There Is A Plot, And It's A Good One

Rating: 9/10 (28 July 2019)

Even people who like this movie seem to think there's no plot. Now, with the risk of including Spoilers (although I won't be drawing arrows to or underlining plot points) the story of the two main protagonists, DiCaprio's down-and-out actor and Pitt's stunt double with nowhere to go but up, is not simply about, or even mainly about, their friendship. It is about what each of these two do in the face of adversity.
This is not a piece of nostalgia and I don't think there's even a moment of nostalgia in it. It makes use of a fairly distant, but not quite yet remote past. I was nine in the year this movie takes place. I remember this time vividly. In capturing certain aspects of this era, ONCE UPON A TIME prompts recognition in the minds of viewers who lived during that era. There isn't a single moment designed to make us yearn to return to 1969. Nor is this work designed to make us think it was a dystopian era. This may seem odd, given the focus on the Manson Family, but Tarantino is neither critiquing nor praising late '60s America. He is taking an event which is seared into the minds of people who lived at the time, an event which has become mythic; as central to American iconography as the legend of Jesse James; and made it the backdrop of a story about how individuals choose to use their freedom.