I put "last film" in quotes because I don't believe for one second that it's really his last.
Massive Once Upon A Time In Hollywood spoilers, FYI.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is, in some ways, along similar lines as his last few films. Tarantino rewrites a brutal, unjust history in such a way that the villains receive their due punishment. We have no sympathy for Calvin Candie because he is symbolic of a violent, overtly racist system whose tendrils haunt us today. We have no sympathy for Hitler because his evil and ruthlessness remains unfathomable nearly a century later.
In Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Tarantino once again invents a death that feels, at least partially, justified. The Manson Family murderers were victims of brainwashing and cult programming, but at the end of the day, they took lives and are therefore given no sympathy when their lives are taken in fiction.
However, where Tarantino broke from his pattern is that, in addition to adding a deserved (depending on your stance on capital punishment) death, he also redacted a death in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. You could make a thin case that the remaining Basterds' lives represent escaped or resistant Jews, or that Django and Hildi represent escaped slaves...
But Sharon, Jay and Abigail unambiguously survived the events of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. To me, this added great poignance to the last scene.
Before the closing scene, there's a grand Tarantino catharsis wherein the baddies get what they deserve. Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio's chatacters dispense with the Manson family forthwith in dramatic, violent and highly entertaining fashion.
Now, in past Tarantino films, this is where it ends or is close enough to the ending that you still feel that triumph. Django blows up Candieland and rides off with Hildi. Aldo drives Landa to the woods and carves a swastika into his forehead that he "can't take off." We all walk away feeling like rock stars.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood has a similar catharsis, but that isn't the end. Cop cars investigate and an ambulance comes to repair Pitt's character, which rouses the fictional Sharon (who is pregnant), Jay and Abigail. The energy comes down and Sharon (Margot Robbie) invites Leo's character to her home. No grand anthem, no closing laugh...the camera just pans to the sky.
Inglourious said, "This is how this man should have died!"
Django said, "This is how people like this should have died!"
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood said, "This is how this woman and her beloved and her friends should have lived."
It is at once comedy and tragedy, parody and tribute, fantasy and eulogy. The last shot is beautiful and incredibly painful and I am filled with fresh mourning for people I've never met every time I watch it.
