The Hateful Eight

I realised something as I sat down to write this review, something that has yet to happen once in the fast-approaching three years since I started Tenouttaten: I had no idea what to fucking write about The Hateful Eight. This realisation was swiftly followed by another creeping thought: this is the first Quentin Tarantino film I've critiqued. And from there, the moments of clarity continued to surge into my brain, as I began to think about my experience watching The Hateful Eight compared to Tarantino's seven (or eight, or nine) other films prior. When the credits for The Hateful Eight rolled, to roughly five minutes following, I was speechless. I knew that I loved it, but I also knew that it had burrowed into me, and I knew that I wouldn't stop thinking about it for a long, long time. The problem was, I had no idea how to collate those thoughts. It was strangely liberating; for once, I wasn't the self-aggrandising boffin who had all the answers but actually has very few answers. I was a tear-filled, gaping-eyed child at the foot of art. This is not dissimilar to how I've walked away from Tarantino's other films - I always leave the cinema in complete awe that his self-assured mash-ups of European expressionist cinema, American/Australian exploitation cinema, and Italian westerns are universally recognised as highbrow entertainment - but there was something else that The Hateful Eight left me with. It's kind of incredible that, after a career approaching 30 years, in which every one of his films has been hyper violent and exploitative to some degree, that I can assuredly say that this is his bleakest, meanest, cruelest, most viciously awful film to date. I think it's the closest he'll come, given that he's said himself that he only has two left in the bag, to making a horror film. And I mean horror in the true sense of the word: this film is fucking horrific. In his prior films, even the lowest of the scum-suck pool had a hint of charisma, or showed a shred of humanity that made their actions slightly more tolerable. In The Hateful Eight, characters that even show a sliver of such stupid sentimentality are punished for it, generally within seconds. If a character shows decency, it's only to disarm or befuddle so that the knife goes into the back all the more easy. Now, while watching awful people do awful things to each other can be entertaining in its own right, that doesn't exactly make it difficult to discuss. Where The Hateful Eight really digs its claws into your fucking eyeballs is that there is a socially political agenda behind all of it. The Hateful Eight continues Tarantino's series of historical revisionist films, but unlike Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, the purpose of The Hateful Eight is not to utilise a fantasy setting to offer up catharsis or triumph during a time of historical oppression. No, the purpose of The Hateful Eight is to utilise a fantasy setting to shine a great big spotlight into the heart of every person sitting in the audience; to prove to you that just because you cheered when Django blew up Candyland, doesn't mean you're not still a fucking racist.

The Hateful Eight takes place after the Civil War. Slavery has been abolished, and African Americans can now live safely and peacefully in their homes. Except that they can't. The Hateful Eight begins with a bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), negotiating to ride in a wagon currently housing fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), and prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). As Marquis approaches the wagon, John Ruth's pistol comes out the window. John Ruth tells Marquis to stand where he can see him, following that by addressing him as "black fella." Already, we're being presented with the notion that just because something has been declared illegal, that does not automatically eliminate the desire or even the ability for people to continue to do it. When John Ruth realises that he knows Marquis, he sings a different tune, and introduces him to Daisy, letting her know that, to Daisy, Marquis should be known as Major Warren. Without blinking, Daisy says, "Howdy, nigger." She is not met with horror. She is not met with condemnation. Marquis stays silent, and John Ruth laughs uproariously, and says, "Don't you know darkies don't like being called nigger no more? They find it offensive." "I've been called worse," Daisy replies. Legally, slavery is over. Shouldn't it be that with it disappears the signifier of black people's oppression? No. Why the fuck would it? Criminalising something doesn't eliminate the culturally-ingrained desire in people to continue being criminals. This is explored further when the wagon happens upon the maybe-maybe-not new sheriff of the county they're travelling to, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Chris Mannix is a Lost Causer, a sect of the Confederates that took their loss of the Civil War, and turned it into a noble defeat of a set of heroic values, to continue to uphold nobly, like a true American. And what does Mannix receive for continuing to be a filthy fucking racist? Why, a promotion of course! If we are to believe that he is indeed the new sheriff of Red Rock, then this is communicating that racism didn't die, it just got layered into bureaucracy. While they're travelling together, Marquis and Mannix begin to engage in an argument over their actions during the war. Mannix begins to layer uncertainty towards Marquis, detailing a brave escape he made burning down a Confederate camp he was interred at before adding the caveat that among the casualties of the fire were more Northerners than Southerners. Marquis had murdered his white brothers. Some hero. Marquis fires back at the actions of the Lost Causers; that in spite of, you know, black people not being property anymore, they were still doing their fair share of wanton slaughter for no reason other than not caring that Lincoln said, "Hey, hey. Stop it." That's when Goggins reveals the true intent behind his racism. "When niggers are scared, that's when white folks are safe."

It would seem then that, like Django Unchained, Major Marquis Warren is our moral center; the vessel through which we contrast all of this hateful, utterly repugnant shit, right? Well, hold onto that thought. In this carriage, Marquis has a supporter. In spite of referring to him as black fella, darkie and, occasionally, nigger, John Ruth feels like he and Marquis share a bond that transcends race. They're both bounty hunters, and they're both good at what they do. But they also share a bond that is reliant on race. You see, Major Marquis Warren has a letter from Abraham Lincoln, written to him during the war, where he and the President were pen pals. John Ruth has read this letter, and in the stage coach, asks to read it again. We don't hear the contents of the letter, but at the end, he says, "Ole Mary Todd's calling, so I guess it's time for bed." Looking up at Marquis, tears in his eyes, he smiles at his friend and says, "Ole Mary Todd...that gets me." Marquis smiles back. "That gets me, too." Now, this is before Mannix has joined their party. Later, when Marquis, John Ruth, Daisy, and Mannix have arrived at Minnie's Haberdashery, to wait out a blizzard, and are in the company of Bob (Demian Bachir), Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), they sit at the table for dinner. Mannix, along with the rest of the room, is now aware that Marquis supposedly has a letter from President Lincoln. Mannix presses the notion of the idea, breaking down the clarifying reality of it into the smallest of minutiae, before exploding into laughter, at the idea that a black man, dishonorably discharged from the military, no less, could have a letter from the President of the United States. This whole time, we watch the reactions of Mannix's interrogation on two faces: Marquis's and John Ruth's. Marquis is mad, but he also knows he's in a room full of people that wouldn't think twice to react twice as violently to a black man acting grumpy. So, he lets it go. Until we focus on John Ruth, and we see the other shoe drop in his head. You see, John Ruth was under the impression that the bond he and Marquis shared absolved him to some degree of the hateful prejudice surrounding him in the world. He's not about to cry for black civil liberties, but he appreciates the novelty of having one that he's "cool with." He asks Marquis is the letter if fake, and Marquis seizes his opportunity to walk away with some dignity. He laughs and says that of course it's fake, before asking if he hurt John Ruth's feelings. John Ruth displays genuine hurt on his face, and says, "As a matter of fact, you did." It's sad, but not in a way that makes you pity John Ruth. It's sad in how pathetic it is. Marquis elaborates by saying that if it were not for that letter, he would be frozen in the blizzard. It was the creation of that letter that allowed him to get by relatively openly in a white society. Echoing Mannix's earlier sentiment, and further highlighting the ouroboros, Marquis says, "The only time black folks are safe, is when white folks is disarmed. And this letter had the desired effect of disarming white folks." This damages John Ruth, to the point that he lets his guard down, and we see that his one black friend proving he wasn't racist was nothing but a paper-thin barrier torn to shreds at the first instance of a black man treating him wrong. "So I guess it's true what they say about you people. You can't believe a fuckin' word that comes outta your mouths." Poor Major Marquis Warren can't catch a break, right? Well, good thing this is Quentin's Revisionist Hour, where Marquis will heroically thwart oppression and ride into the sunset, because, like Django, he's our moral center in a sea of injustice, right? Dead fucking wrong. Marquis is a product of this society, like every other motherfucker in this world, and Marquis is a piece of shit, like every other motherfucker in this world. Now that his security blanket, the Lincoln letter, is gone, Marquis gains the courage to reveal who he truly is. Actually, let me rephrase that: who the society around him made him. Seemingly displaying an act of human decency amongst the cavalcade of hatred, he gets a bowl of soup and offers it to the General Sandy Smithers, sitting by the fire because he refused to eat at the same table as a black man. He asks if he can sit with him, and they start to, respectfully, share war stories. It seems like Marquis is trying to ground himself after the aforementioned revelation, to show that he can stand above it all with dignity. Truly, he was just looking for the clarifying detail that Sandy Smither's son is who Marquis thought he was, at which point he puts a pistol on the table beside Smithers, gets up, walks across the room, and painfully, excruciatingly, details the story of how he murdered Chester Charles Smithers. But he didn't just murder him. No, that would be too easy for the son of General Sandy Smithers, the Bloody Nigger Killer of Baton Rouge. Marquis marched Chester Charles Smither through the snow, naked, until all he could beg for was a blanket. For warmth. Major Marquis Warren offered warmth in the form of his erect penis in Chester Charles Smither's mouth, with the promise of a blanket after. But like the letter, there was no blanket. There was only a scared, frozen white boy sucking on a black man's dick, receiving a bullet to the head for his service. Sandy Smithers grabs the pistol, rises to his feet, Marquis shoots him down, and we're left wondering what the fuck to think. How the fuck to feel.

So, The Hateful Eight is complicated. That's because it's supposed to be. Like I mentioned previously, this is not triumphant fantasy. This is high-concept reality. Though the film takes place in the late 1800s, its rhetoric hits right now. We knew about The Hateful Eight quite a while ago, and it might surprise you to learn that in the original draft of the screenplay, Abraham Lincoln's letter was real. During the timespan between it being real and it being fake, Ferguson, Missouri happened, among others. I don't think it's too insane a leap to see a connection between the two. Over the last year and change, we have slowly become more and more aware that, try as we might to believe we are a progressive society getting better every day, and that slavery and the racism that came with it is nothing but an ugly, though healed, scar on human history, long past, the reality is that things are no better. If anything, it's more insidious. Few are openly racist, and therefore honest. Racism, and crimes as a result of it, are hidden in bureaucracy and procedure, in such a way that it allows the white police chief to hop on the news and say that the poor, unarmed black kid bleeding out in the street was a criminal who was treated accordingly and with due process by the officer of the law who's back at home high-fiving his family for getting a pension package for his hard work, along with commendations for the killer headshot on a nigger. To go back to the film, are you starting to see the connection? Remember how Mannix got the sheriff's job? It's through this lens of historical revisionism that Tarantino is able to cut even more cleanly, and viciously, to the truth of the matter. Racism is not dead, it's thriving. It's legal again. But, come on, we know this is wrong, right? We know this is utterly fucking despicable. But what are we to do? How in the hell are we supposed to fix this deeply ingrained cultural perspective that's older than we are and will likely outlive us all? Well, The Hateful Eight has an answer: we just need to find ourselves a new nigger. By the end of the film, Marquis and Mannix aren't just working together, they're almost friends. In a final shot (along with the whole film) that beautifully references the literal and tonal implications of John Carpenter's The Thing, Marquis and Mannix await their deaths in each other's welcome company now that they've slayed the monster. The monster, you ask? It's Daisy Domergue, hanging from a rope in front of them. Because if there's one thing that crackers and niggers can agree on, it's that the only thing worse than a cracker or a nigger is a bitch. Daisy's crimes go mostly unmentioned, but you can be damn sure it doesn't even approach the atrocities that both of these men have committed in their time. But this isn't personal, it's cultural. We're fixing racism here. When human beings have spent their whole lives defying logic and rational thought in order to ruthlessly oppress a group known as different, the only way to end that oppression is to find another group. Hell, consider the film's opening shot: for three minutes, the camera slowly pulls out from an extreme close-up of a wood-carved Jesus on the cross, the only landmark in the vast, open landscape; a testament to this country's dedication to prejudicial persecution. Jesus was a lone snake oil salesman, who was unique in that his snake oil was really just a set of philosophical values designed to improve humanity, who was deemed different, inferior, and deserving of death. Jesus was alone. Jesus was the original nigger. This same communication of the dangers of biological isolation is on the wall as soon as everyone's holed up in Minnie's Haberdashery. John Ruth, Mannix, and every other swinging dick debate endlessly over what they should be referring to each other as, but nobody bats an eyelid at calling Daisy a bitch or a tramp, or Marquis a nigger. Consider the population of the room, as well: you've got six white men, one black man, and one woman. Daisy and Marquis are isolated in this room, and Daisy relies on the support network of her gang, identities concealed, to be there for her should her biology compromise her safety. When they're all gone, what more does she have left? She attempts to bargain with Mannix to murder Marquis and collect bounties on the gang members whose faces are still intact and let Daisy go free. The reason Mannix refuses - what turns Daisy into the new qualifier to subject to savage intolerance - seems almost trivial in the light of not only this night, but all of history. Daisy didn't warn Mannix that the coffee he almost drank was poisoned. And, with that, she was doomed.

Earlier in the film, Oswaldo Mowbray is explaining the difference between justice and frontier justice through the lens of his occupation as a hangman to Daisy, a scene that gains an extra layer on second viewing knowing that he is, in fact, a member of her gang. He puts forth one scenario, in which Daisy is brought to Red Rock, tried for her crimes, found guilty, and hanged in the town square by an executioner, and labels it justice. He then puts forth another scenario, in which civilians, potentially friends or family of the dead, hang Daisy themselves, and labels it frontier justice. He acknowledges that frontier justice, while cathartic, is in danger of not being justice, for the person hanging from the rope may not deserve to be there. The difference, he posits, is himself, the hangman. "The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion, is always in danger of not being justice." Fast-forward to the end of the film. Oswaldo Mowbray is dead. Daisy Domergue is hanged by Major Marquis Warren and maybe-maybe-not Sheriff Chris Mannix. No trial. No town square. She is strung up from the rafters of Minnie's Haberdashery by a rope, tied to a bed post. It's frontier justice. Is it also justice? Who the fuck cares? Was slavery justice? Who the fuck cares? Was Ferguson, Missouri justice? Who the fuck cares? In that moment, right there, pick whichever one you want, it was just a bitch or a nigger getting what was coming to them. Outside, the law can call it whatever it wants to. The Hateful Eight puts forth that justice has never been dispassionate, and by turn, has never truly been justice. It's only ever been a lie to cover the ugly, black, cancerous truth: white people like oppression because it keeps them strong. But deep down, they know that it isn't right, so they need to layer lie upon lie upon lie, to cover the reality and turn it into something greater. To turn it into an ideal. To then claim that it is, indeed, justice, and racism is, indeed, over. We see the lie grow in The Hateful Eight. Marquis and Mannix deliver frontier justice to Daisy, and as her lifeless body swings, two hateful eyes planted dead on her executioners, Mannix asks if he can read Marquis's fake letter from the President. Marquis obliges, and we finally hear its full contents. Fake Lincoln calls Marquis his friend, and a credit to his race, and hopes their paths will cross again. Reaching the line about Ole Mary Todd, Mannix gets caught, the same way John Ruth did. "That's a nice touch," Mannix says. "Yeah...thanks," Marquis replies. For a second, you genuinely think that they may believe their own bullshit. Then Mannix crumples the note and throws it away. Ah, you see, what he meant was that it's a nice touch to keep up the lie. To put a band-aid over the wound that has already festered, rotten to the core. They've just turned the bitch into the new nigger, and yet they hold Mary Todd up as some ideal figurehead. Mary Todd was a bitch in the same way Daisy Domergue was, but the idea of Mary Todd, the idea of the Lincoln Letter, well, that might just be enough to keep dipshits believing. The Hateful Eight is a tough film to swallow. It is looking for the people that enjoyed Django Unchained but thought that an unarmed black kid running from the police clearly had something to hide, and is delivering them a venom-dripped condemnation that they're probably too stupid to realise, because try as he might, Tarantino just can't not be entertaining. The Hateful Eight is that really perfect sort of film, that encourages discussion through being a shitload of fun. He doesn't want the world to end up this way, and neither should you. But this is too big of a problem to be fixed by one person, regardless of their power or platform. No Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King, or Rosa Parks, or Richard Pryor, or Bill Clinton, or Spike Lee, or Barack Obama, or Kanye West, or Quentin Tarantino is going to be able to fix this on their own. Everybody needs to take responsibility. Everybody needs to admit accountability. Laugh in The Hateful Eight when a character says 'nigger' for humourous effect, but don't walk away without thinking about why you laughed. Black lives matter, and it's time we all stopped thinking that cheering on a black man for murdering his white oppressors gets us off the hook. As Donald Glover so perfectly put it, "You're not not racist 'cos The Wire's in your Netflix queue."