This post contains spoilers for the movie Once upon a time in Hollywood. I strongly recommend that you see the movie first.
A friend of mine makes more of a coincidence than I usually do. And yet lately I’ve been struck by how there have been themes. Self-compassion seems to be one of them. It wasn’t long after noticing that a friend could use a dose of it when I read an article about procrastination. According to the article, self-compassion is one way to break the cycle of unwanted behavior. It’s how I can show up here now. For I had really intended to post something daily. As I like to say, “Try again tomorrow.”
It was hard to find the time to write while I had company. I’m not sure why that is, but routines just don’t work the same for me when I’m thinking from one meal to the next. Everything is different. Lovely. Needed. Appreciated. Fun. But different.
My mother is a DiCaprio fan so a group went to see the Sharon Tate movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A couple days later, after the last shuttle to the airport, Brian and I took a walk around Como Lake and talked about it. He liked it. The fact that he did not doze off is an endorsement. But he ultimately didn’t see the point. However, by the time we got around the lake, we came up with something that was mostly satisfying.
Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
If you haven’t seen the movie, skip this post. See the movie first.
Brian’s main beef seemed to be the rewriting of history. I liked it. But defending it would take some effort.
When I was a kid, I remember the book Helter Skelter laying around the house. It was thick like a dictionary. Black with red lettering. The pages smelled weird, which I attributed to the contents as opposed to any likely factors such as a bookshelf in a musty basement or the smell of a previous reader’s cologne. I knew who Charles Manson was. I had heard of Squeaky Fromme. I knew that Sharon Tate was pregnant. I knew what happened. I didn’t need to know any of this. I was just a kid. But my older siblings probably told me about it, for I certainly didn’t read the book. And for some reason this horrific story is part of the American psyche.
Let me just call bullshit on myself.
I’m not sure what I mean by that, but it sounds right. And it’s for that reason that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was able to do what it did. We watched this movie, knowing what I knew since I was a kid. And during the entire movie I dreaded the inevitable. My plan was to leave early and to let Brian tell me how it ended.
Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
If you haven’t seen the movie, skip this post. See the movie first.
Except the inevitable didn’t happen.
A critic made the comment that the movie was forty-five minutes too long. As a movie goer and not as an editor who has to justify every frame, I can’t say that I was bothered by the length. Furthermore, given the necessity of the slow build to the last scene that made every previous second worthwhile, I thought the pace was about right. And again, Brian did not doze. That says a lot.
Plodding toward the inevitable is a political theme too. We are living it. How many times have I heard that our democracy is in peril? Power is being concentrated? There are human rights violations all over the place. Crimes go unpunished. Then there is also the decimation of the environment. Another shooting. Weak leadership. Saber rattling. On Facebook I saw an article where – if I am to believe it – South Dakota, my home state, is requiring schools to prominently post “In God we trust” in the schools. This makes me feel a little sick, because I suspect that it isn’t one’s religious convictions that would compel such a rule, but a sort of bullying. Is that what we really need? Anyway, the list goes on and it feels like there is a certain inevitable fate that will play out. If I were to believe the conspiracy theorist who was my supervisor at Spuds ‘N Stuff at the mall when I was in high school, we are all headed for the concentration camps. That’s pretty bleak.
There is another narrative.
We just have to write it.
There were things about the movie that will take another viewing for me. For example, what was the purpose of making Brad Pitt’s character a Vietnam Veteran and wife killer, assuming he really did kill his wife? Does it matter what I choose to believe? Would it change the story? Was it about help from unlikely places? Redemption? Healing? After all, in his last scene he is shuttled away in an ambulance. He’s going to be okay. Incidentally, Pitt is in a couple of scenes that also play on our expectations, such as the time the camera scans the car when he pulls into Manson’s hippie camp. This scene would not work without a suspicious past. Something tells me that scenes like that were all over the place and I just missed them. I would also have to look at the scenes where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is on a movie set. Something tells me that I didn’t fully appreciate how they fit. I’m also mildly interested in the woman he marries. It seems like she’s just a plot device, but maybe there’s more to her.
Typically my movie ratings go something like this. I either like a movie right away or I don’t. If I walk out without a feeling one way or the other, I might wake up mad the next day, which means the movie tricked me into sticking with it, but it wasn’t worth it. Or I will like it more and more. I liked this movie. Have to see it again. That’s a new rating for me.