The film deals in allegory of heaven/hell; angels/demons set in the City of Angels. That Tate is the angel, serene and unapproachable seems just perfect for the allegory; that DiCaprio and Pitt desire, above all else to be accepted in heaven is a existential longing.
If Ms. Harris looking for a documentary, they're on a different shelf.
Bravo.
40
He's a stunted, adolescent fanboy. Of course he doesn't know how to portray a three-dimensional woman, Jackie Brown being the possible exception (blaxploitation films stirring some deeper social/sexual thinking in his real adolescence.)
13
Sharon Tate was a Hollywood starlet. She represented the era. She was the princes in the fairy tale that Tarantino created. She wasn't an anachronistic character giving speeches about women's lib which I'm sure disappoints many Times readers. Tarantino's conceit as a director is violence. He uses it as a solution to the film's problem. So in a master stroke this methodical, detailed, well acted, directed, edited film pulled off what few in the film business ever accomplished - a coup de theatre - he saved the princess... in our hearts and sad to say in only the film. But after 50 years of having to put up with the monster Manson family it was a unexpected revenge well worth it... and Tarantino pulled it off. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo.
50
Tarantino’s Sharon Tate is also part of the director’s snapshot of the world of Hollywood actors in 1969. The oldest of these actors, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), recalls a bygone style of athletic performance that invites comparisons to silent star Douglas Fairbanks. Booth’s physical skills are showcased in his encounter with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) and his graceful leaps onto a roof to fix a TV antenna. TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a creature of the sound era, when the ability to deliver dialogue effectively became paramount. Rick is obsessed with learning his lines and frustrated over his flubs. Eight-year-old Trudi (Julia Butters) looks to a future time when Method acting would become dominant, dictating that actors become totally immersed in the characters they play. Trudi also reflects an era when actors became free agents rather than contract players and thus depended on the favor of industry titans like Walt Disney to get roles. Sharon Tate (Margo Robbie) represents yet another kind of actor. She was one of many alluring young women who functioned as eye candy in the James Bond spy cycle and other such Hollywood entertainments of the day. Tarantino gives Tate an additional dimension in a scene in which she reveals herself as a reader, purchasing Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a classic story of a young beauty who meets a tragic end, for her husband Roman Polanski.
33
The Tate-LaBianca murders are an appalling subject of hagiography, especially at a point in American history when the level of senseless violence being perpetrated is enormously more expansive than it had been in the 60’s.
It definitely doesn’t help to present the Manson Family in any kind of dramatized, re-written fashion. Enough people already believe that Charles Manson killed people himself — a frequent boast of his — but the truth is far more alarming.
This movie qualifies as ‘art’, purely for its artifice, and it allows Quentin Tarantino to hype up a movie by attaching it to one of America’s most colorful psychopaths.
3
The premise of these concerns is absurd. The film and it’s characters are works of art. While I am no particular fan of QT and consider myself as much a feminist as any man can be, the energy wasted on this type of minutiae, however fashionable, seems tragic given current events. I hope we can all regain our senses in time to save our endangered institutions of enlightenment so that they may still reach those who have waited longest for them. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Rome is burning. Let’s put away our fiddles and pick up a hose, we can write the patriarchy’s epitaph together when we’re through.
19
The greater distance between the camera and Margot Robbie, as opposed to other characters (Pitt and DiCaprio) may be a function of the blending of a true life character with fictional characters.
When we first meet Cliff Rick, we don't know who they are, they're fictional characters. Because of this, Tarrantino needs to build their narrative up from scratch, so there's a lot of character building.
With Tate, the audience knows the back story, but perhaps in a more abstract way. The audience isn't yet emotionally invested. By filming Margot Robbie from some distance from her historical character goes through a scene, the audience slowly fills in the back story, and the distance builds a sense of dread as you come to like the character, but realize you can't help her - you're watching, but you can't influence events.
It's a powerful cinematic technique, but it does require keeping a greater distance from Robbie's character than Pitt 'sand DiCaprio's.
FWIW, the violence in Tarrantino movies makes it hard for me to enjoy them. The violence in this film was jarring and gratuitous. Tarrantino usually generally does better than 5-second tags to identify a character as "killable to applause", but in this film, I felt he did rely on meagre setups so that the audience could revel in violent bullying.
10
I think that Tarantino's portrayal of Tate was to present her in an angelic fashion, where the viewer is simply supposed to exult in her comely aura. The audience is not meant to be acquainted with her, just revel in her being. I actually think this was a nice homage and Robbie did a splendid job.
When it comes down to it, I wish Pitt and Qualley had more interactions. They seemed to riff well off each other and the story could have benefited from more dialogue between the two. Though Leo did a great job, some of his scenes on the Lancer set were a tad boring, except the one with Butters, where she schools him on the pros of method acting.
I initially left he cinema a bit disappointed, likely because I thought the movie meandered a bit too much. I was more invested in the Pitt/Qualley dynamic and wanted more of that. That said, after having time to ruminate over the film, I have grown more fond of it. I will definitely revisit it later on blue-ray to pick up on the stuff that I missed the first time.
P.S. I thought it would have been great if Tarantino included a scene where Hans Landa is reveling over one of Rick Dalton's movies in Nantucket (maybe in the credits or the movie itself). This would have worked given these characters are from the same time period.
1
When "Reservoir Dogs" came out, I attended a press screening. After 10 minutes I left, appalled by the violence. In years since, I have been amazed by the accolades Tarantino has reaped. His glorification of violence has helped lead us where we are today--running for the exits.
58
@trenton
The article is about "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," not "Reservoir Dogs." If you haven't seen "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," and apparently you haven't, refrain from commenting on an article about a movie you didn't see.
It's a great movie. Tarantino should retire on it.
43
So, Tarantino brought us a beefed up NRA, complicate members of Congress and white nationalism? I think not.
20
@trenton Give me a break. Artists have been featuring extreme violence in their work since the dark ages. Read up.
27
Okay, okay; we'll see it, we'll see it...I think we've had quite enough NYT press on this movie now, thank you.
6
Was no one disgusted with the degrading characterization of Bruce Lee and the Mexican American characters?
8
@Rick I remember the film showing Bruce very patiently and caringly teaching Sharon Tate how to movie-fight. I remember the film showing Bruce knock Cliff to the ground with a flying kick...good shot, Bruce. I remember Bruce getting thrown into a car as part of that sparring session.
Degradation??
Hyperbole much??
13
Here is what I know for sure.
Sharon Tate was a young woman in the prime of her life. She was joyfully pregnant, weeks away from delivery. Her murder, and the manner in which it went down, has haunted me for years. It was so awful that I won’t recount it here. Go read about it, if you want to understand the details of what was done to her while still alive.
So. Would you all be okay, as an example, with a movie that fetishized, reduced and trivialized the murder of say...Lacy Peterson?
Or your own sister, daughter or mother?
Didn’t think so.
Out of an abundance of respect to Ms. Tate and her family, I will it contribute one penny to this movie.
.....and Quentin Tarantino (spellcheck wants to aptly rename him “Queen Tarantula”) is so over. While his gore fests may continue to appeal to a subset off bloodthirsty males, it’s 2019. Our citizens are being murdered and we’ve had our fill of violence. Plus,,post #metoo, we women are tired of being shoved to the side. Movies like this have very little place in the great many lives that now consume entertainment. If you want to see brilliance, go see the second season of Fleabag on Netflix and spare yourself yet another immersion in unnecessary violence and degradation of other humans.
19
@Gwe Kind of amazing that you, a stranger to Ms. Tate, is so offended by this film while her sister sings its praises, and specifically points out how accurate the portrayal is of her sister by MR, and says she was honored to be on set to see it all.
How about you look up the meaning of "brittle spirit," and calm down a little...
22
Sharon Tate is a character in the film, but despite some people’s frustration, the film is not about Sharon Tate. Like most Tarantino films the film is ultimately about Q. Tarantino. Full stop. He does not, thankfully, feel it’s his job to produce a piece of retro-sexual politically correct propaganda that shows an empowered Sharon Tate taking a flame thrower to uninvited houseguests - any more than it shows the women of the so-called Manson family pushing back against Charlie’s psychopathic patrimony. If someone out there wants to make those films and can do them well, I’ll plunk down my $12 at the box office. Until then, despite all of Tarantino’s shortcomings, please don’t waste my time whining about some imagined film you would have preferred that this director make. And if his revenge fantasy doesn’t suit you, stay home - or concoct your own revenge fantasy - or both. In this film, Sharon Tate isn’t a weak person who needs Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio to rescue her. She is, in this story, a lucky person who’s the beneficiary of Charlie Manson’s sloppy instructions to his minions. She’s a fortunate bystander - which is a much more realistic role for most people than becoming a spontaneous yet competent killer. In this fantasy, Pitt and DiCaprio weren’t saving their glamorous neighbor (and in a selfish fit of regressive machismo, robbing her of her agency.) They were defending themselves against a murderous home invasion by a trio of homicidal idiots.
32
It is not complicated.
Tarantino is a good scene setter and writer and camera user and the best editor ever and master of scene beats.
He is also a sadist whose funniest dialogue comes after being set up by carefully staged and relished torture scenes like a cigarette after and he is shallow to the core. He has made no effort in his life to get to the life that flows in people especially the women and he has no interest in it or them and does not have one movie scene with that flow in it. His great scenes are something else.
Using bad movies as raw material to make great scenes is the only life that matters to him.
Saying it is complicated to excuse being charmed by a beast is not complicated. It is just invertebrate cowardice. Tarantino is not a straussian or a Jesuit playing with the dialectic.
I have some vague memory of someone like Brando working on some bad movie like Missouri Breaks saying something to the effect there was no connection between whether a person was good and whether they had talent. He would know. This movie Tarantino’s defense of Harvey and what he opposes and can’t deal with. A good person does not turn the Manson murders into a lament for the old ways of Hollywood any more than a good person incites racist violence with lies and the goed to the scene of the slaughter of innocents to strut about. Not complicated.
7
Never have seen a Tarantino film, never planning to either. Doesn't our country have enough violence as it is.
5
I find it very telling that many people commenting here - as the kind of people that Tarantino attracts to his cinematic oeuvre - have to defend their enjoyment of the film by attacking intellectuals. They have no interest in critical thinking whatsoever.
6
Tarantino saved Sharon Tate. If his movie ending had been the reality in 1969, Tate would have lived, and the bad guys would have died. What's the problem?
10
I did not think Cliff killed his wife. Walking in his shoes it wasn’t even a consideration for me. As for the rather satisfying climax reeling in violence toward the Manson girls was a kind of heroic wrath from a fading unheroic actor Rick Dalton. He finally got to redeem himself? Was it sexist? Here lies truth vs fairy tale; Tex was annihilated too but the girls were double-tortured. But then again there were two of them. In the moment I found it very satisfying. I did not laugh but reveled in my wish for all horrible people to be stopped. This film was a once-upon-a-time after all. They weren’t women to me - they were brain washed almost killing machines. Sick little soldiers.
I do wonder why so many seem to think Cliff killed his wife? Didn’t they walk around with the guy for two and a half hours like I did? The one scene with his wife only provokes; providing scant insight. For me, I wasn’t walking around with a killer.
Tate holds a mythical place because of her beauty and her potential. For me the final tragedy that most of us will never experience or understand is how she died. She wasn’t truly part of our interest or culture before that horrible night.
Tarantino is a white male. That is his perspective. His love of story reveals and accentuates his pointed view which is seldom easy but certainly gives us lots to think about.
This film was very disjointed and piecemeal but the provocations will keep us busy as usual.
2
I have had it. Why are we discussing the work of a hack director, whose movies are overly derivative, violent for the sake of being violent, misogynistic, and always too long. He will never be a Spielberg, a David Fincher, a Brian De Palma, an Alfred Hitchcock, an Orson Wells, or a John Huston. He is nothing more than a pop idol. His popularity says more about stupid critics who forget that a movie is first, a visual work of art and not just a script, a series of scenes, not a literary work.
7
men find it impossible to portray women as anything other than their fantasies
men lack the ability to portray women as people, because men lack the ability to understand women as people
9
@No name Generalize much?
9
Brilliant or not, Tarantino’s films are too in-your-face violent for me.
Btw, I missed a discussion of Uma Thurman.
8
Maybe your critic didn't understand the Sharon Tate character in this movie, but I did. I can help her with it if she likes. If she doesn't, maybe it will go some distance toward lifting the veil once she realizes, in film, as in other forms, the character only needs to be true to the narrative, not to psychological expectation critics bring to it. To make this Sharon Tate--Tarantino's Sharon Tate-- more "complicated" than she is would be to ruin the movie.
16
@hglassberg maybe that’s one reason why some of us have issues with Tarantino films.
7
@unreceivedogma. That's fine. Then talk about the movie as a whole, instead of deploring a character's innocence in a film that's about innocence.
6
In the mind of an adolescent boy, Sharon Tate became a transcendent figure of beauty and unbearable tragedy. The tragedy has to be bypassed to make her loss bearable and her perfect image untouched in the boy’s memory.
19
I still think the climactic scene was sick. Not cathartic, not funny.
The hyper violence graphically depicted against the 2 Manson women was too much. (Yes, I know in real life they were hyper-violent & murdered Sharon Tate & 3 others, but we're talking about the film inspired in part by that event, not the event itself.)
The close up of the woman's charred corpse floating in the pool was gratuitous. I felt nauseated looking at it.
Before that scene, I was actually liking the film quite a lot. I thought the shot of the large number of female members of the Manson "family" standing threateningly in front of Cliff (Brad Pitt) was chilling. As one review said, they were like the followers of Dionysus in Euripides' "The Bacchae."
I also loved all the references to films & TV from my childhood.
But what was the deal with making Cliff a wife-killer? (To be fair, the flashback is ambiguous; it seemed like he was drunk, sitting on a rocking boat at sea, so the speargun [phallic symbol alert!] might have gone off accidentally.) Just trying to keep him from being a pure hero? But then in combination with his bashing the Manson woman's head repeatedly creates a pattern of violence toward women that many reviewers & commenters in the here
were okay with or found aesthetically pleasing, even funny.
So I'm ambivalent about the film, as I've been about all of Tarantino's films. It isn't just stylizing the violence (most films do that); it's the gruesome depiction that's troubling.
13
@JediProf I think the film is ambiguous as to whether Cliff killed his wife at all. The cut to the scene where he’s sitting on a boat holding a spear gun while his wife harangues him, strongly implies that we cut away just before she is fatally harpooned, but nothing anyone says suggests that his wife was harpooned or died at sea. That flashback could be a complete misdirect.
10
@JediProf can you say Pulp Fiction? How about Jango Unchained, Fargo, etc etc. Gratuitous violence is Tarantino’s signature.
3
@AHW Fargo was the Cohen Brothers, not Tarantino. But you're right, gratuitous hyper-stylized violence that appears like a bloodied, macabre ballet is definitely his signature.
2
Jesus. It’s just a movie. Can’t we simply enjoy a story anymore without a horde of half-baked intellectuals dissecting every aspect of it like it was a frog in biology class?
56
@ScottC.
No, you can’t. Tarantino aspires to make more than “just a movie”, he wants to be taken seriously as an auteur. Therefore he will get judged as such. Imho, he fails because he is self indulgent with regard to gratuitous displays of violence and misogyny designed to do little more than shock, all at the service of shallow entertainment values that you seem to prefer.
It is telling that Tarantino attracts the kind of audience that wants to think that they are watching “just a movie” and want to remain oblivious to the subliminal messaging and consequences of his imagery. In this, I will not begrudge Tarantino his success.
8
@ScottC Because you hate critical thinking, Scott? Criticism is one of the great joys of life, and criticism about art improve and enriches art. This article made me like the movie more, and think about it in a way I had not before.
If you "simply enjoyed" this movie, reading this article, this thoughtful criticism of the movie, might allow you to more complicatedly enjoy it more.
2
Really - Thank you ! This endless dissection of
basically ... everything, is getting downright ridiculous
2
Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Do any of Tarantino’s?
5
@Elaine
Barely, there about eight seconds of Ms. Tate talking with her friend about their pregnancies, which was so bland and short that even as I watched it, I wondered if it had been put in to pass the Bechdel test.
4
@Elaine Can you name a Spielberg film that passes your test?
3
@Jason Yes, "The Post."
3
Tarantino’s heroines are tough—swordfighters like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, withstand torture like Kerry Washington in Django Unchained, and kill bad guys like Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight. None of his women reveal the vulnerability, empathy, and emotional strength and resilience that comes from real life experience. To be fair, his men don’t either. Tarantino makes movies from homages to scenes from other movies—spaghetti westerns, kung fu, and blaxpoitation; not Truffaut, Ozu, Fellini, Welles. His storylines are action driven, his technique enhances scenes, but he shows little understanding of real people and their life experiences.
9
Sorry for everyone who doesn't get Tarantino. I loved all 2 hours and 40 minutes. Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio are incredible. Come Oscar time, best picture, best actor for Leo and best director for Quentin.
32
@Mark McIntyre this a not an uncommon response given to someone who disagrees with you..."you have a different opinion, or saw it differently than I did...obviously you misunderstand my superior way of looking at things...really, you just don't get it..."
1
Have you stopped to reflect and consider for even a short moment that it is maybe you who doesn’t “get” Tarantino?
3
Enjoyable up until the typically unnecessary and over the top violence. I had another ending is so much better and rewarding for all. The box office and the viewing audience
Oh well people. I tried
3
What I don't understand is the neurological condition in which after watching Ms. Robbie in her scenes, seeing anyone else thereafter made my eyes hurt. I wish I knew the name for that neurological phenomenon.
5
The problem with most movies and especially movie critics is that the tendency is to overthink things and ascribe meaning that probably isn’t warranted. This movie is a revisionist dark comedy, with a counterintuitive ending. Designed to be fun and nostalgic, and probably not more than that. But critics pour all of their social angst into it looking for meaning (or reinforcing shocked biases) where there is none. It’s one reason modern art paintings sell for so much — the artist can throw anything on a canvas and art critics will find the deepest meaning that never actually existed. So for me, this is a good, amusing, and even touching movie. A movie and nothing more.
24
@JTFJ2 What's wonderful is there is a wide world where people like you aren't overthinking things, and you can go there and not do that with them.
Those of us who enjoy critical thinking, and the craft of criticism, and art criticism, because we think it expands the art and allows us to enjoy it more, will be here doing this.
9
Todd: I understand the need of those who produce or provide nothing tangible to justify their choice of careers. That said, it's clear you have no grasp of the meaning of logic as critical thinking....If you did, you'd realize that "art criticism" (essentially, subjective maundering about the critics own likes, dislikes and biases for a paycheck) and actual critical thinking are pretty much mutually exclusive.
1
Lowell, yours is the classic posture of anti-intellectualism: put down that which you don’t understand by dismissing it without providing even the slightest substantive foundational reasoning for doing so. The ultimate ad hominem attack.
1
I thought the movie was a love poem to Sharon Tate, and an intentional contrast to Hollywood noir where the beautiful people are monsters just under the surface.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a beautiful, nice, wholesome starlet is just that.
I thought Tarantino's portrayal of the Manson family was brilliant... simultaneously innocent, magnetic, and insane. The noir yang to Tate's yin.
72
@sonnel I think this is right on the money. I think a big thing Tarantino did right was going very understated with both the Manson family and Tate. He left room for the well-known historical facts of these figures to influence how we felt about what we were seeing rather than telling us how we ought to feel.
18
The movie wasn’t about Sharon Tate. She’s a tragic enigma to this day. All we knew when this happened was that she was married to Roman Polanski, and she was so young and beautiful. The murders were so horrific and you were alive then, there’s a lingering pang about it. Like after the JFK assassination, the world changed and it’s felt like some portal opened afterwards that released all the evil and madness we’re nearly immune to now.
37
@Gabrielle Rose Thank you for pointing that out...I thought it was obvious. I get the feeling most people are caught up in some sort of projected idea based upon details they can site, but they seem to miss the entire gist of the film. It really has very little to do with any realistic concept of Tate or the Mansons, or even what went down.
5
Tarantino's juvenile perspective makes money and that's what it's about, period.
5
I found Sharon Tate to be a more nuanced character than seems to be generally credited. She is idealized, but very winning, sort of like Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth. She's beautiful and lively, but down to earth, and thoughtful. She's beautiful and privileged, but humble and kind. She gives a hippie woman a ride and is totally sweet in how she treats her, she connects with the elderly man in the book store over Tess of the D'urbervilles, she is thrilled to tell the girl at the box office and her homely old manager that she is in the picture they are showing, and seems to be genuinely touched when they want to take her photo and invite her in to watch the film, she is visibly delighted when her performance on screen gets laughs. she tenses up into a fighting stance when she watches herself fight on screen. Her character is such a lovely person and it is imbued by so much poignancy because we know her fate. I think she is exactly what she ought to have been in this movie. I don't think the film would have been in anyway enriched if several mundane traits had been thrown in to "humanize" her.
68
Never saw the Django film, and probably never will. When I heard the title I thought someone had made a film about Django Reinhardt.
2
@Joan In California
Well you would wrong then. You are missing a powerhouse performance by Christolph Waltz and a dope revisionist slave history twist.
7
Look up Django Reinhardt and you'll learn about one of the greatest 20th century musicians.
2
@Left Coast I thought Samuel Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio also put on great performances in that movie.
3
Perhaps, the critics be shunned. More than likely, the critics are a tiny minority looking to be noticed.
4
@Cynical You think critics should be "shunned"? They expand and improve art--if you've seen this movie, and read this article, it gives you new and interesting ways to consider the film, like all criticism.
Indeed, critics are "a tiny minority"--too many uncritical people want to "shun" them, it would seem. Me, I love it, critical thinking and criticism are some of life's greatest joys.
6
Critical thinking ? Now that's a Hoot.
Might be if any of it was a bit creative or original.
More Magical Thinking from the Nattering Nabobs of Negativity joining in Group think lockstep to the slightest occurrence nowadays
Tarantino is not the director to look towards if you just want confirmation of or conformity to any particular narrative. Moreoever, I think the author here came close to but fell short of truly understanding the film. Tate here is supposed to feel ethereal, almost just existing in the moment. You're supposed to have this lingering question in the back of your mind of, "is she even real?"
By the end of the film, after the violent climax, we hear her speak through a voicebox. The person we're hearing speak never existed, because the real Sharon Tate died by this point in the story. The film's version of Tate has now become completely ephemeral and almost non-corporeal -- a disembodied voice of hope and love, welcoming our protagonist into her home. Particularly striking is that it's only after the real Tate died that our fictional Tate has her most substantial interaction with the protagonist. A bit later, we see her from above, her face not visible, because she's passed into another world that never was -- a world that DiCaprio's character is now passing into as well. A snapshot of what Hollywood should have been near the end of 1969 rather than what it was, suspended in time, forever unreachable.
65
@nilkn Wow, that is really beautifully expressed! And I agree.
@nilkn Very well observed!
He didn't get anything "wrong." It's his movie, he made it, it's fiction.
75
Depends on what the meaning of the word “fiction” is, I suppose.
I am only a few years younger than Sharon Tate would be and I took ballet lessons with her in Santa Monica a couple of years before she was tragically killed. She was what you could call a transcendent beauty, and she was sweet and shy. And to think that something so dreadful happened to someone like that!
68
@Katharine Talamantez She was incandescent.
6
@Floyd Hall She was! She had a light around her and when I first saw her, I still remember it, 51 years later.
10
"Critics have seized on that characterization — or rather, lack of characterization. (She’s merely a “sexualized cipher,” as one review put it.)"
I didn't take it that way at all. Margot Robbie's Tate may have very little dialogue, but she was the life force of the film even without it (perhaps ESPECIALLY without it). In intentional contrast to the aging-out-of-their-careers Jack Dalton (DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Pitt), Robbie is young, beautiful, innocent, and on the way up professionally.
Her joy at watching an audience respond to her performance in the film-within-the-film is palpable. She's also open and generous (giving the girl a ride... and then a hug). And she's literate (when she stops into a store for a gift for her husband, she picks up a book -- Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, the subtitle of which I think is how Tarantino wants us to see his/Robbie's depiction of Tate).
I left the film thinking Tarantino's decision to write the role of Tate this way was neither accidental nor inadequate. He reinforced that the public knew precious little about her, and that in a world absent Hollywood endings, we never would.
100
@D Price Totally agree.
4
@Melissa Westbrook, absolutely agree. I think this critic missed the mark. Debra Tate, Sharon’s sister, is said to be pleased with how Tarantino portrayed Sharon.
I remember hearing about the Tate-LaBianca murders as a child and later reading the horrific details in Bugliosi’s book. I felt the ending of this film was brilliant and surprisingly cathartic. Some of the others in the audience must have thought so, too, because they were applauding.
22
@D Price The fact that she bought a copy of Tess does imply she had a real creative relationship with Polansky. Tess was one of the movies he made after Tate was killed. Starred Polansky's new Girl Friend/Wife Nastasia Kinsky
6
worst movie in the last 20 years. Should have gone straight to video. No real story or script, lots of wasted time of people driving in cars.
1
@Dude Let me rebut your review, point by point: One of the best movies of the last 20 years. Movies like this are why we still go to movie theaters. Great story and script, punctuated with beautiful and exhilarating scenes of people driving cars.
39
This film is not a Sharon Tate biopic., it's an ode to all of Tarantino's film fetishes: spaghetti westerns, poliziotteschi films, roadshow movies, and the oddball position many of the last movie contract players found themselves in by 1969...teetering between continued fame and career evaporation. The Sharon Tate presented here is surely meant to symbolize (key word symbolize) the opposite of that...a promising film career on the upswing, an ethereal beauty who was also the polar opposite of the degenerates waiting out in the desert to destroy her. Tarantino's motives for presenting Sharon Tate this way can be questioned but to what end? He's made a movie that features an angel and that angel is in the form of Sharon Tate, which for a film fanatic like Tarantino, makes perfect sense.
30
Interiority? For real?
5
I loved Robbie's performance. Her Sharon Tate is a tabula rasa for the audience: we seen in her what we want to see. The near angelic portrait of Tate in her last months, just as she was coming into her own, is a beautiful and heartbreaking. OUAT...IH gives us a Sharon Tate who is a more than the name that is synonymous with a flashpoint of unfathomable savagery.
20
@Henry Julius of Course Robbie's performance was right on the money. But Tate was so much less compelling than Robbie's other great roles that it does show how little we expected of women in those days.
1
Thank you for the spoiler. I can now watch the movie in good conscience.
2
Tate in the movie is obviously intended to be a chimera, a symbol, the angelic version of herself that we all imagine. To put many words in her mouth, or to give us more of her life, would have grounded her in a way that would have made her less effective in the film. Surely, Taratino also realized that putting words in a murdered woman's mouth would have opened him to another form of criticism, one that would have probably been more justified.
People condemning his treatment of Tate must not have seen the movie. She's hardly more than a bit player, but she sticks with you as much as the two primary leads. I remember her in the movie as an angel, above it all, with not a second of negativity ascribed to her. I think that's what QT was going for, and I really appreciate that he did. She was a wonderful woman in real life, and this movie has forever marked that in that mind.
105
@Todd, nicely said
8
@Todd you're the only one in the comments so far that gets it. Tate was depicted as an ideal. Above human. Flawless.
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I guess the horror of her death (in real life) made some think she deserved more respect. Women don’t get treated like that in Tarantino films. In my view, seen one......
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@Lisa'm
STRAIGHT 2 VIDEO.
@Lisa See my other post, this movie is an uplifting tribute to her.
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Margot Robbie could play a floor lamp and give a fascinating performance. Since some of Tate's family felt the film captured her well, I accept that.
However, it is hard to ignore the way the film treats every other woman. There is an eight year old girl, whose role is to make us believe that the Leo Dicaprio's character is a brilliant actor and to applaud him for throwing her unexpectedly and violently to the ground. There is Brad Pitt's character's wife who is shown as whinny and whose off screen murder we should overlook because Pitt is shown heroic on screen. There is the strident woman who (correctly) fires Pitt and ends his career. And then there are those Manson women, who are shown as sexual predators and firmly in control of the Manson operations and the selection of victims. (Most historians depict the woman as victims of the men's manipulations as well as ultimately the killers under the direction of men). It is hard to avoid the overall misogyny of this movie, regardless of how real we think the depiction of Tate was.
The article suggests that the movie should have shown Tate (and presumably her house guests) defending themselves. In the movie, it was the dog who leads the attack against the killers. In real life, of course, the Tate killers avoided houses with guard dogs and I think it is unfair to somehow suggest that the Tate and her guests could have done more to defend themselves.
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@D
Her family has no say nor should they.
@D You mean the little girl who was shown to be a consummate professional, mature beyond her years and, ultimately, maybe the most empathetic character in the film?
You mean the gaffer boss who ran the stunt department, to the extent that she had all the men terrified and fired a man on the spot, with her one word? One of the strongest, toughest people in the entire movie?
What about Lena Dunham, who's taken over Bruce Dern's house and property, and has him doing exactly what she says, including sleeping during the day so he will stay up and watch TV with her. Weak or strong character?
QT isn't perfect, but he's featured a LONG line of tough, heroic, smart and forward-thinking women. Doesn't always treat them so well, haha, but then Die Hard kicked the heck out of Bruce Willis too, huh.
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@D I don’t think you are being fair about the other women in the movie.
The eight year old girl is precocious, and we are at first led to believe she will be inhuman and unsympathetic, but we are surprised to find that while she is preternaturally self-possessed, she is also very sympathetic and humane. She wins the genuine admiration and respect of Leonardo DiCaprio and challenges him to be better. Her praise for his acting (which may have been motivated, at least in part, by sympathy) genuinely gives him a lift. It is sort of sweet and ridiculous that he is so pleased to be told by an eight year old girl that his performance was “the best acting I’ve ever seen.”
Cliff’s wife is haranguing him on the boat. It’s rumored that he killed her, and the scene is suggestive of how it might have happened if he did. But we don’t know that he did. We don’t know if his wife even died on a boat or because she was harpooned. That little scene just reinforces the cloud of suspicion that Cliff is under.
When Zoe Bell’s character fires Cliff for fighting Bruce Lee, you are right to add “correctly”. Bell may be strident, but she ought to be under the circumstances. She’s also powerful and in control. She thinks Cliff murdered his wife and she isn’t afraid to say so to his face. Cliff even says “fair enough” after his reminiscence.
If the Manson women had been depicted as helpless victims instead of menacing hippy zealots, don’t you think that would have reinforced gender stereotypes?
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I loved this movie too. I found it's optimism a much needed fairy tale in this depressing moment in time. I loved the layers of detail and depth. No piece of the movie was just what we saw. Small actions carved deep grooves. She bought the first edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Might have been Polanski's Tess had she lived?
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Have you ever seen a Sharon Tate movie? She always played a sweet, innocent sexpot. Tarantino got it right.
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@Mickey Topol YOU NAILED IT!
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Those are the roles she played, not who she was. The point of the criticisms about her portrayal in this film is that she is never given any sort of real life or character outside of that fantasy ideal. Yes, that was not her “function” in the film as designed by Tarantino. He only meant her to be an ideal of something that was lost - or which never really existed in the first place. You might see that as a strength in the film, or a shortcoming. That is what the discussion is all about. To say the writer of this piece doesn’t “get it” is to negate any discussion, which seems to be the true essence of not “getting it.”
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Sharon Tate, with the help of her husband, exploited her youth, beauty and sexuality to get ahead in her career. Women need to accept that some women will do that. Don’t try to make Tate into some complicated, esoteric misunderstood deep thinker. If she wanted to be thought of that way, she wouldn’t have made Valley Of The Dolls.
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It's pretty simple, really. That's just what Sharon Tate was like. Maybe there's more you'd like to know about her, maybe she's different from other characters in other films, but that doesn't mean her portrayal here isn't authentic.
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Was it a realistic expectation, after viewing a fictionalized and revisionist treatment of a real event, to expect to understand Sharon Tate more completely?
I think it'd be like watching the Godfather to understand the socio-economic rationale for the rise of organized crime.
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@Steve Williams Maybe not, but Harris is absolutely correct in pointing out the missed opportunity and Tarantino's broad brush stroke characterizations of his female characters that are tantamount to continued objectification, and I thank her for it.
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@Steve Williams
Actually the Godfather Part II does provie a socioeconomic rationale for the rise of organized crime.
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I genuinely loved this movie.
As for Tarantino's depiction of Sharon Tate, he clearly chose to keep her at a distance, to freeze her in time as the symbol of the late '60s California Dream that she remains in our collective imagination, that Dream which was so brutally dashed with her murder.
He wasn't making a documentary. He wasn't making a political statement. He was making art, which is larger and requires freedom from political expectations.
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@Livonian
Agreed. In fact, political expectations are the death of art.
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I’m an artist. As an artist, and as a thinking person, I understand, like it or not, that there are political aspects and contexts to everything. Even breathing is political, to borrow from the name of a blog of a friend of mine.
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