What if...?

Rating: 9/10 (10 September 2019)

An unexpected film for Hollywood in general and for Tarantino in particular. "What would have happen if..." asks Tarantino, inviting viewers to plunge into the retrospective of "scrapping eras" - decline of the "golden age" of Hollywood and transition to the "director's movies" of the 1970s. It's clear that the change of eras was not an isolated aesthetic phenomenon, but was associated with socio-political transformations caused, above all, by the actual defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, which lead to a crisis and replacement of establishment when the "new left" stars of the infamous "Generation 69," have taken to the top in the wake of student protests and the hippie movement. Along with the changes of the political elite and of cultural norms, changes were also taking place in Hollywood - the traditional positive heroes of Westerns in "white hats" were fading into the past, replaced by "stereotypes breakers", "sexual revolution" and relying on directing.
The protagonists of the story - a "white hat" Rick Dalton from television westerns, performed by DiCaprio, and his stunt friend Cliff Booth performed by Pitt - embody the heroes of the passing "golden age", having difficulty adapting to the upcoming "hippie era". The "new era" is shown as the merciless killer of the past - former heroes turned into villains in the eyes of the "new brave world": Rick Dalton is forced to change his white hat to a black one, while Cliff Booth, a real "cowboy", a war hero, having in his biography a fact that can cause attacks of uncontrolled aggression among feminists, turns into a villain-pariah in the "left-liberal" Hollywood world of hippies, the world of "generation 69".
Quentin portrayed the "brave new world" itself as extremely unpleasant, represented in all its "glory" during Booth's trip to an ominous ranch, populated mainly by hippie girls, drug addicts and murderers from Manson's followers. All this against the backdrop of the splendor of the disappearing glorious Hollywood, meticulously recreated by Tarantino in the smallest details. The director allows us to plunge into the splendor of "vanishing beauty", slowly stretching it in the Sergio Leone's aesthetic style. Actually, the title itself reminds us about "Once Upon a Time in the West", and if Dalton just plays a cowboy, then Booth, especially in the arrival at the ranch scene, is a real cowboy, a reincarnated Clint Eastwood - the "Blonde" from the "dollars trilogy". Dalton's neighbor is the "hottest director" Roman Polanski with his wife, performed by Robbie, representatives of the "new wave", carefree "left-liberals" hanging out at the Hugh Hefner's Playboy estate and enjoying their growing popularity. Those of the audience who recognized Manson's surname and heard about Polanski's wife's fate are wary, but these events are unfamiliar to our heroes and they end their "golden age" by playing in the spaghetti westerns in Italy, from where Dalton brings himself an Italian beauty and got ready to part with his old friend Booth. This happens in early August 1969. Here comes the "what if" game - an alternative story in Tarantino's style. "What if Manson's killers messed up the house?", bursting not in the cozy refuge of the "new heroes" of liberal Hollywood, but visiting the "good old, conservative America" represented by the real cowboy Booth and theatrical cowboy Dalton? I'll only note that it was not in vain that Tarantino accentuated on an episode with Dalton's burning of the Nazis from the flamethrower in one of his roles. The real Nazis, to whom this terrible weapon had to be used, for Quentin were hippies from the "generation 69", from the "new era". The traditional, conservative America in white hats, a pair of cowboys with balls, was able to change the course of history and protect the lives of innocents from villains, and protect the "new Hollywood" from death. I don't know how and why Tarantino ventured into such a conservative film manifesto, but this is without a doubt the best of his movies.