"Once Upon A Time In Hollywood," Counterfactual History and Catharsis
Note: This post contains plot spoilers
The ending of Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood," which arrives after a long series of historically accurate storylines, is both a bracing exercise in alternate reality and a stroke of genius. Both times I saw the film, audiences were giddy at the depiction of Manson Family murderers meeting their just ends at the hands of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Cliff's pitbull Brandy. The much-criticized violence with which the fictional heroes dispatch Tex Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel is anything but gratuitous: rather, it is fitting punishment for a horrific crime.
Like Tarantino, I was a child during the 1960's, too young to participate in the era but old enough to remember the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Tate-LaBianca murders. Though not yet an Angeleno, I visited Los Angeles shortly before the murders and clearly recall their traumatic aftermath. Contrary to Joan Didion's cynical claim that "no one was surprised," the shock was palpable and the horror indelible. It's not an exaggeration to say that the Manson Family permanently altered Los Angeles: installers of alarm systems, security gates, walls and fences did a booming business after the Tate-LaBianca murders, and have thrived ever since.
In rewriting reality, Tarantino bestows on the audience that rarest of emotions: catharthis. For those of us whose childhoods were abruptly ended by the Manson Family, the conclusion of "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood," is nothing short of thrilling. By showing us what might have been, Tarantino lifts us up, assuaging a fifty-year-old wound.
Next time: "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" and the Many-Worlds Theory