By Preston Wilder
Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) holds up a warning hand: “Let’s slow it down,” he suggests. “Let’s slow it waaaay down”. Quentin Tarantino agrees, The Hateful Eight marking a new peak of wheel-spinning sluggishness even for this always-flabby filmmaker. It’s not that the pace is too slow, scene by scene – something always simmers in the background, mostly the threat of violence; the film isn’t boring – it’s that the story’s attenuated, stretched out like taffy. There’s a flashback that could literally have been over in 30 seconds; all we really need is a shot to establish who was there on that fateful morning, plus a single piece of information. It lasts 20 minutes.
This is not a problem specific to Tarantino (maybe it’s not even a problem; most people seem to be OK with it). Judd Apatow does something similar in comedy, milking jokes dry (and beyond dry); Magic Mike XXL turned it into a musical; most serial TV shows, whatever their virtues, aren’t especially punchy or concise, and their dialogues tend to last longer than movie dialogues – and let’s not even mention the woolly rhythms of reality TV. For whatever reason, artists are allowed to ramble at the moment, even when it looks like self-indulgence. Maybe it’s a culture of narcissism – and Tarantino seems to fit that particular bill, yet his films are always smarter than he sounds in interviews: his sense of staging is too strong, his trademark dialogue too entertaining, even when he’s drawing out an 80-minute, back-of-an-envelope plot to nearly three hours.
One thing’s for sure: if you’re bringing eight unpleasant people to a single location, Tarantino’s the man to do the introductions – and Jackson, who’s now appeared in four of QT’s eight movies, is a gloriously cool interpreter (he can steal a scene just by letting the other guy rant and replying “Yes”). Marquis is a handy starting-point in describing the titular Eight: he’s a bounty hunter, like John Ruth (Kurt Russell) who’s got a fugitive in tow, a “no-damn-good murderin’ bitch” named Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) – but Marquis is also a Civil War veteran (the setting is snowbound Wyoming in the late 19th century), like decrepit General Smithers (Bruce Dern) and kind of like Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) whose daddy was a famous Southern renegade. Mannix and the General are hateful indeed, filled with loathing of “niggers” – and the slate is completed by well-spoken Brit Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), ugly mug Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and a Mexican named Bob (Demian Bichir) who claims to be taking care of Millie’s, the bar where the action takes place, while Millie and ‘Sweet Dave’ are away.
The set-up is terrific, the result undernourished. Some have mentioned Agatha Christie, making it sound like the characters are about to start dying off one-by-one, but this is no And Then There Were None. The early scenes have an emphasis on legal trappings, people demanding to see each other’s warrants and papers; Mobray makes a speech on justice, which he contrasts with “frontier justice” (the latter is “thirst-quenching”, the former dispassionate) – but it’s not very relevant, though it rhymes with the ending a little bit. The opening shot shows a crucified Jesus, but that’s not too relevant either.
Above all, as in Tarantino’s previous film Django Unchained, the subject is race, the climate of mutual mistrust clearly tying in with 21st-century America. The only time whites are safe is when blacks are scared, claims Mannix; the only time blacks are safe is when whites are disarmed, retorts Marquis later. If there’s a point to The Hateful Eight it’s surely political, with the final act – unlike in Django – admitting a sliver of hope: as Abraham Lincoln puts it in a letter (sunlight glints off the letter as Marquis takes it out, making it look like a literal beacon of light), “Times are changing, slowly but surely”.
So much for politics; what about the film as entertainment? Well, it has its moments, pitched between comedy and gore-splattered action. Daisy gives an evil little smile through bloodied lips that might justify Leigh’s award-winning (she was up for a Golden Globe, among other things) all by itself. The actors take their moments, Ennio Morricone adds a properly jangly score, the dialogue is very Tarantino – but his imagination, once so fertile, seems to be slowly growing numb as he gets older. Shot-off limbs, florid turns of phrase, fellatio used as a punchline (is there a hidden ‘hate fellate’ pun?); pretty slim pickings for a three-hour movie.
The answer to the problem is obvious. Tarantino turns 53 in March; his films have always been about people as well as genre conventions. He should simply embrace middle age, ditch the criminals and tough guys and gallons of blood, and write a relationship drama. The Hateful Eight is halfway-there – the same conceit of people trapped in a mountain cabin was used in the 1956 Marilyn Monroe drama Bus Stop, for instance – but the film is drawn-out and stately when its gory B-movie content needed the energy of a Reservoir Dogs. He’s still good enough to get away with it, but for how much longer? There’s slow, and there’s waaaay too slow.
DIRECTED BY Quentin Tarantino
STARRING Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh
US 2015 167 mins
