Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The Problem With Auteurs

If you like drinking games, find a list of Tarantino signatures and take a shot every time one of them happens - you’ll blackout by the second act.

There is a fine line between an auteur and a self-parodist. In order to be considered an auteur, a director must inject their entire soul into every aspect of their work. Whether it be unique aesthetic choices or recurring themes throughout their films’ plots, an auteur’s fingerprints should be found all over their project. Familiarity is comforting to us, it’s why we eat the same thing on the menu every time we go out for food, or why we always buy the same brand of shampoo. We know what to expect. It’s the same thing with Auteurs. When we watch a Wes Anderson film we expect beautiful colours, when we watch an Alfred Hitchcock film we expect the Everyman and the Blonde Bombshell. 

What do we expect when we see a Tarantino film? Bloodshed, gratuitous violence, bloodshed, comedy, bloodshed, references to other movies, bloodshed, foot shots, and dialogue that goes on for so long you feel like you could get married before the characters finish their conversation. Tarantino is deep rooted in the post-modernist genre. A director who is famous for stating that he “didn’t go to film school, he went to films,” he is influenced heavily by everything from B-movies to spaghetti westerns. 

From Left: Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio. 

I was a big fan of The Hateful Eight. It’s long, it’s violent, it has Samuel L. Jackson in it - certainly a Tarantino affair. However, with the film, the director produced something more understated. The use of the lodge as the film’s primary location gave a claustrophobic atmosphere and added something which had been sorely missing in Tarantino’s prior films - real tension. I thought as he drew closer to his tenth (and supposedly final) film, the director had matured significantly and was still willing to subvert audiences expectations, as he did with Pulp Fiction, all those years ago. Cue Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

One thing I loved about The Hateful Eight was the score by Ennio Morricone. It was a great change of pace from the soundtracks of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. However, Tarantino’s mixtape was back with a vengeance in Once Upon a Time. There’s no way to describe it other than that it feels like someone with Spotify premium has pressed shuffle on a 60s playlist and they keep skipping because they’re excited to see what song is next. The music add nothing to the scenes and instead just used to fill the silence when characters move from point A to point B

Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio ooze charisma.

This is a film about nothing. And that’s fine. Some of the best films are about people just living their lives, but at a nearly 3 hour runtime you have to give your audiences something. You feel every 161 of those minutes, and that’s the worst part. Scenes go nowhere. Margot Robbie embodies Sharon Tate, but those talents are wasted when all we see is her walking down the street, buying a book, dancing, smiling. The film has an almost smug contentment with its shambling pace. Just as a scene begins to grip you we’re bustled into the next one. As a director famous for his snappy dialogue, it’s sad to see how leaden the writing is. With their incredible charisma, Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt just about pull it off, but they aren’t given much to work with.

Criminally under-utilised - Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate

With every foot shot I found myself growing more and more convinced that this was just a $90 million dollar practical joke. At this point I’m convinced that Tarantino is so far up his own rectal cavity that it would take a search party to find him again. The bloodbath finale - so jarring when compared to the sleepy pace of the prior two and a half hours - is the cinematic equivalent of the director giving us the middle finger. No longer in auteur territory, Tarantino has taken a running jump into the area of self parody with the film and its frankly quite embarrassing. To see a director who once was a breath of fresh air in Hollywood produce a film which feels like a skit from The Simpsons, shows that too much control is no good for anyone. A Camel is a horse designed by a committee, but committees aren’t always bad. Plus if it was left to Tarantino, his horse would have feet instead of hooves and walk around saying the N word (not neigh). 

Lot’s of people will love this film, and rightly so. Films are made primarily for audiences’ enjoyment after all. Although, some people would love a three hour long tape of paint drying as long as the ‘Directed by Quentin Tarantino’ title card popped up at the end. An undoubtedly stylish ode to the swinging sixties, the film isn’t a total lost cause. However is the film really a love letter from Tarantino to Hollywood? Or was it a love letter from Tarantino to himself?