In the end it turns out the clue was in the title all along. This was a fairytale. A story that was destined to have a happy ending, a tidy ending, even at the expense of our expectations. Certainly my expectations… I was sitting there during the big violent climax (trademark: Quentin Tarantino) wondering why this scene was dragging on so long and getting so deep into the bloodshedding when the psycho hippies were due to murder everybody next door any minute now. But then of course the whole revising history trick has been up Tarantino’s sleeve for a while now, from the slave revolts of Django Unchained to the, you know, fiery death of Adolf Hitler in Inglorious Basterds.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is also a fable. For most of it’s runtime this is the story of two film stars, one on the rise and one on the way down. A Star Is Born in periphery. That, to be honest, is the heart of what Tarantino seems to be up to here and that narrative frame is what elevates this tale beyond the sum of its many enjoyable scenes. We get to know Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton pretty early, an old TV Western leading man who has been relegated to guest spots on other shows while having his regular stunt man and best buddy Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt) drive him around town. Booth’s got some hefty baggage and he can’t really hold down too many film gigs himself these days but as a fella used to sliding under the radar he handles it a fair bit better that Rick, safe to say.

Brad Pitt is outstanding in this film, by the way. He’s the main man and he’s absolutely sizzling in every way. Like, his acting is remarkable, clearly. Maybe I’m more alone than I realise with ol’ Pitty but I’ve always rated this dude as a performer. BP is more than just a movie star, he’s spent the last couple decades stringing together a sneakily excellent resume. A few big budget flops in there, sure, but my fella’s consistently shown his face, even in smaller roles, in interesting and creatively ambitious projects. The Assassination of Jesse James. 12 Years A Slave. Inglourious Basterds. Fight Club. Moneyball. 12 Monkeys. True Romance. Snatch. Killing Them Softly. The Counselor. The Tree Of Life. Plus his Plan B production company is regularly putting out quality films as well.

In OUATIH, Pitt’s character is one level removed from the main yarn. He’s a friend and an observer, an adjacent figure. Adjacent to DiCaprio’s character obviously but he also ends up adjacent to the feral hippies of the Manson family too. It’s through his eyes that we see a lot of the film and in his own way he’s a little like a supremely over-skilled Dude from Big Lebowski (Petition to get Brad Pitt in a Coen Bros film next), just kind of getting by to get by amidst all this turmoil. Also there’s a scene where he takes his shirt off on the roof and I swear to you it’s not even fair. This bloke is in his mid-50s now. This was an absolute showcase for the man.

But, as I say, it might be his film but it’s not his story. We get extended scenes of a drunken and self-doubting Rick Dalton trying to put a little juice back in his career as he stares down an industry and a culture that is about to change forever. Dalton’s trying to consolidate his place in the world and is slowly coming to the awareness that it isn’t going to be possible. Meanwhile Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate is on the rise. She’s in touch with the counter-culture but she’s also an industry darling – married to a post-Rosemary’s Baby and pre-rapey Roman Polanski at the time, remember. Her scenes are breezy and sweet. Grooving to the poolside tunes at the Playboy Mansion or driving through LA taking sympathy on hitchhikers. She beams more smiles than she speaks words… but that’s completely deliberate. Tate, in this film, is the essence of what’s great about Hollywood. Her dreams are coming true before our eyes. There’s a level of distance we’re kept at from her as a character but that’s because she’s both a real historical person and also someone on that pedestal of fame and glamour.

And yet there’s a darkness there that underlines the film because we know what’s going to happen. When Cliff Booth visits Spahn Ranch we see hints of what might follow. Charles Manson himself is cleverly kept on the sidelines most of the time but the knowledge of one of Hollywood’s most horrific events weighs upon the screen – particularly in an otherwise delightful scene where Robbie’s Tate watches herself in the Dean Martin flick The Wrecking Crew and it’s the real life Sharon Tate we see on the screen-within-a-screen. The Manson Murders are a shadow that only shifts when the more pitiful shadow of Rick Dalton’s earnest vulnerability takes its place (old mate sure is quick to tears).

So when the big old climax arrives and what happens happens – you’ve probably already seen it if you’re reading this but just in case you’re looking for a nudge in the right direction I’ll keep the direct spoilers out of things (I watched it with almost no idea of anything beyond the trailer, but I know people who’ve loved it whilst already knowing how it ends) – it caught me off guard. I suspect the next time I watch it I’ll appreciate it more for that reason too. Because while the violence and the interludes and the detailed set pieces and the general love of film that’s present here are all pure Tarantino… what I wasn’t expecting was such a tender ending, in which both Tate and Dalton appear to get the happily-ever-afters that Tate deserves and which Dalton desires. An ending which is especially celebratory for Sharon Tate whose legacy for fifty years has been that, inescapably, of a tragic victim.

(Sidenote: I’ve listened to all the You Must Remember This pods on the Manson murders, I’ve read Emma Cline’s The Girls, and I’ve scoured a fair few wiki pages in between so I had a pretty decent knowledge of the story coming into it… pretty sure if you have zero Manson Family awareness then you’ll still find an enjoyable film here but, yeah, the subtext certainly won’t hit as hard)

For Dalton, hey, whatever. If he lands himself the lead in Chinatown at the expense of Jack Nicholson then good for him but he’s still aging in an ageless land so Hollywood can only be so generous. It’s easy to see the parallels between him and Quentin Tarantino himself who, nine movies deep out of a self-imposed limit of ten (as if anyone believes that) is entering a new era as a filmmaker and that fear of being replaced probably never goes away. At first you want to carve out a space for yourself, then you want to keep it. That’s not really how it works but change is a difficult thing to adjust to. That also helps explain a very predictable backlash to the film from certain corners but the beauty of OUATIH is that Tarantino doesn’t mind keeping things ambiguous.

Except for that ending, of course. Although having said that there’s certainly an element of fantasy to the final few scenes. The slow denouement takes place at a distance, between locked gates or seen from a helicopter shot, keeping this happy ending just out of arm’s reach for the viewer… like a dream, perhaps.

I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder if it was all an acid-dipped cigarette induced hallucination as that scene unfolded but I think that theory’s missing the point. Because the ending was a fantasy. It was a dream. It’s only, after all, a movie. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood there was an actress named Sharon Tate. Well, she might have gotten her happy ending here within this work of artistic fiction but when the credits stop rolling, when the lights come back on, when the cinema clears… we know what really happened. But for almost three hours in a darkened theatre beneath a whirring projector we can sit enamoured – much like Robbie’s Tate does at her own film – and pretend that wasn’t the case.

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