Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, Leaonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, and Al Capino as Marvin Schwartz in Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (Sony Pictures)

Ever by Dalton’s side during the twilight of his career is Cliff Booth. Tanned and tattooed, Booth is Dalton’s faithful stunt double, confidant, drinking companion, driver, and, on occasion, bodyguard. Each night, while dropping an inebriated Dalton at to his sprawling Hollywood Hills mansion, Booth swaps his employer’s immaculate creamy ’66 Cadillac Coupe de Ville for his own jalopy, which he drives home to a trailer he shares with Brandy, a caramel Pitbull. Indifferent to the celebrity and privilege of Hollywood, Booth, in these glimpses, is one of us – the industry outsider. The Dalton–Booth camaraderie is based, in part, on the relationship between Burt Reynolds, the moustached icon of the Hollywood cowboy and star of Deliverance, and his longtime stunt double, Hal Needam.

Unlike Dalton and Booth, Tate’s character is based on a bona-fide Hollywood star. In a strobe of paparazzi flashes, she strides through LAX Airport’s terminal into the convertible of her waiting husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). The couple speed along LA’s boundless freeways while the camera soars around them. The sequences featuring the city’s twisting roadways are where Tarantino is at his dynamic best. His use of sweeping crane shots are reflective of the cinematography of Hollywood’s Golden Age; today, such camerawork is mostly replaced with cheaper drone footage. The precision of the camera follows Tate and Polanski back to their gated Hollywood property, which abuts Dalton’s.

Regrettably, throughout a film foreshadowing her ruthless murder at the hands of the Manson Family, Tate acts more as a plot device than as a complete character. Her appearances throb with a threat of violence, such as when Tate dances blithely to her vinyl records while Manson stumbles, to a menacing score, up her driveway. Once Upon a Time is at times like a thriller. In one scene Booth visits Spahn Ranch, the bohemian headquarters of the Family. Rather than engaging the audience in Tate’s life and legacy, Tarantino deploys her as a narrative counterpoint to Dalton and Booth. She is a decoy, a woman whose life story exists here to frame two quasi-fictionalised men. Despite Robbie’s tender performance, Tarantino’s characterisation of Tate seems regressive and one-dimensional. 

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (Sony Pictures)

Style surpassing substance: this is not a fresh critique of Tarantino’s ouevre. For a film that strives for moments of wistful and meditative introspection, such criticism is necessary. Tarantino seems utterly nonchalant about telling the story of the Manson Family murders, which left a then-pregnant Tate dead alongside six of her friends on 8 August 1969. Here, it is pertinent to note that Tarantino, until now, has always been backed by Harvey Weinstein, the executive producer now discredited and facing trial for egregious sexual misconduct. Weinstein’s production company, Miramax, elevated Tarantino to a mythical status. The company’s publicity team was legendary for their aggressive tactics to secure Academy Awards, of which Tarantino has clinched two for screenwriting. Once Upon a Time is the director’s first project with Sony Pictures, which fought for the rights to distribute the film.

Weinstein and Miramax aside, Tarantino had his own public reckoning, with Uma Therman revealing in 2018 that her life was endangered on the set of Kill Bill, when she was forced to drive a defective stunt car, despite repeated protestations. The car crashed at high speed, with Thurman at the wheel. The noisy release of Once Upon a Time signals that Hollywood and cinéphiles remain contented to revere Tarantino and to ignore his transgressions. But the director’s flawed depiction of the life and death of Sharon Tate, and the film’s befuddled narrative structure, makes Once Upon a Time an exercise in production design and camerawork, rather than one in storytelling.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (Sony), directed by Quentin Tarantino, was released in cinemas 15 August 2019.