It’s astonishing film making, for good or ill. Looking deeper, it may say a lot about who Tarantino is, and how his psyche operates, especially if you blend the recurring motifs of this with his previous two works, Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds. Playing death, brutality, and graphic violence for laughs is an odd way to earn a living. Having said that, he might just be making movies: it may begin and end right there.
In his eighth film, Tarantino’s style remains consistent. His films have all employed a similar look and feel to them and he remains highly skilled at building and maintaining suspense where it’s called for. His is a unique vision, in that he’d make an ultra-claustrophobic thriller, set in either a single room or a stagecoach, and then shoot it with one of the widest lenses possible (Ultra Panavision 70). A vast majority of the piece takes place inside a humble haberdashery, so the kind of vast panoramas used for films like The Robe and Mutiny on the Bounty don’t get much screen time in The Hateful Eight.
Fans of the director’s previous works will in all likelihood be thrilled by what’s on display. People with more delicate constitutions or more sensitive to matters of race, gender or other matters politic may find some of it hard to stomach. But this is after all, a hateful, not a sensitive octet. The film works as a piece of theatre. Broken into chapters (like much of the director’s past work), its structured to work like a play (the roadshow version of the film is replete with an intermission and program), all the while being very cinematic (and employing a voice over and flashback sequence to tremendous effect). It’s at the same time quite different to what he’s done before, in that few of his films could ever have been described as claustrophobic, although as per usual he’s mining inspiration from multiple well-trodden sources, down to the Ennio Morricone score. The dialogue is captivating, although dark and every single word of it is riddled with misanthropy. Hence the title. It presents America at its very worst – the worst of its inhabitants after the Civil War. Tarantino’s writing is so beautifully penned and delivered, his structure superb – his execution flawless. It’s filled with an old world theatrical menace, and in as much is probably the man’s darkest, most unpleasant work as director.
Kurt Russell is front-and-centre for much of it, and plays his ‘hangman’ bounty hunter with the John Wayne inflection and swagger he brought to Big Trouble in Little China. He’s great in this. So too is Samuel L. Jackson as the Union army officer turned bounty hunter; his Marquis Warren is the smartest person in any room he walks into and has no compunction about gunning down folks with a less than progressive bent on race relations. Jackson gets the lion’s share of Tarantino’s lip-smacking dialogue, and having played for the director in five of his works now, he seems the perfect fit and staple of the QT repertory company. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s doomed prisoner is dirty and vulgar, and the actor expertly fills her with rage and venom. Bruce Dern plays a Confederate general with sadness in his eyes and unchecked bitterness in his heart. Tim Roth gets to infuse his British executioner with the kind of relish and glee that Christoph Waltz had been doing in Tarantino’s films of late. Michael Madsen plays a variation on both his Budd from Kill Bill and Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs. The only actor not fitting in is Walton Goggins, who is all gol-lee and shucks as the town’s new sheriff. His delivery seemed out of step with the overall mood; he plays him like a racist Huckleberry Hound.
The Hateful Eight is astonishing any way you look at it. It unflinchingly depicts racism, misogyny, misanthropy, and yet is not a piece of work which could be labelled any of those things. It is a depiction of the absolute worst aspects of America and its history encapsulated in one place at one point in time, rather than a work of it. And it is testimony to the talents of one of the few remaining auteurs; the film is unique, Tarantino’s vision remains singular and his work is wholeheartedly confident.