The Hateful Eight (2015)

1/1/16

I went into The Hateful Eight with a lot of expectations. It was the Tarantino film that almost wasn't (because the script had been leaked) and it was shot on Ultra Panavision 70. I came out of it very nonplussed.

Though it was shot with large format film and lenses, nearly the entire runtime was spent inside a not particularly cinematic cabin. And then there was also the question of misogyny. While I'm aware that Tarantino has written some seriously awesome female characters in the past, I absolutely could not figure out what he was trying to say here. Needless to say I wasn't really chomping at the bit to revisit this film any time soon.

5/16/17

It's nearly eighteen months later and I decide to give it another try. And while the Cinema of this filmed stage play still leaves much to be desired, I got a lot more out of it this time. I'm still not certain what Quentin was trying to do with this picture, but having lived through the 2016 Election and five months of Trump, the world of this film is now a much more recognizable one. It's not a straight analogy where A = X or anything like that, but this duplicitous world where everyone has a hidden agenda and rivals miraculously become unlikely allies, feels just like turning on the evening news. And of course it's particularly bad for the women. God bless America!