Quentin Tarantino's hyped-up newest (and, yes, eighth) film, The Hateful Eight, is conceptually and visually impressive, and it is also uncompromisingly ugly. Essentially Reservoir Dogs done in a fake-Western style, the film collects nine (yes, nine) horrible characters together in a cauldron that boils over into cruelty and violence during a beastly three-hour detention span. The unlikely and unlikeable characters spin webs of lies and slurs at each other from the get-go, and by the final act bloodbath, the only catharsis I felt came with the lights rising in the auditorium.
We begin with a stagecoach journey through Wyoming snow, shown in delicious 70mm film that only really works for shots like this. The remainder of the film takes place inside a cabin that, while improbably spacious like Hermione's handbag, does not need a 70mm presentation. It seems that Tarantino is trying to do a Hitchcockian Lifeboat, and he is ruining his own claustrophobic concept by expanding his vision. Even the wideshots of the coach outside are empty, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing, which makes me wonder why so many critics are applauding that camera choice. I might also add that the pretentious scope comes across as though the movie presents itself as a masterpiece. Which it most certainly is not.
One by one, the characters pile up. We have a full cast, from Kurt Russell (performing with a strange John Wayne swagger) to Samuel L. Jackson (being Samuel L. Jackson), and from Michael Madsen (doing his thing) to Tim Roth (playing an effete Brit, "the Hangman", a part probably intended for Christoph Waltz). Most curiously, we have Jennifer Jason Leigh as a treacherous outlaw, spending the entire film chained to her captor, face perpetually smeared in blood, and the constant recipient of brutal attack. I "understand" the violence against her in terms of the plot. I do. I do not, however, understand the repeated face-punches that Russell's character delivers to her. I also do not understand the laughter such violence elicited from the men in the audience around me. Sure, its shock value is undeniable, but laughter?
Now before you attempt to reenact "The Hangman" and (spoiler alert) lynch me like Jennifer Jason Leigh, let's get a few things straight. I am generally fine with Tarantino's penchant for movies featuring an underdog getting ultra-violent revenge; I may not clamor for more, but I can appreciate his style and his sentiments for what they are. But this film is not a revenge narrative. Not really. Rather, it's an excuse for a bunch of men to get together and toss around vicious slurs with no merit, little purpose, and bad payoffs. It's an excuse to paint the main woman in the film as a villain, chain her up, torment and torture her, and ultimately hang her, all while calling her a "bitch." In fact, I challenge you to time all the deaths in the film. Hers is the only one that takes longer to see, as the camera lingers pornographically on first her bloodied, prostrate frame and then on her wide eyes as she is slowly strangled from the rafters. Hers is the only death in the film that is not only witnessed by the camera, but celebrated. And if you think I'm being oversensitive, check out the only other two women in the film: Both are black, kind and hospitable and endearing, and both are coldly murdered after just a few minutes of screen time.
Still not convinced that this movie is ugly? Let's try the racial slurs that fly around like the snow outside. At least Django Unchained had historical and dramatic reasons for its incessant use of "nigger", and at least the leading black character in that story enacted revenge on the evil white slaveowners. I already knew Tarantino loved that word almost as much as blood, but I wasn't prepared for its tedious and provocative use here. I was also unprepared for Tarantino's lazy and crude flourish before intermission, when Jackson's character recalls, with perverted relish, capturing, raping, and murdering a white man who is revealed to be the son of another one of the so-called hateful eight/nine (being Bruce Dern's character, a former Confederate general). The story, whether true or untrue, serves its purpose in leading to the general's death.
But it's an oddly childish scene, with two stellar actors tossing insults at each other like snowballs. Jackson's lengthy monologue describing his prodigious penis is both stupid and unnerving to hear and to contemplate. Jackson's manic and watery eyes bulge and shimmer while Bruce Dern looks on in horror, and meanwhile I was yawning. It was, like the rape scene in Pulp Fiction, an obvious and lackluster attempt by Tarantino to make us wonder, "Wow, I can't believe we're going there," and applaud the director's use of taboo. But what it also does is perpetuate that very taboo. It creates a spectacle out of a tragedy, simply for audience reaction. It strips away any guise of historical accuracy or political commentary from that moment, and reveals the man behind the curtain: Tarantino, self-appointed knight in white, who sweeps in from a place of privilege to rescue the bitch and nigger and faggot from their weaknesses and then display them as trophies, whereby he may further declare himself a friend of the "underdog".
In fact, this film was so insensitive and ironic, that I'm questioning almost all of Tarantino's declared solidarity with oppressed people. Sure, some of his movies are revenge flicks of women, Jews, and American slaves; but I'm wondering what's really at work in them, if this new vision is a culmination of their disparate messages. For the first time in a Tarantino film, I don't see any moral framework whatsoever. I don't see any justification, causation, or even merit to the evils at work. Instead, I see a gleeful pit of vipers, slithering over each other as they bite, wallowing in the venom and the gore, and ultimately crying out not for compassion but for still more violence.
Ultimately, this film is little more than a dare. A cruel dare made by a man who feels impervious to criticism. He is daring us to hate this film. He is daring us to declare our hate, and then wallow in it while his hardcore fans will no doubt object to criticisms like mine with a simple, "Of course it's an ugly movie, just look at the title! Hateful!" As if, as long as the production team admits its ideological faults, it's okay to put trash onscreen. As if being offended by that trash makes us prudish. As if we should either get off on these images of gore and filth or challenge him and all he declares to be righteous. In fact, as I begin to glimpse that man behind the curtain, I suspect that his much-lauded style of lavish sensation is little more than just that. That his only goal in filmmaking is sensation. I suspect that his years of identifying with underdogs and minorities and outsiders is little more than a ploy to get acclaim and praise for the same trash he'd be making anyway.
I don't see Leigh, in this movie, as a strong female role in a man's movie, holding her own and fighting back; I see Tarantino holding a misogynist leash and pretending that the woman on the end is a trophy. I don't see Jackson here as an ironic counterpoint to our cultural discussion on racism; I see Tarantino in blackface using language that he has no business using. Tarantino is daring me to hate The Hateful Eight. I don't. But I don't have to like it.
P.S. There are elements of the film I do like. Channing Tatum in the wild west is one. Ennio Morricone's fabulous score is another. And frankly, some of Tarantino's dialogue is one. My issue with that last one comes in when we don't have, for example, Christoph Waltz and his icy, ironic eloquence to deliver it. It also comes in when Tarantino himself thinks his dialogue is the best ever when, actually, it's not. He should read some O'Neill if he wants to do another long day's journey like this.
IMDb: The Hateful Eight
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