“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”: A Love Letter with Blood

“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is the ninth work of director Quentin Tarantino.The director Quentin has a lot of fans all over the world.

Quentin once said that he retired after only making ten films, and as the penultimate movie “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”, the script took Quentin 5 years, it can be described as intensive work, how about this movie?

Quentin himself revealed that it took five years to polish the script. Originally, he wanted to come out as a novel, but then he realized that it was the best material suitable for making a movie.

Quentin has always only created original video creations and scripts (except for 1997 (Jackie Brown) which was adapted from a novel, and 2009’s “Inglourious Basterds” introduced historical facts).

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the second film that introduces real events into original story scripts, and “Inglourious Basterds” 10 years ago has once again constructed a story stage that empties history.

Related Post:10 movies that influenced “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”.

As far as the tone and formal aesthetics of the film are concerned, this film may not be the Quentin you are familiar with.

“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is relatively gentle and private, and tends to be authoritarian. It expresses Quentin’s fandom in the 1960s. The formula is still Quentin’s unique style and tone.

Quentin led the audience to return to the glamorous period of Hollywood, and took the time to return to Los Angeles in 1969: that era in which contemporary American society abused and discriminated against hippie culture, and the Manson family strangled Roman Polanski’s wife-Sharonta A special murder case.

If Alfonso Cuarón’s “Rome” is his love letter to “Hometown”, then “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is undoubtedly Quentin’s “Reminiscence of the Past”.

The cultural foundation of the whole work is his “Magic” spirit and feelings. The bloody and violent unique sauce has become a piece of cake after dinner.

Related Post:Quentin Tarantino: I still have to retire after making 10 feature films. I once considered restarting “Reservoir Dog”.

“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” can be described as Quentin’s own old wine that has been brewed for many years. Whether it tastes different from person to person, it is a matter of opinion whether you can taste the final strength and flavor.

Before Quentin became a film director, he was a work-student in a video store and a lifelong movie fanatic.
The fascinating feeling of being obsessed with filming is undoubtedly his creative nutrient.

His love for Italian western films led him to shoot “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight”.

His fascination with Bruce Lee and Hong Kong-produced films led him to shoot “Kill Bill Vol.1” with the intertwined elements of East and West.

Now he has created a collage of his memories and fascinating feelings of the late 1960s: “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”.

This is also the work with the highest viewing frequency and threshold in his creative career.

When the film was released, Quentin issued a list of ten films produced in the 1950s and 1960s, which indicated that “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is a work that “pays tribute to the story”.

Compared with the past, Quentin is more “gentle” (at least for the first two-thirds of the film). The nonlinear narrative of the signature is honestly true with the previous fluency and accuracy.

But it is more like a collage of memories, a fairy tale of the sixties that was once magnificent.

Its spirit and blood are still Quentin, but in terms of narrative texture and picture scheduling, Quentin’s most convergent and gentle performance in recent years.

Quentin, who has created “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight”, in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”, in addition to paying tribute to the once magnificent entertainment symbol, he did not forget to introduce his passion for Italian westerns. .

The decline of Italian Westerns is a generational decline for Quentin, and the characters in the film do all of this.

Rick Dalton (Leonardo), the former movie star of the outdated golden age, represents the “past” of the western film and television era.

It has gone through the peak of colorful light, but now it has died down.

His queen martial arts stand-in-Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) represents the “now”.

The scene axis that is the hardest behind the light and shadow and the actors is also the image worker who is concealed by the aura of the superstar.

And under these two main fictional characters, don’t forget the “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” Triangle and Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate (the real characters in the film).

However, Margot’s role is not at all the core role of the whole, or even a vase corner.

The script also didn’t give the character the thickness it should have, and basically the meaning of the character was just fur.

The death of Sharon Tate represents the passing of the era of innocence in Hollywood. Compared with the golden age of Rick Dalton’s Italian Westerns, the two fall into a different star.

But Quentin contrasted them together, but could not show the strong contrast between the two, on the contrary, it showed the distinct “actor class”.

It can only be said that this “Hollywood Love Letter” does not only cover a single level. It may not be hierarchical and detailed, but it is indeed an ingenious display.

Quentin once said: “People ask me if I have been to film school? I said no, I went directly to film.”

“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” allowed him to successfully enter the “movie” itself!

This is a movie about movies, and it also exposes the glamour and scars, prosperity and downfall of Hollywood in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The year it was released coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of Sharon Tate’s death. The end of the film seems to be a branch of the plot of Manson’s murder. Unexpectedly, the handling at the end is unexpectedly gentle.

But “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is constructed on an aerial stage where reality and fiction are mixed, and it is also a story view constructed by Quentin.

Of course, he can rewrite history in his own way and narrative perspective, just like “Inglourious Basterds” ten years ago, “in the name of tampering with the historical facts of Nazi Germany, and practicing the real idea of ​​revenge of the Jews.”

On the whole, “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is by no means Quentin’s top refined work, and even one of his works in the new millennium, which is slightly moderate, or perhaps the most ordinary and private.

But I am very sure of the creative idea of ​​the film. The first half of the literary drama is more than the martial arts, which is written with soft and stylistic brushstrokes.

In the second half, the most orthodox Quentin R-level formula works normally. This is a black tragicomedy. It is also a work of Quentin’s slightly mixed creative levels and thoughts from the film to the present. It is not very accurate, but the information in it is still sharp.

In addition, if you want to understand the movie “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”, it would be better to have some understanding of Hollywood in the 1960s.

For example, the murder of Sharon Tate, and why Bruce Lee appeared in the film?

As time passed, the story between Bruce Lee and Sharon Tate became less known.

In addition to the parts brought in from the “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” movie, there is actually a deeper relationship between them.

First of all, many people think that Sharon Tate’s ex-boyfriend, Jay Sebring, one of the victims of the Manson family murder, started his career in Hollywood for Bruce Lee.

The Hollywood star hair stylist discovered Bruce Lee’s amazing performance in a 1964 karate competition.

Later, a producer mentioned to him that he hoped to find an Asian actor who was good at martial arts, and Jessebrin recommended Bruce Lee to him.

Bruce Lee also participated in an audition-which allowed him to successfully win the classic role in the movie The Green Hornet: (Kato).

In the following years, Bruce Lee served as the martial arts instructor for many Hollywood stars, including actress Sharon Tate.

He also became friends with Sharon Tate’s husband: director Roman Polanski, and often went on vacation together.

Unfortunately, after the murder of Sharon Tate, Polanski was rumored to have suspected Bruce Lee’s involvement in the case.

It was mainly because Bruce Lee said that he had lost a pair of glasses at the time. Unfortunately, the police also found a pair of unidentified glasses at the scene of the murder.

Of course, the misunderstanding was quickly resolved, but Bruce Lee died of cerebral edema a few years after the murder of Sharon Tate, at the age of 32.

Before the official release of “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”, Quentin worked with Sony Pictures to personally select 10 films for screening on Sony’s film channel.

These 10 movies have all influenced Quentin’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”. The following is a list of films, welcome to collect!

1. (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969)
2. (Cactus Flower, 1969)
3. (Easy Rider, 1969)
4. (Arizona Raiders, 1965)
5. (Getting Straight, 1970)
6. (The Wrecking Crew, 1968)
7. (Model Shop, 1970)
8. (Hammerhead, 1968)
9. (Gunman’s Walk, 1958)
10. (Battle of the Coral Sea, 1959)

Related Post:”Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” novel published, the new trailer has many new scenes.