Adrian Siderius

To me this movie is a beautiful representation of Tarantino’s style and what makes his movies unique. Structured plot lines and things ‘having a point’ aren’t what you’re meant to gain out of a Tarantino movie - the journey is the experience. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has the feel of all his past movies and expresses strong themes of the 60’s era, but what makes it magical to me is the way Tarantino goes against the norms of what a makes a movie, “a movie”. The vague storyline, using big name actors sporadically and giving them very few lines just so they serve as a more of a representation of themselves rather than adding content to the plot, narrating a couple of random parts of the film instead of narration at structured intervals, building suspense in scenes that fizzles in a borderline anticlimactic way and then smoothly blends to the next scene - it’s perfect. I feel that criticism about these things is completely missing what makes Tarantino so amazing. His cinematography is so indulgent. The way the camera clearly portrays a character’s boots hitting the floorboards, the way a character slurps their drink or flicks the cap of their zippo lighter down every time they light a cigarette, zooming in on a character’s quirky facial expressions, the amount of dialogue that adds nothing at all, having a lengthy scene of a character driving a car really fast, the deep sounds of the engines, the radio blaring out - it all feels so human. Celebrating the iniquities and complexities of human existence is what make his movies brilliant. To me the lack of meaning, the absurdism of his movies are purely metaphorical of life itself. There isn’t meant to be meaning, nothing is meant to be heading towards a specified point - you just enjoy the dream, the illusion of meaning, the thrills and spills of existence.