As with most things Quentin Tarantino-related, this film has been the source of much frenzied controversy. First of all, it brings us one step closer to his self-imposed career limit of 10 films which, depending on your taste in cinema and tolerance of abrasive personalities, could register as either a good or a bad thing. The film’s plot was controversial from the beginning, applying Tarantino’s stylized lens to the story of Sharon Tate’s brutal murder, something that many doubted he would be able to do tastefully (spoiler: he was able to). And then of course it marks Tarantino’s first break with the Weinstein Company, as circumstances forced him to seek a production deal elsewhere, with studios more than happy to throw money at him and indulge his demands for final cut.

So after all that hullabaloo, was the flash worthy of the sizzle? To me it feels like much ado about nothing. This film, by Quentin Tarantino’s standards, if very toned down, relaxed, one might even say unfocused or wandering. It turns out Tarantino pulled an old switcheroo on us, as Sharon Tate and the Manson murders only putz around on the fringes of the film. This is actually a hang-out buddy film, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as a former Western TV star struggling to make the jump to movies, and his long-time stunt double Brad Pitt who, well, sort of takes care of him because like most actors he’s a mess. It’s this relationship, a mutually dependent bromance, which forms the core of the movie.

The film is set in 1969, a pretty pivotal year in Hollywood history. The old studio system was undergoing massive changes, as were public tastes. The Hays Code, a set of standards that had governed film content since the 1930s, stopped being used in 1968. This meant filmmakers were suddenly freed up to explore controversial subject matter that had previously been forbidden, and it (along with other factors) ignited a creative revolution in the industry. A wave of auteur filmmakers came smashing onto the scene in the late 60s, and in many cases they were eager to attack and subvert traditional Hollywood genres like crime stories or musicals. It was clear by 1969 that the old rules of Hollywood no longer applied.

This period saw a number of revisionist Westerns from directors like Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah who jumped on the symbols of Old Hollywood and reinterpreted them through a more brutal and cynical lens, puncturing the myth of the cowboy as the heroic symbol of America’s Manifest Destiny and rebranding him as a crude, desperate and often immoral figure of exploitation and meaningless violence. This is the Hollywood of Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time, and it provides an important backdrop for the character of Rick Dalton (DiCaprio).

Dalton was a famous (fictitious) TV cowboy during the late 50s and early 60s, when television serials were pumping out cowboy fluff to feed the public appetite for Westerns. He tries to make the jump to film, but washes out as audience tastes had changed a lot by the end of the 60s, and that’s when we meet him in the film. He’s a struggling, self-loathing, self-doubting alcoholic whose best friend and closest companion is also his paid bagman – in other words, he’s a typical screwed-up actor. The movie basically just lazily follows these two guys as they bounce around Hollywood taking meetings, going to sets, indulging in some flashbacks now and again. That’s it – well, until the end when there’s a bit of a twist involving Sharon Tate, Rick Dalton, the Manson family and some historical fiction. But that’s not really the meat of the story. 

This film is impressionistic, a kind of indulgent and sensory slice-of-life set in late 1960s Hollywood featuring a series of immaculately structured set pieces. By Tarantino’s standards, where it often feels like the screenplay is constantly trying to outsmart itself, the dialogue in Once Upon a Time is less obsessed with being clever or sharp. It’s just content to… wander in the past and enjoy itself. And for me it was a mostly enjoyable time. But then again, this movie is pitched to viewers like me who have a pretty good handle on Hollywood history and why it would be significant for Dalton to start starring in 2nd tier spaghetti Westerns, which were yet another new and surprisingly resonant re-imagining of old Western tropes. For people who aren’t particularly geeky film nerds or steeped in the history of cinema, the film’s 2 ½ hour run time might well begin to drag.

I watched it in Bali, and after the lights came up an American girl seated behind me loudly declared: “Well, that was disappointing.” I can’t blame her for the opinion, though in typical American fashion she was certainly confident that the rest of the theater wanted to hear it. My sister-in-law and her friend who came to watch the movie with us were both bored too. And honestly, not a lot happens in this film. It is a movie that is going to go over a lot of peoples’ heads, and it lacks the obvious rock star rhythm and breakneck pace of most of Tarantino’s previous films.

Some reviewers have equated the film’s nostalgic pacing and sense of longing with Tarantino’s own anxieties about the creeping inertia of cinematic irrelevance. Who knows if that is where the film comes from. It does feel somehow less substantial and less daring than previous Tarantino movies, but also more personal, more languid and content to just exist in a little slice of time and movie history that is obviously deeply meaningful to the filmmaker. It is also, of course, executed with consummate skill so it’s never bad and it is fun to hang out with these characters in that time and place. It is just not what many people have been conditioned to expect from this filmmaker.