HATEFUL 8/8/16
Quentin Tarantino is an auteur, in the truest sense of the word. Each of his films represents years of craftsmanship, a deep love of the cinematic medium, a remarkable nose for music, and a closeness with his cast that is remarked on in numerous interviewsāand shows on-screen through the seamless chemistry of characters.
Tarantinoās films are known, and often reviled, for their use of graphic violence. In fervently recommending The Hateful Eight to an older writer of my acquaintance, I was surprised by the hostility of his response. He said that Tarantino ārepresents not a criticism of the violence that is now besetting America but its celebrationā, and that a friend told him that the audience applauded when a womanās face got splattered with blood.
On the basis of that secondhand experience (which has more to do with the Audience than the film itself), he dismissed the film wholesale.
Two notes, on the above. Firstly: that thereās some heavy spoilering in what Iāve got to say about H8-8āso if you havenāt seen it, you may want to stop reading now. Secondly: knowing that this acquaintance is a stubborn alte-kokher, I never wrote him back. Not because I canāt respond, but because I know heād dismiss anything of substance I had to say, and force his own (uninformed) opinion back at me.
While I hope this essay reaches receptive eyes and ears, I dedicate it to all who dismiss art with violent or disturbing content solely on the basis of what it containsārather than what it intends.
As Tarantino put it himself (in a 1994 interview about True Romance):
āTo me, violence is a totally aesthetic subject. Saying you donāt like violence in movies is like saying you donāt like dance sequences in movies. I do like dance sequences in movies, but if I didnāt, it doesnāt mean I should stop dance sequences being made....[Violence isnāt for everyone, but] if you CAN climb that mountain, then Iām going to give you something to climb.ā
I donāt contend my acquaintanceās earlier point, about Tarantino being part of the American culture of violence. Natural Born Killers (QTās second script, which was adapted to film by Oliver Stone in 1994) has been criticized for its glorification of violence, and inspiring mass-murderers. Perhaps most prominently, the Columbine killers used āNBKā as their code for the massacre they were planning.
But the killers (tragically), and critics of the film (merely unfortunately), missed the message underlying the violence being portrayed. Tarantinoās films contain graphic, hilarious, horrific scenes of violenceābut they are never simply violence-for-violence-sake.
NBK is a commentary on the Mediaās glorification OF Violence (such as the celebrity-status of Charles Manson, who is mentioned in the film a number of times).Ā āWhy do disillusioned youths get into Mickey and Mallory?ā a psychiatrist interviewed in the script (whose scene was cut from the film) muses rhetorically.Ā āWhy do disillusioned housewives read romance novels? Why are you filming this special? Because you know as well as I do, you sayĀ ātonight at nine Charles Manson speaks,ā everybodyās going to tune in...Mickey and Mallory have shocked a country numb with violence.ā
I want to briefly linger on that phrase:Ā āa country numb with violenceā. Its truth in 1994, and increasingly so in our world of weekly shootings, bombings, threats and an election oozing hate into our homes via the Tube, is strikingly cognizant of the filmās own violence. Stoneās final film is a joyride of chaos and murder, in which the Media serves as counterpoint--but in Tarantinoās original vision, Mickey and Mallory are almost downstaged by the ever-present analysis OF them.Ā
In Tarantinoās original screenplay, the role of the Media, and particularly its role in spinning the Narrative around M&M KnoxĀ is more explicit than in Oliver Stoneās film. Itās worth noting that QT asked that he be credited with the filmās story, but not its script, as he felt the final thing was so distant from what he wrote--and, as a careful reading of the screenplay reveals, what he was trying to say.
Fast-forward 22 yearsāfrom Natural Born KillersĀ to Hateful Eight.
The first was, to paraphrase Hitchcock (comparing his 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too MuchĀ with his better-known 1956 remake)Ā "the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional".
NBKās critique of media-glorified violence is muddied by its actual use of extreme violence. Not to mention the fact that much of the onscreen violence (as seen in Stoneās film) is cartoonish or played for laughs. Literally, even, in the I Love Mallory segment, which juxtaposes Malloryās abusive dysfunctional family with a cheerful laugh-track.
(Incidentally: the I Love MalloryĀ segment--brutal though it is--justifies the murder of Malloryās parents far better than the screenplay, which shrugs it off by simply saying thatĀ āthey didnāt approve of our marriageā. It is one of several scenes and elements which donāt appear in the screenplay--and, I think, vastly improve the story.
The whole interlude with the Indian, as well. That wasnāt in Tarantinoās story, but adds a terrific mystical element to the film. Trippy AF.
But I digress.)
The Hateful Eight, by contrast, has enormous potential for violence, but only brief moment of onscreen violence in the first half of the film. The central plot of the film is that the bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang in Red Rock, for the crime of murder. They end up trapped, with a half-dozen other shady characters, in Minnieās Haberdashery during a three-day blizzard. Ruth suspects that one of their companions is an accomplice of Domergueās, who intends to kill everyone else and set her free.
Within this paranoid, claustrophobic environment, the characters are set up for violent conflict. I might write another whole essay on the issue of racism, as the film takes place some while after the American Civil War, and Marquis Warren (SLJ) is the only black man amidst the titular Eight. Or the similarities between The Hateful EightĀ and The ThingĀ (which share a basic premise, location, leading man, and nailbitingly tense score by Ennio Morricone).
But the tension of the film, as I say, is derived from the looming potential for sudden violence, and the possible hanging of Daisy Domergue.
While John Ruthās nickname is The Hangmanāsince he always sees that his charges arrive alive to be tried and hangedāthe delightfully-named Oswaldo Mobray is an actual hangman by profession.
Oswaldo gives a speech during Chapter Two about the distinction between Justice and Frontier Justice. The distinction, he opines, lies in the fact that heāthe hangmanāis a Dispassionate Man. Frontier Justice, as he describes it, is lynching. He points out that such an act is viscerally satisfying, but not what Civilized Society considers to be true Justice.
āThis dispassion,ā he concludes, with a flourish, āis the very essence of Justiceāfor Justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being....Justice.ā
In the final scene of the film, Daisy is hanged from the rafters of the Haberdashery, by two dying men. One of these was on his way to Red Rock, where he would be the new Sheriff. As they hoist her up, he proclaims āAs my first and last act as Sheriff of Red Rock, I sentence you to hang by the neck until dead.ā
This statementāand sceneāis gristly (and unflinchingly graphic), but while it is poetic (done in Ruthās memory), it is in fact an act of Frontier Justice. The Sheriffās words say otherwise, but the hanging IS an act of passion, rather than True Justice.
Her hanging is poetic also in the bookend it forms with the first image of the film: a snow-laden crucifix.
The first is a familiar, sacred image; the other, an awful and uncompromising image of violent death, which REFUSES to cut away, even as you squirm and wish it would.
Her death isāvery intentionally, I suspectāa disturbing, violent thing to watch.
The crucifixion is cold, and so familiar that our first thought is certainly of the visual beauty captured in the shotābut barely registering the subject, the act itself, the event which it depicts and commemorates: a violent, public execution. The hanging of a man judged guilty by the laws of his time, and condemned to hang, with nails through his hands and feet, under the scorching sun, until he dies.
Daisyās deathādespite all we are told about her crimes, and witness of her character, that justifies the actāis immediate, disturbing, and motivated by passion rather than dispassionate Justice.
What separates a Crime Of Passion from the Passionate (In?)Justice which ends THE HATEFUL EIGHT?
That ādispassionā, Oswaldo declares, is what distinguishes undue violence from lawful murder. But both acts consciously harm, torture, and ultimately kill, other human beings.
These questions are raised by the film, implied in dialogue, and explored in action. You might have the same discussion, about murder and execution, in a purely philosophical context. But Tarantinoās genius lies in his ability to pose these difficult and ambiguous moral questions within the context of a fucking epic movie.
He is, unarguably, inextricably, part of our Culture Of Violence. But his work is more than simply glorification of violence, or slapstick splashes of gore. His films are high art, even as they are grotesque. He forces us to leave the theater with a mixed sense of catharsis--and questions that stick in your mind like that popcorn kernel between your teeth.
