Yes. Look at my first response.
I don’t watch movie trailers and I try to avoid hearing any details of movies before I go in. In most cases hearing the back story is a spoiler, this time it seems it was mandatory.
Like I say, I started to think they were loosely based on the manson family, because of them being hippies, about to attack celebs and I vaguely remembered polanski being a potential target. But there were enough details that were different that I put all that to one side.
Neither Polanski nor Tate (nor the four other people murdered that night, who I see keep getting overlooked) were targeted. Manson sent some of his followers to that house because he had a grudge against a former resident, Terry Melcher. Manson didn’t care who the current residents were.
Yes–Once Upon A Time because it is a fairy tale about the evil monsters getting their comeuppance and the good people living happily ever after. (I’m imagining that meeting with Tate and friends led to a friendship with Polanski and a renewed career for Dalton, leading to him not having to sell his house and fire Booth. And of course Tate and several other people get to not be bloodily murdered.)
The mistake is in treating this like a stand-alone, self-contained movie–you aren’t supposed to enjoy the come-uppance of the hippies based on what they have done so far in the movie, you are supposed to enjoy it based on what you know really happened in real life.
What details were different? I read* Helter Skelter* too, and up until the would-be killers drove up that driveway, everything seemed to be very similar to how things went in real life, as far as I remember.
To Mijin’s point, one’s enjoyment (and understanding) of this film is greatly, greatly, enhanced if the audience knows two things going in:
People familiar with point 1, by this time in his career, know that whatever they are going to get, they sure as hell ain’t gonna get a A-B-C movie plot.
But if you don’t know point 2, then I can also see how this movie would be more difficult to understand - you’re watching two guys and one woman, all with differing lives and if you don’t know this film is about Manson, there’s not a damn bit of plot tying this together other than the relationship between Leo and Brad. And there’s no plot there either, just a couple of guys hustling in a changing world.
I saw this movie with someone unfamiliar with my points 1 & 2 above and we had to turn it off by the time Leo was talking to the little girl, my date was so confused. It’s not a movie for everybody, that is for sure.
Loved it. I had been actually avoiding it because I really didn’t need to see anything about Manson ever again. But hey, it had good ratings and my wife wanted to watch it.
I was immediately delighted that it wasn’t really “about Manson”, Tarantino just stole part of the Manson story for a typical Tarantino movie. The whole movie was just a setup for “what if they went in the wrong house?” And it worked.
I liked this film all the way through until the cartoonish, violent end with a blowtorch which he just happened to have in his gargage, fully loaded. I was very sure going in that Tarantino would write this alternative history where Sharon Tate did not die. Really hoped he would not do that. T
Of course he did. And it fucks up the whole film. What could have been an homage to old Hollywood with a poignant ending about the lost lives of Sharon Tate and all the other people who were murdered becomes a fucking Looney Tunes, Wil E. Coyete B-movie Bruce Lee bullshit film.
That final scene, at the party with Sharon Tate still alive, could have been moving. But watching it, I could only think of the…silliness…of the scene before. Tarantino turned a real life tragedy which affected millions of people into a childish revenge fantasy.
I probably could have done without the flame thrower but revenge fantasy for those millions of people “affected”(?) was rather clearly what he was going for.
Right, but could he have not done it in a better way? He could have. Just suppose that when they are in the driveway and one woman decides she can’t do it and walks away, what if the others had done the same thing? Then cut to the final scene at the party. Now you have an adult film and not a cartoon.
Again, I looked forward to the film and dreaded it at the same time. QT is an immensley talented filmmaker, I just wish he would grow up.
Right.
At the screening I went to with 20 people, only one person enjoyed the movie and he was aware of the premise (also he was watching it for the second time).
FYI I am not American and nor was anyone else there.
My opinion is that films should not rely on the viewer having specific outside knowledge before the start, but if the specifics of the manson murders are very much common knowledge among americans, then this is just an unfortunate example where for once a US movie is fine domestically but needs extra explanation for international audiences.
(Incidentally, it didn’t get a cinema release here in China; I think mostly because of the negative depiction of Bruce Lee, but also they would have had to cut the whole ending. In China films don’t have age certificates, so they all need to be PG)
It would have helped if they had included a scene or two establishing the hippies as terrible people.
But I still don’t think I would have enjoyed the violence at the end. Like I say, a murder plot going cartoonishly wrong I’m down with, I just don’t think the graphic nature and style was appropriate. In Pulp Fiction Tarantino knew we would not have enjoyed actually seeing Marsellus Wallace going medieval with pliers and a blowtorch. I wish he had shown similar restraint here.
Well, that sounds boring. Maybe there’s a reason he’s the one given big budgets?
Eta: the flamethrower wasn’t really a plot point. The girl was helplessly thrashing in the pool. It was purely stylistic.
But these are exactly the Raison d’être of Tarantino.
The things you are objecting to are part of the common elements of a Tarantino movie—cartoonish violence and altering history to give it a Hollywood ending. For Pete’s sake he gave the Second World War a better ending than it had in real life. And silliness is part of the fundamental ethos of a Tarantino world.
The word “poignant” is alien to the Tarantino vocabulary. He makes pastiches of the elements of popular film that he considers bad-ass and cool and at the end you get to cheer for a hero who has engaged in over-the-too explicit violence to save the day.
That was the part that made me not very upset about the violence at the end. These were the Manson killers. We know (by living in this alternate universe) what those people were prepared to do. They were brutal monsters. Read up on the gory details of the Tate murders if you must.
Plus it was satisfying that for all the horror and mystique about how these people were able to murder so many people, two middle aged guys that are drunk and high end up offing them.
And now you know that in this universe there will not be books and movies about these people or parole hearings and Manson and stuff. These were just a few hippies that got killed and their fame will not exist. I think Tarantino captured that pretty well. Even though there was some goofy over the top violence, well, that’s Tarantino.
I think the Kill Bill movies have plenty of poignant moments, especially vol. 2.
The end of Jackie Brown was poignant. Of course Tarantino didn’t write the story, just the screenplay.
That is extremely hard to do, given that every element of human culture is “specific outside knowledge.” For instance, if you watch a movie where someone has been punched in the nose, their nose is red, and someone sarcastically calls them Rudolph, that is assuming that someone is familiar with the children’s story of Rudolph the Rednosed Raindeer. Do you think–for a real example–this movie is bad because you have to have some awareness of the Chinese Cultural Revolution?
Not all Americans are familar with it (not all Americans are familiar with history in general) but in the US the Manson murders are Pretty Damn Famous. I’d bet that they are in the number 2 or 3 spot (with 1 definitely JFK and the other potential number 2 being OJ.)
Then the film wouldn’t have had a climax. Cut to the party? What party? There were like, five people at the Polanski residence, more of a gathering of friends than a party. And to be clear, DiCaprio wouldn’t have been at the party because there would have been no reason for him to be invited, so there would have been no resolution to his petering career, just poof out.
I mean, shoot, Django Unchained could have ended with Django and Hilde sneaking back, freeing all the slaves, and grinding them to safety as they join Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad and start giving speeches in Washington, with no final confrontation with the Candies, but then that wouldn’t have been much fun either.
Yes, those are the common elemements of a Taratino movie. I hoped for something more. Instead he keeps doing the same thing over and over.
Yes it would have had a climax. The same one it had, Sharon Tate not murdered, instead of being saved by a guy with a blowtorch. But OK, that is what Tarantino does. You liked it, fine. I didn’t.