This essay contains spoilers. Be forewarned.
First and foremost, OUATIH is a film that's going to depend a lot on what you take going into it. Not just culturally, but about the Tate/LaBianca murders and the people involved. (And don't get me started on the international trailer, which makes the film look like a buddy action rescue comedy. Cringe for a number of reasons.)
With my knowledge of the events, people, culture, and the TV/movies within it, coupled with my (before this film, total) inexperience with Tarantino films, here's my take on a film that's been much-written about and discussed. This is going to be less about the deeper themes and subtext (countless articles are out there about it), and more about my experience personally.
My mere addition to the "actor and double" thematic analysis:
Note where the actors' names are placed on the screen.
Being "stuck in the past" when it comes to my influences and film-watching, OUATIH is about as "made for me" as a new film in the 2010s can get. Possibly the dream of any screenwriter is for them to be able to express their "memory piece" in a script, incorporating as many little details as possible to create (or partially re-create) a full-blown world in and of itself.
Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton
Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth
Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate
So, what did I take into OUATIH? Well, being a third-generation true crime buff helped with the historical elements, but of course, knowing the (regular and pop) culture of 1969, on the brink of inevitable change, probably put me at an advantage. It's not the same as actually being around then, of course, but knowing virtually all the names mentioned did make me feel good inside.
I also had an inkling on how the ending was going to go, so my first viewing was less filled with growing tension, but rather a calm, cool, "let's enjoy the slow ride" mindset.
I also had an inkling on how the ending was going to go, so my first viewing was less filled with growing tension, but rather a calm, cool, "let's enjoy the slow ride" mindset.
Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring
Al Pacino as Marvin Schwarz
(Side note: I imagine that if Rick and Marvin were having the above conversation a decade later, Marvin would say Rick wouldn't even be cut out for Mrs. Columbo. Ouch!)
The first time I saw the teaser trailer for OUATIH, I was hyped. Not only because of the music (opening gloriously with The Mamas and the Papas' "Straight Shooter"), but also for Mike Moh as Bruce Lee (more on that later).
Mike Moh as Bruce Lee, standing out in the teaser trailer
for all the right reasons.
But the subsequent main trailer emphasized the vulnerability of its main protagonist, one Rick Dalton.
As a perfectionist with a self-inflicted stubborn streak, I relate to this
on a deep and spiritual level.
Full of fear for the future and little moments of honesty, Rick's role
is that of both an audience surrogate and (one of) the film's heart(s).
Similar to Luke Skywalker in A New Hope (I know...), Rick Dalton is the main character, a role that would normally be filled by someone with Cliff Booth's personality in older films and shows. Constantly unsure of himself, albeit filtered through the ways of coping (alcoholism, heavy smoking, etc.) that would bat fewer eyes in 1969, Rick is not a man who keeps his feelings inside, and to its credit, the film never makes a big deal out of it. It's less "men shouldn't be afraid to cry" (though that's not a bad sentiment), and more "this is who Rick is, and Cliff is there for him and is his friend for who he is".
Bright yellow Hawaiian shirts never looked so cool.
By intricate contrast, Cliff is a man whose actions speak louder than his light, languid words.
Constantly visually framed like the western hero Rick only played on T.V., Cliff is equal parts loyal friend and morally-ambiguous spaghetti western gunman. We're given several reasons why we're not supposed to like Cliff, but he's just so cool that we can't help but envy him a little. And it's clear that this is completely intentional.
While I question a couple of QT's other casting choices,
I seem to be the only person floored at the casting of Rebecca Gayheart
as Cliff's late wife. Talk about adding to the subtext of that scene.
It took me some time (okay, months) to think about why Cliff has this ambiguity on virtually all fronts. My answer has mainly to do with how this all plays in the climax. If we saw Cliff as totally friendly with no dark past whatsoever, it would have just made his later actions a lot more disturbing and come right out of nowhere. (Again, more on that later.)
Much has been made of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and how she figures in the film. Film is a visual medium first, and had this been a novel, Robbie's amount of spoken dialogue would've stood out far more, but seeing as she's not the main character, this never bothered me in the quantitative sense.
By all accounts, Tate really seemed like the nicest woman you could ever meet. Seeing her go about her normal daily life allows the viewer to step back from how she died and instead see how she lived.
In contrast to Rick being hard on himself, Tate
gleefully seeing The Wrecking Crew should remind us to
take pride in and enjoy our own work. There is no shame in it.
Character actor Clu Gulager (The Last Picture Show, McQ)
appears as a bookstore owner.
Knowing Roman Polanski was cheating on her throughout
their marriage, I interpreted that to be the reason for
Tate's briefly-seen melancholy here.
Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich in The Sound of Music
and the 70s Spider-Man) as director Sam Wanamaker.
Julia Butters as Trudi Fraser,
rightfully praised by critics as a standout.
Margaret Qualley as spunky
Manson "Family" member Pussycat.
Bruce Dern as a hilarious George Spahn.
(Also, Cliff's accent here reminded me of Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos.)
NOW, ABOUT THAT ONE SCENE...
Knowing what I knew going in and the historical fiction aspect, seeing Cliff's "flashback-within-a-flashback" scene with Bruce Lee...
The haircut seen above isn't what Lee actually had on The Green Hornet,
but the 70s Enter the Dragon cut is so iconic, anyone would let it slide.
For the record, I'm a mixed Chinese-Canadian female who's white-looking enough to not get crap for being Chinese or mixed (yet), but here's my interpretation.
For the most part, I understand what QT is trying to do, and I never thought this scene to be nearly as offensive as some others did.
For one, the fictional aspect should be kept in mind. Two, this is Cliff's (ambiguous at best, unreliable at worst) recollection. Three, even in that version of events, Cliff is a condescending jerk to Lee, calling him "Kato" and treating him like a child. (And while I can see Lee boasting about his abilities, since, well, he could back it up, I can also imagine Cliff exaggerating Lee's claim that he'd "make [Muhammad Ali] a cr*pple".)
Four, outside that scene, in later separate flashbacks, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring are seen training with a much nicer and more at-ease Lee.
Further adding to the unreliability of Cliff's flashback is a factor that also clues the viewer in to the film's level of fiction:
One astute viewer online pointed out that a person would be seriously injured
from being thrown into a car door and leaving that massive a dent.
And while QT never struck me as someone who hated Lee (though I don't completely understand his original intent for the scene), he might have underestimated just how beloved Lee is by the Asian community. Would it have been better had Lee just totally kicked Cliff's ass? Maybe, if there was another scene for Cliff to show his skills, but I'm fine with the fight ending in a draw, implausible as that may be in and of itself. Hell, Lee would have probably been twice as fast as what we see here.
And Lee's battle cries here might be over-the-top, but...
(Hey, I love the guy too, but how can you not at least crack a smile?)
So that's my two yuan. If plans for a miniseries version of OUATIH come through, here's hoping we see more of Mike Moh. At least it wouldn't be this:
SO, THAT ENDING...
On first watch, again, I more or less guessed (correctly) how things would go, but the execution? (Pardon the term...)
Well first off, I certainly wasn't expecting the Manson "Family" members to change their plan while still in their car.
"Sadie" (Mikey Madison) delivers a standout monologue about violence
on television, while reminding the audience just how horribly warped
the Manson "Family"'s worldview was (and, well, is...).
No one in OUATIH gives a bad performance (well, okay, but Lena Dunham isn't called to do much, thankfully), but Mikey Madison's "Sadie" and Austin Butler's "Tex" both leave the audience thoroughly tense, but laughing from some of the screenplay's darker humor. (Think two twentysomething Tommy DeVitos, and you'll be in the ballpark of what I mean.)
"I'm as real as a doughnut, motherfucker!"
But as Binky Barnes would ask, is he more famous than a doughnut?
Like others, I felt some serious whiplash, considering what I'd been watching for the last two-plus hours. I knew enough about QT's filmography to know that's his style, and while it didn't quite gel at first, the final fight as a whole did eventually grow on me. That's partially due to its effort to take away the Manson "Family"'s power.
Several have decried the climax for Cliff repeatedly slamming "Katie" (Madisen Beaty)'s head into a telephone receiver and a wall (similar, though intending the opposite effect, to ED-209 riddling the OCP executive with bullets for practically a minute in Robocop). While we're probably meant to be disturbed by how many times Cliff does it (and again, his ambiguity backs it up), and I understand that similar violence to both sexes in the same scene simply won't net the same reactions in the audience (for unfortunate and all-too-real reasons), at no point did these other reviewers at least acknowledge that right before it, Cliff had been brutally stomping on "Tex"'s head. (Perhaps if he did so repeatedly onscreen, that might have driven the point home.)
for the utterly painful-looking effects. Though I have to laugh at the
too-small head (or is it too-long neck?) of the "Tex" dummy being stomped on.
Once the chaos has cleared, and we're at the very end, hearing the first notes of Maurice Jarre's "Miss Lily Langtry" and seeing the gates of the Polanski house open for Rick, it dawns on the audience not only the meaning of the title, but also the "bedtime story" aspect and what it means for its reader. The "bad guys" are vanquished, the kind, loving person and her friends are saved (and were never in any danger), the hero makes several new friends, and the knight is battle-scarred, but may live to fight another day. (Again, though, the latter is (here I go) ambiguous.) Letting us enjoy this peace within the story, while sadly reminding us that's not what actually happened, is how you end a film full of melancholy and sentimentality like OUATIH.
LOGO (SCREEN) GEMS
OUATIH starts out with the 1968 - 1973 pink-draped variation of the 1936 - 1976 Columbia Pictures logo, which was featured on films such as Model Shop, Funny Girl, Tommy, and seemingly one-third of Goldie Hawn's early filmography.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
In a film full of accurate details, many have pointed out that LSD
breaks down when smoked and would not have made Cliff high off his ass.
I, however, take this to be foreshadowing the film's true nature.
Gotta have my pre-2008 recipe KD.
Yes, I'm that much of a mac-and-cheese freak.
QT has cited Cactus Flower (1969) as one of OUATIH's inspirations, which is odd,
because I don't remember Ingrid Bergman burning hippies with a flamethrower.
TIDBITS AND SUCH
Okay, so it's a cheap-plug-within-a-cheap-plug, but the QT-owned New Beverly Cinema's blog has some great articles by Kim Morgan, Peter Avellino, and Tim Lucas for further reading.
And if somehow, you haven't heard any of the songs from OUATIH's fabulous soundtrack, what are you waiting for? My personal favorites are Vanilla Fudge's cover of "You Keep Me Hangin' On", Neil Diamond's "Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show", the aforementioned "Straight Shooter", and Los Bravos' cover of "Bring a Little Lovin'".
Inspired by this film, I once drove my car in Cliff Booth mode,
with my windows down and my aviators on, though knowing my radio,
it was probably to Santana's cover of Ian Thomas' "Hold On" instead.
OUATIH clocks in at just over two and a half hours, so if you're like me, you'll best enjoy it in chunks, or better yet, with friends.
Copyright © Chynna Moore
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