The DSIR September Issue

D S I R September Issue 2019

Nirvair Singh comments on Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie. The latest addition to Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is a movie that had insurmountable expectations, considering its ultra-famous cast and crew. However, the numbers and the reviews seemed to have shattered these expectations. The storyline was deficient somewhere, but the film played an alternative role: picturising the Hollywood of 1969.The film, which was released 50 years after 1969, was able to give the audience a glimpse of the quintessential ‘Hollywood lifestyle’ through the eyes of the actor-stuntman duo, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Right from the word go, the film is all about making the audience feel like they are back in 1969: be it the Ford Mustangs, Dean Martin films or the hippie culture. The constant hum of the LA radio which goes- “it’s 5 o’clock in Los Angeles” and the flashbacks to Dalton’s Western films and TV shows help establish the Zeitgeist. All of these cinematographic elements help to give the movie more depth and

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colour. It never hurts to play up Los Angeles’ iconic street art or the movie billboards along the roads. Three-time Oscar-winner Robert Richardson does this seamlessly and quite frankly, it is these cinematographic elements that give the movie the ‘zing’ which its plot seems to lack.The spirit of the times is especially iconic because 1969 was on the cusp of The Golden Age and The New Hollywood Movement, both eradefining in their own right. In 1969 the New Hollywood movement had just taken root and the classic era had come to an end. The New Hollywood Movement is regarded as a renaissance for the industry with a new generation of filmmakers directing films that broke convention. Films like ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ replaced ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘Django’, with the coming of directors like Mike Nichols and Roman Polanski. During the first half of the film, the duo is cruising around L.A. trying to get casted, which, at the time, is a herculean task for Dalton- a former Western actor and ageing star. Dalton Picture Credits:The Daily Beast and Pixabay