I was invited to a restaurant, but I did not go - said that in the evening I was going to the premiere of a new film by Quentin Tarantino. And immediately I thought that it sounds exactly like it did in 1997, for example, the year when “Jackie Brown” appeared on the screens. Or in any other year when Tarantino films appeared. A new film has been released, and the rest right now is not so important - you need to go to the cinema. Certainly to the cinema. You can’t wait for pirated copies, torrents, or streaming video to appear on sites with ads. Tarantino need to watch a movie. Each new Tarantino movie must be watched for the first time in a movie theater. Because Tarantino is the very spirit of cinema and should be treated appropriately.
In an old interview with Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin, they asked how he would describe postmodernism in a word. Sorokin thought for a long time, as it is peculiar to him, and then answered: “Context”. Here is Tarantino’s new film “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” - this is primarily a context. More precisely, this work, which emerged from the context, exists in this context, but it also creates this context.
It seems that the film is based on the story of two friends from 1969 - actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cliff Booth - Rick's understudy, played by Brad Pitt. Rick Dalton starred in the Western TV series, and then decided to go into full-length films, but it didn’t work out, and now he is in a crisis when his grip is not the same, and his name is not so eager, and the star status is not so obvious. As if once in Hollywood came timelessness.
The era of Westerns has already passed, the era of blockbusters has not yet begun. And most of the movie on screen is exactly what happens “once in Hollywood.” Friends drive through the streets, meet friends, drink a lot. Hollywood here seems to be the main character - the streets, advertising signs, movie posters, luxury huge cars. Expressive everyday life is more important than the plot. Al Pacino, then Luc Perry, then a man completely indistinguishable from Bruce Lee appears on the screen.
Al Pacino admires how DiCaprio played in a Nazi movie and shows a machine gun firing, in which we recognize the shooting of Tony Montana performed by Al Pacino. And in the film about the Nazis there is a reference to the Tarantino "Inglourious Basterds". Everything in Hollywood is intertwined, everything is connected with each other. Moreover, no one here is the main character or the main star of the film. Therefore, the understudy here is more important than the actor, and Al Pacino, in fact, plays a supporting role, if not an episode.
Cinema is focusing reality, isolating individual episodes and building them into one story, which the author considers to be the main one. Human vision is wide-angle - we see a lot of things at once and sometimes we don’t realize it ourselves. The movie screen focuses our attention on something specific - on the line, texture, historical event.
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino does the opposite: he seeks to show reality in its entirety, with all its secondary circumstances. He will defocus reality in order to collect from this infinitely wide context a completely unexpected story in his unique author's style - with blood, torn hands, knives protruding from the back, a flamethrower and a bloody pool.
But it will be later. And first, two and a half hours above Hollywood, in addition to the unspeakably beautiful DiCaprio and Pitt, the ghost of Charles Manson, the terrible criminal and founder of the Family sect, whose members killed the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski in Hollywood in 1969, ominously blows.
There are many critics of the investigation into this case who believe that Manson’s guilt and involvement in the crimes has not been proven, but he received his nine life sentences and died in prison at the age of 83. And this part of the context is crucial for understanding the intent of Tarantino.
For the American public, the Family business is, let’s say, how for us the Chikatilo case. There is much to argue about, but everyone understands what kind of business it is, who this person is, the society reacts homogeneously and instantly to this image. Before going to the cinema, read the Wikipedia article about Manson, and I promise you that you will be pleasantly surprised when you see Tarantino tell this story. His story has nothing to do with reality, but the final of his film Inglourious Basterds has nothing to do with reality. The Nazi leadership was burned in the theater in 1943 - you look, you understand that it’s not true, but you still rejoice.
So Tarantino in his films restores simple justice in her boyish sense. Justice, nobility, revenge, which is served cold - all this is a great illusion that exists only while the screen with the movie Tarantino is on. But while the film is on, there is nothing more real in the world.
Beautiful people, luxurious women, sparkling cars, sparkling Hollywood, Playboy parties, ice in huge glasses, impeccable costumes, breathtaking fights, a lot of cigarette smoke and a lot of female legs.
After the premiere of this film, Tarantino was accused of cruelty and foot fetishism. Accusing Tarantino of cruelty is, of course, ridiculous in itself. If the word “cruelty” had to be replaced in all languages, then it probably should have been replaced by the word “Tarantino”. For this they love him. And as for foot-fetishism, this genius certainly has the right to such a weakness - women constantly put their feet on the dashboard in front of the chair, and poke them into the camera. This is his author's trick - to unexpectedly highlight what seems to be secondary. What is the meaning of the plot of “Pulp Fiction” played a conversation between Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield about the massage of the foot of his wife Marcellus Wallace? And the fact that this wife then danced barefoot? It didn’t matter, but we remembered it for life, simply because it was in the Tarantino movie.
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood there is a seemingly completely unimportant episode. The actress - the wife of Roman Polanski - comes to the cinema from boredom during the day. A ticket costs 75 cents, but she tells the cashier: “Can I pass for free? I starred in this movie. " She is allowed into the hall, and she sits absolutely happy - not because she saved 75 cents, but because she is in the movies. And on both sides of the screen. And the whole hall looked just as happy at the premiere of "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" - we are in the movies!
This week Quentin Tarantino came to Moscow. Everyone was touched by his photographs in the museum halls of the Kremlin, and at a press conference he was asked if he liked the Tsar Cannon.
And he replied: “Great gun. Most of all I liked that the nuclei that lie in front of her and with which she is supposed to shoot are much larger than the diameter of the barrel and simply will not fit into this gun. ”
About the same thing can be said about the film "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood." Tarantino made a film that goes far beyond the world of cinema - right into history, if not forever.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.