the film, either, with Cinematographer Robert Richardson and Production Designer Barbra Ling evoking the look of a slightly sun-faded post card.
I’m sure this is the way many who had never been to Los Angeles imagined the city looked like in the 1960s, constantly bathed in a golden glow. The lavish detail of Ling’s production design is virtually flawless owing mostly to the decision to use practical locations and real historical buildings, minimizing the digital effects as much as possible. The physical reproduction of period details at famous Los Angeles landmarks was definitely worth the considerable cost, with every dollar spent showing up on screen. There was never a moment where the sense of time and place were betrayed by a dodgy visual effect.
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The core of this film, of course, is the relationship between Cliff Booth and former television star Rick Dalton (played with overwrought pathos by Leonardo DiCaprio). Tarantino claimed the relationship was inspired by Kurt Russell and his long-time stuntman John Casino, a depiction of professional loyalty that is hard to imagine in today’s world, where the power dynamic between employee and employer is both fluid and vaguely homoerotic.
Their friendship is purportedly by far the longest relationship in either of their lives, and Booth’s dedication remains even after Dalton can no longer afford to pay him. This hints that there might have been a shared skeleton or two in their closet. All of this is played out perfectly with deliberate pacing and brilliant performances by the two actors, making their fascinating relationship alone worth the price of admission.
I believe Hitchcock famously said that if you show a gun in the first act, it should go off by the third act. In some ways, the character of Cliff Booth is that gun. But even at his worst, Hitchcock would never have stooped to asking Cary Grant to repeatedly smash a teenage girl’s head into a vintage wall-mounted telephone until her face is little more than a bloody pulp. Big name actors will forsake their considerable pay for the chance to play interesting, layered characters, and I assume Brad Pitt is no exception. This is hardly the first time Pitt’s played threatening or outright violent characters, from the overly self-reflective title character in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (wr./dir. Andrew Dominik) to the exact opposite role of Tyler Durden in Fight Club (wr. Jim Uhis/dir. David Fincher) and everything in between. But is it really worth it if a character as compelling as Cliff Booth is betrayed in the end by a misogynist orgy of violence? I couldn’t help but feel that the final scenes in this film betrayed all that work, a gratuitous smudge on his image as an actor who has been exceedingly careful in the work he chooses to undertake. But he must have felt the first two hours of brilliance was worth the last fifteen minutes of schlock. He might have been right, since he now has an Academy Award to prove it.
But he must have felt the first two hours of brilliance was worth the last fifteen minutes of schlock.
There were many things that were worthy of this film being celebrated as a Hollywood classic. It had all the elements that could make it sweep the award season. It had an award-worthy script, great visuals, masterful pacing, excellent performances by an all-star cast, and the added benefit of reflecting Hollywood’s love for itself. In almost every respect it was Oscar bait that would have warmed Harvey Weinstein’s cold black heart.(8) So that begs the question why the film under-performed, both at the box office and during awards season? The answer seems obvious in that it lies with the filmmaker himself. My admiration for the film’s brilliance could only be tempered by Tarantino problematic misogyny and fetishistic obsession with violence.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that extreme violence should never be portrayed in movies, even to comic effect. Tarantino previous films, especially 1994’s Pulp Fiction, reveled in its violence to great effect, especially when the characters had to deal with the consequences of that violence. When Vinnie (played with quirky effectiveness by John Travolta) accidentally shoots Marvin (a convincingly terrified Phil LaMarr) in the face, spraying a comical amount of blood and gore on the inside of the car and all over his partner Jules (played by the consistently brilliant Samuel L. Jackson), the characters have to spend a significant portion of the movie dealing with the consequences.
The difference is that the scene was an organic consequence of the characters and their situation, unlike the final scenes in Hollywood, where the entire sequence was justified only as some kind of gratuitous wish-fulfillment on the part of the filmmaker.
Tarantino deification of Sharon Tate (played with unfair brainlessness by Margot Robbie) came across as little more than his unattainable sexual fetish: an idealized flower child the likes of which we haven’t been seen since Kay Lenz in Breezy (wr. Jo Heims/dir. Clint Eastwood). As a screen character, she’s barely more than 3-dimensional doll. To be fair to Robbie (a fine actor who is sometimes hobbled by her good looks), there was almost no character development for her to portray, and certainly no empathy developed for her that the audience could relate to. If you didn’t already know who Sharon Tate was, this film provides only the most superficial insight into her character. The same cannot be said for the white male characters in the film, who are all heroic (if flawed) in their own unique ways.
Mike Moh, the only visible minority, was at least given something interesting to do. Robbie just got to dress up and look pretty, a threatened virginal character put forward as a justification for the inevitable violence Tarantino was compelled to portray later in the film.
Tarantino proudly admits his entire inspiration for the movie was based on the final reel of the film, having written the story back-to-front in the service of the problematic final scenes he envisioned. He even went to the point of hiding the ending from the producers and the crew. (9) You wonder what the real reason he might have had for being reticent to show it to people. Perhaps if the ending of the story had been widely distributed, maybe someone would have taken a moment to question what the hell they were doing. (10) You have to remember Tarantino deliberately set up these circumstances, just so that he could indulge in the creation of these scenes tailor-made to satisfy his excesses. He admits this was the entire reason for the film from the beginning. The story explicitly posits that Sharon Tate could have been saved if only heavily armed misogynistic white men had been given the opportunity to intervene. When the thesis of the film is described in those stark terms, how could it not cause the viewer to feel a bit nauseated?
Robbie just got to dress up and look pretty, a threatened virginal character put forward as a justification for the inevitable violence Tarantino was compelled to portray later in the film.
But the viciousness of their retribution against these people was hardly justified by the circumstances. The first rule of screenwriting is to never betray the rules of the world you have created. And the rule was that, as Dalton torched that girl in the swimming pool, he had no idea what these people were really capable of at this point. Is Tarantino, the writer, not betraying the characters and his entire story by such a turn? Of course, the audience knows these are the Manson family girls who, with Tex Watson, would eventually kill Sharon Tate and her unborn baby. But the characters at that point do not know this. Granted, the character of Cliff Booth could claim self-defense in the particular circumstances Tarantino set up in the scene, and I suppose Rick Dalton could make the same claim. But in the minds of Booth and Dawson, they are just a bunch of hippies that creeped them out. Does this justify smashing a teenage girl in the face with a can of dog food?
But even at his worst, Hitchcock would never have stooped to asking Cary Grant to repeatedly smash a teenage girl’s head into a vintage wall-mounted telephone until her face is little more than a bloody pulp.
In a bid to justify Tarantino’s excess, some critics have even suggested the final reel of the film was nothing more than Cliff Booth’s acid-induced fantasy, but I’m not buying it. And if Tarantino meant it as some kind of half-baked tribute to Sharon Tate, then he needs some serious self-examination. I’m certain Roman Polanski would have been horrified, if he ever found the stomach to watch the movie. (11)
A friend of mine described the final scenes of Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood as a ‘facial’, referring to a particular sexual act that could only be seen as a fire hose to a woman’s sexual fire. While my friend said it with tongue firmly in cheek, she wasn’t far off. As a film buff, to have such an amazing tribute to an iconic age of Hollywood filmmaking end with such a cheap B-Movie bit of self-gratification was nauseating.
Tarantino’s sadistic impulses aside, it was the lack of imagination in how he chose to end his film that was so beneath everything else he had created up to that point. It can only be thought of as a betrayal of the material. I can’t help but wonder if Sally Menke were alive today, could she have convinced Tarantino to end the film right at that point when the Manson family is standing outside the gate of Sharon Tate’s house, allowing the audience the luxury to wonder, “If I was Cliff Booth, what would I have done had I encountered the clan from Spahn Ranch in my boss’s driveway?” I believe such an ending would have pushed the film into masterpiece status, perhaps causing audiences and critics alike to talk about it as much as the ending of The Sopranos (cr. David Chase). The realists in the audience would assume Tate would have been killed as she was in reality. But the more imaginative would have bought into Tarantino fairy tale and imagined Cliff Booth somehow intervening and saving her. That would have been a classic ending to beat them all. It might even have been enough to bring Tarantino the respect he obviously craves. But Tarantino had no interest in respecting his audience, allowing them make up their own minds.
That would have been a classic ending to beat them all. It might even have been enough to bring Tarantino the respect he obviously craves.
My ultimate disappointment with this film was mostly due to what I see as the failed opportunity to create a modern classic, something that would have blown away critics and audiences alike. Instead, all that carefully constructed tension was vaporized by the filmmaker’s choice to indulge in his worst impulses. I believe Hitchcock would have been appalled at the waste.
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1) Though the same can’t be said for so-called ‘brown’ characters, like Mexicans, Middle Eastern or South Asian characters.
2) The people who complained about this obviously haven’t hung around many twelve-year olds recently.
3) There seems to be no consensus about where or if the ellipsis are included in the official title. I can only assume the posters and the opening titles are correct, as Tarantino would have had to approve both.
4) This is really the biggest lie in the film, since it could be argued quite convincingly that the real golden age of Hollywood died a decade earlier. Other than Stanley Kubrick’s films, I can’t think of any studio productions from that era worth watching. Certainly Hollywood royalty had long lost its lustre by then, replaced by the far more interesting ‘new age’ period beginning in 1967 with releases like The Graduate (wr. Buck Henry and Calder Willingham/dir. Mike Nichols), Bonnie and Clyde (wr. David Newton and Robert Benton/dir. Arthur Penn) and In the Heat of the Night (wr. Sterling Silliphant/dir. Norman Jewison). Of course, even that ‘new age’ all ended in 1977 when Star Wars (wr./dir. George Lucas) confirmed that the blockbuster Jaws (wr. Carl Gottlieb/dir. Steven Spielberg) wasn’t just a one-off.
5) I don’t include The Hateful Eight (2015) in this because I still haven’t figured out what the hell the point was bringing all those ugly characters together. At some point in the film, almost all of these titular eight men heroically beat on Daisy Domergue (played by a very slight Jenifer Jason Leigh). Apparently no one on set spoke up about that, either.
6) After Sally Menke’s death in 2010, Tarantino films have become demonstratively more misogynistic.
7) Spahn was originally to be played by Burt Reynolds but he died before filming began.
8) This is the first of Tarantino films not produced by the serial rapist, despite Tarantino decades-old knowledge of how Weinstein treated women, even some of Tarantino own girlfriends.
9) Apparently he kept the only paper copy of the third act in a safe, allowing the actors access only for rehearsals before it was locked away again. There was talk that no one on the crew had seen the final act of the script, though I can’t see how that could be possible.
10) Not that it would have made much of a difference considering Tarantino ego. He seems hardly the type to accept criticism of his creative decisions, even when it involves incinerating a teenage girl with a flame thrower.
11) I’m not excusing Polanski’s behaviour after the death of his wife, but his problems seem to have begun only after she was murdered. What he went through would serious fuck-up anyone.
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Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood (2019)
Running Time: 161 minutes.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Cinematography by: Robert Richardson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie
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