Hateful Eight – Bloody Christmas

John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth: One of them fellas is not what he says he is…

On a roller coaster you know when the breakneck descent is coming, you see it when the ride slowly crawls across the peak, it gives you time to hold on to your seat belt tight. Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is a roller coaster ride in terms of the narration. You can feel the tension rise when the story hits a narrative high, you are at the edge-of-your seat when Ennio Morricone’s terrific score hits the right note. Something’s gotta give you feel, and when it does, you fall back like the character on-screen who has been shot in his gut. Tarantino’s latest slow-burn western is his most bloody, brutal and shocking. I could even say that it is his best film till date, but then in a few years he might make another movie and I would go on to hail that as his best pic. The genius of Quentin Tarantino lies in his ability to consistently surpass his previous ventures.

The Hateful Eight is a departure from Tarantino’s previous works that have a theme of revenge and redemption. It has the basic premise of a whodunit: a raging snowstorm outside, eight strangers stuck together in a tavern, a secret that connects them all to each other. It could be an Agatha Christie novel, but in typical Tarantino fashion the story unravels with long-winded dialogues and shocking revelations, that is soon followed by gunshots and lots of blood.

The story takes place in the aftermath of the Civil War, John “The Hangman” Ruth, a bounty hunter, is transporting the foul-mouthed Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to be hanged in Red Rock. With a blizzard raging, he meets Maj. Marquis Warren (Samuel Jackson), a fellow bounty hunter and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), the soon-to-be-instated sheriff of Red Rock. The first two chapters go about setting the dynamics between the characters. Both Warren and Mannix have their roots in the opposite camps of civil war which fuels further animosity between the two. They seek refuge in Minnie’s Haberdashery with four other mysterious strangers, General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), a vitriolic war veteran grieving his dead son, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) the smooth-talking hangman of Red Rock, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) a silent cowboy, and Bob, the caretaker of Minnie’s Haberdashery. But all is not as it seems inside the haberdashery.

Distrust and paranoia have always been underlying themes in Tarantino’s films, in The Hateful Eight it is brilliantly used to pit the characters against each other. Lines are drawn, and so are the guns. Tarantino has often used the setting of a story as a tool for shock and awe, like he were holding a mirror to us showing where our bigotry and hatred stems from. If Inglorious Basterds used Nazi violence, Django Unchained used slavery to make us squirm in our seats. In The Hateful Eight, the aftermath of the Civil War creates an animosity between the whites and the sole black man. A story narrated by one of them just before the interval, (a Tarantino signature) leaves you revolted and stunned. The n-word is thrown around liberally in contempt, the only female character is treated with disdain. Tarantino has always had strong female characters, strong enough to take on an army of killers, yet, the women in The Hateful Eight often seem to be at mercy of other men.

What adds more to The Hateful Eight as an absorbing feature are the sound and the visuals. Tarantino, an old-school filmmaker, in his attempt to revive 70-mm cinema, has shot the movie with Ultra Panavision, a throwback to sixties. The result is simply astounding when enjoyed in a 70-mm screen. What adds more intrigue and a sense of reality to the movie is the constant howling of the blizzard outside the haberdashery, making a force of nature look like a character in itself. Ennio Morricone returns to composing for a Western after 40 years lending the movie more gravitas.

The Hateful Eight is not an easy watch, the language is disturbing, the violence is terrifying. The movie has been getting mixed reviews over the Internet for the aforementioned reasons, at a day and age where hate is prevalent online and offline, is such glorified violence necessary? If you are familiar with his body of work, you’d know that a filmmaker like Tarantino doesn’t hold back in adding shock value to his movies. And if you are someone with a strong stomach and grounded sensibilities, go watch The Hateful Eight because it is an ode to cinema by one of its maverick students.