I loved The Hateful Eight, but would be hesitant to recommend it to anyone outside of Quentin Tarantino fans because by the end, there isn’t a person NOT drenched in blood, dead or alive. The Hateful Eight is a grand improvement over the snoozefest Django Unchained. Even though The Hateful Eight is over 3 hours long, no previews, complete with an overture and intermission, I never lost interest in the story. I saw The Hateful Eight at the Somerville Theater in 70 mm, and I swear that the theater turned up the AC to make the theater colder so the audience could empathize with how the characters felt.
The Hateful Eight is Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film, and it is visually epic and beautiful. Tarantino is back to his roots of reimagining history in the vein of Inglorious Basterds and is more optimistic (perhaps too much) than he was in Django Unchained. Spaghetti Western legend Ennio Morricone did The Hateful Eight soundtrack, which at times reminded me of a John Carpenter film so I was not surprised later on to read that he also did the soundtrack for The Thing, which also inspired Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight!
Two things frame The Hateful Eight: a foreboding storm and a wooden crucifix with Jesus on it. If all art focuses on heaven, hell, pre or post fallen world, The Hateful Eight definitely exists in the fallen world even if it is Christmas time. In The Hateful Eight, coexistence is challenging if not impossible. The Hateful Eight tells the story of individuals thrown together because of one of two factors: the storm or the murderer, Daisy Domergue. We never find out who Daisy killed or what makes her so awful or fearsome, but it is a given based on how she talks, acts even towards people who could be allies or sympathize with her and appears. She is literally manhandled throughout the entire film, but is not perturbed by it. Even though these individuals may or may not know each other well, they know of each other’s notorious reputations with the exception of the stagecoach driver. The Hateful Eight is essentially a motivation mystery before it becomes a more traditional mystery. The Hateful Eight asks what motivates people to act.

SPOILERS

The Hateful Eight is an overt metaphor for the United States. There is only one scene, Chapter Five, that briefly shows the ideal post Civil War America: Minnie’s Haberdashery. Minnie is a black woman. Her husband is white. A white female immigrant, played by legendary stuntwoman Zoe Bell, is an amazing coach driver not hobbled by gender roles. Minnie has two employees: a black woman and a black man. Minnie is welcoming to everyone, including one of her Mexican patrons, despite what one character who is known to lie says. There is a cat. That world doesn’t last long. Lawless forces, only motivated by their selfish personal interest, obliterate this world, but these lawless forces have a redeeming factor.
The outlaw gang loves each other. The men hug each other. The leader wants to save his sister. They are Americans, Mexican and British. Even though the sister uses hateful racist speech, the gang seems more international than national.
John Ruth is representative of the national law, the Yankee and the victor of the Civil War. He has an idea of how things should go and can be a bit of a tyrant, but not without reason. He fancies himself closer to Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Major Warren, than he is while simultaneously treating him poorly. He pouts and reveals his racist generalizations when he realizes that Warren lied to him. His sense of honor gets him killed, and he is a naive dictator who actually has no control.
Warren is a war hero to some and a war criminal to others. Warren is black so most of the nigger comments are directed to him. He lies for his benefit: to protect himself from alleged allies like Ruth and to kill an enemy with a thin measure of justification (Bob the Mexican-by claiming that Minnie hated Mexicans thus casting doubt on Bob’s story that he is Minnie’s employee- and the Confederate General by claiming that he knew, raped and killed his son). Warren is the character that Tarantino relates to the most as a character who uses words to paint images in people’s minds, but until he is emasculated and forced to be dependent on others for survival, peace will be impossible with him around. By making the only major black character as a deeply flawed hero, there are some hints that Tarantino had to strain to create false equivalencies between Warren’s alleged bad acts and other characters. Warren would not make it past auditions when casting Glory.
Sheriff Chris Mannix lies to himself about his family’s role in the Civil War, but did not directly participate in it. Mannix is proudly racist, not very bright though fairly good at being a BS detector and is becoming the face of the new law despite his ignoble origins, which is an alarming development so soon after the Civil War. In the end, Mannix chooses law and principles over race and his initial Southern chivalry towards women because of how he lies to himself about his family and his family’s place in history. Unlike Ruth and Warren, he is able to divest himself of his long-standing Civil War grudges to form an alliance and buddy cop friendship with Warren. Unlike the Confederate establishment such as the General and every white Southern person in Django Unchained, he can be saved because he did not commit the atrocities. The sins of the father do not befall the son.
The Hateful Eight is quite optimistic for Tarantino. The Hateful Eight suggests that when historical enemies can unite against lawless forces of chaos, the country can be redeemed. Of course, it will take a literal force of nature to claim that redemption. Do I actually buy that if by some miracle, Mannix and Warren survive their seemingly mortal injuries, Mannix will apply his newfound respect for one black person to all black people? No. It is probably an example of the exception, not the rule, and it is still terrifying, as it is in The Hateful Eight’s final scenes, to think that the rule of law must be interpreted and upheld by such a racist, stupid though effective lie detector. Tarantino definitely sees the line between the law/civilized society and lawless West as a thin and occasionally arbitrary one by making the Tim Roth’s character really an outlaw. On the other hand, every one ends up dead, including possibly an entire nearby town so maybe it isn’t optimistic after all.
People are horrified that the only major female character is seen as the epitome of evil and chaos that must be destroyed. I found it refreshing that a female character could be evil, but not presented as a sexual being-neither as a femme fatale, nor a potential rape victim. She isn’t presented as pretty or ugly, but horrific-covered in gore, injured and injuring, down, but not out. I look forward to rewatching The Hateful Eight to see how she interacts with certain characters now that I know her relationship to them. She is more in charge than she appears to be. Daisy Domergue is a character without vanity, without love interests and only squawks when she loses her guitar and her brother. Is she innocent? No, and she never pretends to be innocent or tries to elicit sympathy. You would only need to change the wardrobe if you changed the sex of the character. It is radical to not make a female character nice.