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Many believe that the function of cinema is to simulate reality, and that the purpose of cinematic work is to create a world that succeeds in inspiring audiences to be real.In contrast, American director Quentin Tarantino embraces a different reference.It seems to be particularly interested in manipulating reality and creating parallel versions of it.
Tarantino did it before in Inglourious Basterds when he presented in the first chapter of the film a very real treatment of the time of the Nazi invasion of Europe, and then manipulated all the real events at the end of the film when Adolf Hitler was killed very violently by an armed Jewish band .
Now Tarantino repeats his hobby of manipulating history, this time in his handling of the murder of American actress Sharon Tate in his new film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", and involved a gang working under the direction of the famous American serial killer Charles Manson.
So what happens in Tarantino's new movie? What is the reason for using Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt? How does their existence change history?
Three tales and one film
Since his first film "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992, Tarantino has chosen to divide his film into chapters, and then has a unique narrative style. Chapters in Tarantino's films are not chronological, but despite their randomness, they eventually make an image. Complete story.
In this film Tarantino changes this method for the first time, where we watch the film continuously without any chapters, but nevertheless maintains a narrative of more than one tale in the film itself.
Here we follow three parallel stories. The first is the story of the American actress Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, with whom we are touring in Hollywood, where this rising actress dreams of being a public star, especially after marrying the famous director Roman Polanski.
The second is the story of American actor Rick Dalton, who plays Leonardo Lecaprio, an actor who is in the stage of stardom. After being a hero to many big films, he is now struggling only for help roles.
The third is Clive Booth, played by Brad Pitt, a dangerous viewer and a close friend of Rick Dalton.
The movie takes place at the end of 1969 in Hollywood, where reality meets imagination.Charlene Tate is real, but Rick Dalton and Clive Booth are characters of Tarantino's imagination.
Tarantino relies heavily on scenes of Dalton and Booth, which we know together first and then trace each other's personal story through flashback scenes, taking a peek at each other's history. For Sharon Tate, Tarantino relies on her being filmed in distant cadres for most of the film's events. We viewers seem to be spying on her, as if we are constantly watching for what will happen to her.
The irony of history
Tarantino completes in this film what he started in the deliberate irony of history, here not only this at the end of the film, or in the circumstances surrounding the incident of Sharon Tate, which we will not tell in order not to spoil the surprise of the film to those who have not yet seen, but the irony extends Also for the number of real characters we see with the eyes of Tarantino.
Perhaps the most prominent and controversial of these characters is Bruce Lee, a martial arts teacher with Chinese origins and American citizenship, which Tarantino showed during the events of the film in a very comical, as if he was a prosecutor actor can be beaten by any real person easily. It provoked many contemporaries of Bruce Lee to the point that the historical American basketball player Karim Abdul Jabbar wrote a full article directed to Tarantino in which he admonishes him for showing Bruce Lee in this way, but hints at accusing Tarantino of superficiality, stereotypes and racism as well.
Analyzing the content of Tarantino in a serious and straightforward way is particularly difficult, especially in this case, as Tarantino was created by the trilogy "Kill Bill", which inspired a large part of the details and fashion of heroes from Bruce Lee and his films. It seems, then, that manipulation is not an end to insult, but the end will remain ironic, without any red lines.
Funny violence
In one of the most important scenes of the film, we see the heroes master the killing of their opponents with white weapons at times, and by directing predators to devour them sometimes, and by setting fire to them while alive at other times, the description seems very cruel and bloody, but the reaction of viewers to this scene in most cinemas was A barrage of laughter, here Tarantino paints his violent scenes by adding many strange, surprising and sometimes stupid details, prompting the audience to laugh even though the scene is full of violence.
This is of course consistent with the usual postmodern Tarantino approach, in which the man mocks the classic values of life and cinema, neither the red lines of irony as we mentioned before, nor the red lines of violence as well.