The choice of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite as the first foreign language film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture should please everyone: The film has artistic merit (a pointed satire, a beautifully acted ensemble piece, a tensely entertaining psychological thriller) but also promotes diversity and gives representation to the marginalized (an Asian film performed entirely in Korean). And yet for many critics today, it’s the second part that really counts. According to The New Yorker’s Richard Brody:

Political anger is justly in the air at a time of gross misrule, unleashed hatred, abuse of power, and plutocratic plunder, and with this year’s Oscars — both in the particulars of the ceremony and the results that it delivered — Academy members faced up to their own symbolic part in the dire state of the nation.

Is it still possible or relevant, in today’s climate, to take a stand for the practice of assigning honors based on artistic merit alone? I am moved to do so by the conviction that while the past year gave us a number of excellent and memorable films — not only Parasite but Greta Gerwig’s Little Women — it offered only one work of true genius: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood. And if we cannot recognize major works, we risk losing our ability to produce them.

Once Upon a Time demands that we recognize how the values of political advocacy and aesthetic merit can come apart simply by being an excellent apolitical film. But more than that, it offers an incredibly timely meditation on the nature and value of storytelling.

This is anathema to political critics. Brody termed Once Upon a Time a “ridiculously white movie” with an “obscenely regressive” message — and then added a quick swipe at Tarantino’s “history of seeming to enjoy planting racial slurs in the mouths of his characters.” Josephine Livingstone’s review in The New Republic included this remarkable line: “Movie reviews are not court cases, but let’s presume Tarantino’s innocence for a moment.” (Of course, this statement is as self-contradicting as a Zen koan, suggesting that Livingstone is, in fact, putting Tarantino on trial.)

But the purest expression of ideological criticism that stands out is Spencer Kornhaber’s essay in The Atlantic. Granted, it is ostensibly not a review but an exploration of what Tarantino’s film says about violence; however, this choice of focus is itself what makes it such a paradigm of this kind of writing. More traditional reviews by ideological critics devote a few sentences to the quality of acting, cinematography, and dialogue, only to move briskly along to the really important thing: the politics. Kornhaber cuts out the deadwood and goes straight to what he considers worthy of comment.

Tarantino is, of course, no stranger to controversy. Kornhaber argues — rightly, I think — that Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood is in part a reaction to and a comment on all the controversies from Tarantino’s past. In Kornhaber’s view, “Tarantino is out to absolve Hollywood, and himself, from grotesqueries, excesses, insensitivities, and lapses” — presumably, the much-noted use of graphic violence and racial slurs, as well as supposed misogyny. Though he never says so directly, Kornhaber is clearly concerned by what effect these depictions may have on the public. He demands to know why Tarantino is not.

In Kornhaber’s reading of the film, Tarantino’s defense rests on “a seductive lie”: the idea that “the boundary between what happens in fiction and nonfiction is impermeable.” If that’s true, Tarantino is not responsible for the effect his films may have on culture, and no such effect can even exist.

But does the film really endorse this idea?

(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS CONTAIN MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD)

The story of Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood is largely focused on actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his faithful right-hand man and former stunt-double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Once the star of the successful Western series Bounty Law, Dalton is now on the downswing of his career. He is forced to choose between playing dead-end parts in TV serials and going abroad to play in low budget spaghetti Westerns, a prospect from which he recoils as beneath the dignity of an established Hollywood star. Booth happily takes his place at Dalton’s side, driving for him after he loses his license (too many DUI’s), house-sitting in the Hollywood hills and running other errands as needed. Dalton eventually does agree to star in Italian films, and also marries his Italian co-star. On his return to Hollywood, Dalton decides to dismiss Cliff in view of his shifting life-focus. The two solemnize their farewell with a long night of drinking — which also happens to be the night of the first home invasions of the Family.

The Manson Family killers are not interested in Rick Dalton or Cliff Booth at first. They have been sent to kill Dalton’s next-door neighbors, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). But on the way to the Polanski house, they have a chance encounter with Dalton. Recognizing him, the killers hatch an idea. Sadie Atkins (Mikey Madison) in particular takes the chance meeting as a sign. She decides they should first kill Dalton, whose on-screen violence has set a bad example for a whole generation. The killers then descend on Dalton’s home. Though incapacitated by drugs and alcohol, Booth and his pit-bull make short work of the intruders, who devolve into buffoons. The last living member of the cult wanders into Dalton’s pool, firing rounds randomly into the air until Dalton spectacularly incinerates her with a flame-thrower, a relic from a World War II exploitation film.

The crisis averted, a still-living Sharon Tate and her friends invite Dalton in for drinks and congratulations for defending the neighborhood. The gates open invitingly, and Dalton joins this circle of Hollywood insiders. The implication seems to be that Tate will live on to have her child and continue a promising film career, while Dalton will recover his career and be embraced once more by the filmmaking establishment. Booth will presumably find a spot somewhere in the mix. It is, in every sense, a Hollywood ending.

Does this suggest that “the boundary between what happens in fiction and nonfiction is impermeable”? I would say clearly not: The film explores all kinds of “permeation” as art imitates life and life imitates art. One particularly important instance of this occurs when Sadie Atkins justifies her would-be murder in terms of Rick Dalton’s on-screen exploits: “My idea is to kill the people who taught us to kill!” Her violence, then, is spurred directly by depictions of violence in art.

The problem for Kornhaber is that the film doesn’t take Atkins’s view seriously enough: “Atkins’s spiel … is incoherent and plays as an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.” Kornhaber himself is far more sympathetic: “Old Hollywood, in Atkins’s reading, created the Mansons, seeding its own destruction.” Kornhaber finds Atkins to be perceptive and convincing, but Tarantino keeps treating her like some kind of deranged killer!

Thus, the real issue is not that the film treats the boundary between fiction and nonfiction as “impermeable”; it’s that Kornhaber and Tarantino have very different ideas about how film and media can influence people.

In Tarantino’s worldview, people are offered images and stories which they can choose to emulate or not. Atkins sees violence onscreen and decides to react with violence of her own; while TV viewing clearly “influenced” her, she is still responsible for her choice. In this framework, Atkins’s attempt to shift the blame to “society” and television is a cultural failure, and one of culture’s most important tasks is to produce individuals capable of interpreting and reacting responsibly to works of art.

In Kornhaber’s worldview, there is no such emphasis on individual competence or choice. Much like Atkins, he believes that people who watch violent shows on TV are subject to something like post-hypnotic suggestion. While careful not to endorse Atkins’ justification of murder, he does seem to endorse her belief that violent media inevitably beget real violence: “Hollywood’s products may not have killed Sharon Tate, but they surely did shape society on a level deeper than momentary amusement.” To Kornhaber, individuals are “permeated” by the ideas and images in which they are immersed. The task of overwhelming importance, then, is to control the art, and the critic’s role is to elevate art that promotes good morals and discourage art that promotes bad ones. If, as Kornhaber suggests, “the film industry’s bloodthirstiness” planted the seeds of the Manson murders, could Tarantino’s own inarguably bloodthirsty films someday bear equally horrific fruit — and shouldn’t he be stopped before we find out?

Kornhaber is quite correct that Tarantino’s film treats the Manson Family murders as an attack on and an outrage against Hollywood, and that he wants to defend Hollywood against such an outrage. But Kornhaber grasps roughly half of this defense. The half he does not see at all is closer to Tarantino’s heart and more central to his film.

Tarantino does not merely aim to exonerate Hollywood of the social harms it is sometimes accused of creating; his film also has a great deal to say about the positive value of Hollywood, the things that make it worthy of reverence and esteem. To understand this aspect of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, we have to dive into scenes about which Korhaber has the least to say, but which are the most compelling in the film and rank with the best scenes Tarantino has set to celluloid.

The film’s real central character is Hollywood in all its multifarious glory. Tarantino takes us through nearly every aspect of filmmaking: from lunch meetings with producers to hair and make-up to costuming to shooting with stunt-men; from actors and crew milling on set while waiting to film to actors blowing lines and having the script read to them off-camera to shots being reset for additional takes; from choreographers instructing actors in martial arts to directors building up actors and massaging egos — and much more.

The stories we see these professionals creating are not what either critics or casual viewers tend to credit as terribly important. Dalton makes weekly television shows, mostly forgotten Westerns and shoot-’em-up cops-and-robbers serials. Tate makes a broad comedy with a slumming Dean Martin. But at every point Tarantino underlines how much thought, effort, artistry and even passion go into these simple and often unappreciated works.

Nowhere is this brought home better than in a long sequence in which Dalton films his scenes for the Western series Lancer. Except for the fact that we see them in full color, as the actors on set would have, we experience the series exactly as it is being captured by the camera and exactly as it would be seen by the audience at home. Watching the film, I became totally absorbed: I was no longer watching Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood, I was watching Lancer. Until, that is, Dalton flubs a line and requests to have it read, shattering the illusion. The camera, moving in a smooth arc around the characters, abruptly stops, reverses and hastens back to where it started. Then, Dalton and his co-stars settle back into the scene and the illusion is restored with breathtaking ease and naturalness. In that short time I went from watching Lancer to being suddenly thrown back into the radically different and far more realistic world of Once Upon a Time, and then effortlessly back into Lancer. Rarely has the power of storytelling been demonstrated in real time with such immediacy. I would compare it to the best performance-within-a-performance film scenes, as in Children of Paradise, Limelight and Julie and Celine Go Boating.

In such moments, Once Upon a Time truly shines. Starting from the fairy-tale formula of the title, the film is imbued with the sheer, voluptuous pleasure of storytelling, of departing our reality and entering another. It reminds us of the existence of the storyteller, and of the freedom and delight the storyteller can take in creating and imagining other worlds. It captures the simple joy of pretending.

The would-be killers of the Family appreciate none of this. They cannot see Dalton — or Tate or Polanski — as artists expressing themselves through art, only as vehicles for propaganda. For Atkins, Dalton is one of “the people who taught us to kill.” Dalton would no doubt deny that he was teaching anyone anything. But to the Family, nothing is apolitical. The police, Hollywood, the government sending young men to Vietnam: they’re all part of the powers that be — or, in the Family’s terms, the pigs. This is captured in a brief exchange in which Family member Tex (Austin Butler) briefly remembers Rick Dalton’s character Jake Cahill from his old series Bounty Law; the chance encounter sends him back to his boyhood, when Jake Cahill was the rugged hero he had to have on his lunchbox. But as soon as Atkins names Dalton as part of The System, a cog in the propaganda machine that taught a generation to kill, the childhood hero-worship and the childlike joy in a good story well told are wiped away: in the next moment, the same man is ready to kill his boyhood idol. For the revolution to succeed, nothing can be spared.

This, in Tarantino’s eyes, may be the Family’s ultimate offense (although he surely disapproves of murder as well): the crude, fanatical way in which it flattens art and storytelling. The Family is incapable of seeing the dignity, nobility, or sheer cultural value of Hollywood and the stories it creates. For crusaders like Atkins, all art is merely propaganda; stories can have no other use.

And in this, Kornhaber’s critique is depressingly similar. What Kornhaber really wants from Tarantino is to press him into service — whereas Tarantino seems only to offer us a temporary escape into a better and more attractive world. Kornhaber appreciates the “seductive” quality of such storytelling but finds it ultimately shallow: once the film is over, “the lights come on and the viewers have to cope, on their own, with the world they live in.” If only Tarantino had engaged with the real political and social issues of the day instead of indulging mere fantasy, moviegoers would not be left “on their own”: They would have Tarantino to answer moral questions and perhaps propel them to action.

Kornhaber and like-minded critics would never explicitly say that the beauty and worth of a work of art are identical to its effectiveness in advancing their political cause; but they often imply as much and are careful never to say anything to contradict that idea. The corollary, of course, is that any work of art which does not have a righteous political message cannot be beautiful. Kornhaber, at least, seems to accept as much in the case of Once Upon a Time: he praises it up to a point but is ultimately left cold, and he attributes this lack of enthusiasm directly to the film’s lack of political content.

One can imagine how a critic like Kornhaber might review the films and television shows Rick Dalton stars in. These stories have no ideology. They are simple yarns in which villains behave villainously because they are villains, and square-jawed heroes stop them because it’s what heroes do. There are no larger themes, allegories, or social commentary. We watch these films and shows, if we do, to see the villains get theirs and share in the hero’s triumph. Kornhaber, I expect, would have only scorn.

But where Kornhaber sees shallowness, Tarantino sees purity. The TV shows Dalton acts in belong in a special class which also includes soap operas, melodramas and paperback mystery novels: what one might call pure storytelling. These genres lack prestige, yet they remain hugely popular and commercially successful. They offer no political message or philosophical reflection. Their only appeal is the story and its densely packed twists: What will happen next? Will the villain get away? Will the boy and the girl get together? Who done it? It’s remarkable that such trivialities can be so gripping. But they are gripping exactly because they are so simple. They draw the focus to the deep appeal of narrative itself, unencumbered and unadorned by anything else.

It is somewhat surprising that Tarantino stands up so strongly for such stories. Tarantino himself, including in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, is an intellectually heady filmmaker. Crammed to the rafters with dialogue, his films question the nature of identity, justice and morality. But even if the pure-narrative storytelling is not what Tarantino as an artist practices, he seems intent on letting us know that he appreciates it. The ideological emptiness of such stories leaves room for technical and narrative richness. Such films and TV episodes are costumed, shot, choreographed, written, acted, etc., as artfully as the deepest arthouse meditations. Some of them handle all these aspects of the medium with real mastery, as Lancer seems to. Tarantino insists that we should see their value. But to Kornhaber, that value remains invisible; and as the influence of such critics grow, it’s likely to become invisible to more and more people.

It’s a sign of the times that a major artist like Tarantino should feel compelled to make a film which goes to such lengths to defend the idea of art itself. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “All art is quite useless.” In an age dominated by the Kornhabers and the Brodies, this makes no sense: art can be valuable only insofar as it is useful. But Tarantino would revive the spirit of ars gratia artis: For him, as for Wilde, usefulness is beneath art’s dignity, and art which stoops to teaching moral or political lessons debases itself. Tarantino’s film is a reminder that Wilde’s dictum was meant to pay art a profound compliment.