Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood Redux

I read a column by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times yesterday that tried to equate this movie to the idea of nostalgia for the days of white male privilege.  Although I agree that white privilege was and is a thing, I do not think this movie explores that idea.  She makes reference to an article in the Los Angeles Times by Mary McNamera that asks this question -- "Who doesn’t miss the good old days when cars had fins and white men were the heroes of everything?"  But is that what the movie is doing?

Obviously, I don't see it that way.  Cliff Booth, Brad Pitt's character, seems to me to exemplify not the white male power structure, but rather a nice guy who has finished last.  He doesn't really have any talent, like his friend, Rick, and has gotten into trouble in the past (we don't really find out a lot about this, but we know that he has problems getting work), lives in a filthy trailer and eats Kraft dinner, and basically survives by driving Rick around and fixing the antenna on his house and stuff like that.  She says that his performance invokes iconic "male" performances from the past like Rick in "Casablanca" or Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry -- well, firstly, how one could connect those two characters is beyond me, and how you could say that Cliff is like either of them, is also beyond me. 

Rick is not the iconic man of the sixties either.  He isn't the tough cowboy he plays on tv -- he is full of angst and eagerness to please and cries at the drop of a hat -- is he a hero?  Not in the way Mary McNamera describes.     I get that Quentin Tarantino is nostalgic for old Hollywood -- apparently, he expended a lot of effort in getting the scenes to look authentic but to try to connect it to Donald Trump or the Trumpian idea of "white men as heroes" is a real stretch.

She says we need to leave the world of the past behind, and certainly I agree with her, but I don't think this movie is urging us to return to those 1960 Hollywood days.  I think it is a personal story of Quentin Tarantino's love of Hollywood through the lens of actors who are never what they seem (and the struggle and joy of being an actor).  I'm not a huge fan of QT but I don't think this description of the movie catches its charm, which it has in abundance.

Last night, I watched the movie "Red River" with John Wayne (now there's a Hollywood hero/cowboy without a doubt) and Montgomery Clift (another iconic Hollywood actor, but the complete and utter opposite of John Wayne).  It is a classic western in every sense of the word, in the sense of the good and the bad that that genre entails but what puts it over into greatness is Montgomery Clift himself.  He is really extraordinary.  If you've never seen him in a movie, you should seek him out.  He was always good but besides "Red River", "From Here to Eternity" is terrific (and has the eternally magnificent Burt Lancaster in it as well as an amazing performance by Frank Sinatra and great supporting performances by Donna Reed and Ernest Borgnine) and "A Place in the Sun" (with Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters {who is always terrific}) and a beautiful, tragic supporting performance in "Judgement at Nuremberg" (again with the extraordinary Burt Lancaster).  I'll write about Burt Lancaster another time -- he's one of my favourites.