Fictionalizing History Plays On Fears, But Overlong At Times

Rating: 7/10 (23 November 2019)

I had no idea what the movie was about, going into it. If DiCaprio wasn't starring I might have turned it off in the first 5 minutes, but stuck with it and was glad I did, as the beginning is not representative of what follows.
For anyone who lived through the 60s in LA and was old enough to know what was going on, this film will strike nostalgic notes, including hearing the old KHJ radio ditty. Tarantino really reproduced the era in just about every way.
The film follows DiCaprio's character home - an actor with some success - winding up the Hollywood Hills, turning on to Cielo Drive. This was my first hint of where we were going, knowing the house Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski rented was on Cielo. And sure enough, DiCaprio turns in next door.
Soon we are treated to small, sporadic scenes of Tate and others in the months previous to the Manson murders, and Tarantino does something sweet in that we are able to follow Tate through an endearing afternoon - again fictionalized - but for those who only know her by her tragic death, it was an extremely powerful sequence in its joyful innocence.
As the story progresses we see small interactions between Brad Pitt (who plays DiCaprio's stunt double in the film) and Manson characters... and when Pitt offers a hitcher a ride home to Spahn Ranch, and decides to take a gander around to check on his old friend Charlie Spahn who owns the place, I found myself racking my brain trying to remember if a stunt man was part of history. Again the suspense was Hitchcockian in scenes like this, and Pitt was superb.
In this way Tarantino was able to play off people's fears - often brilliantly - while fictionalizing the past, changing history, especially in the movie's climax. Pitt and DiCaprio both gave stellar performances.
In true Tarantino fashion, however, the film was overlong and had whole sections that could have been cut entirely, making it drag at times, and for way too long.
That said, his films always have that element of brilliance and this one is no different, though I do have to wonder if the film's ratings were helped by a climax the world would have much preferred over history.