Kurt Russell & Samuel L. Jackson
THE HATEFUL 8 – A Film
Review
In Wyoming, in the dead
of winter, a chartered stage-coach is flagged down by Major Marquis Warren
(Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter with a stack of frozen outlaw cadavers –
he needs to get them to town for the rewards.
But the renter of the coach, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), wants
no more passengers, living or dead: he’s already transporting murderess Daisy
Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) whom he intends to hang, and the company of
another bounty hunter holds no appeal.
John Ruth finally gives in, and the trio of passengers are barely on the
road when who else appears, thumbing a ride, but Sheriff Clay Mannix (Walton
Goggins), the new lawman at the town where both Ruth and Warren are expecting
to collect their bounties.
Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh
The group arrives at a
stagecoach stop, and find it full of an interesting and sinister mix of
characters: Bob (Demian Birchir) is minding the place while the owners are
away; Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) is a British traveling hangman; Joe Gage
(Michael Madsen) is a hard-looking cowboy and would-be writer; and General
Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) is a former Confederate officer still clinging to
his past status.
Bruce Dern
Guess what? They’re snowed in: everyone will have to
spend the night. This concerns John Ruth
because he’s convinced that someone, perhaps more than one someone, is not who they say.
Someone is there to free Daisy Domergue, and will willingly commit
murder to do it. And he’s right, of course. From there, 99% of the movie takes place in
the one big room of the log house stagecoach stop, as characters confront each
other, secrets are revealed, and people die.
That’s right, it’s what’s known in the
TV vernacular as an ‘elevator show’ or a ‘bottle show.’ It’s a funny and audacious decision by
Tarantino to do a big-budget theatrical feature version of what is done on TV
to save money. Tarantino explained in an interview with
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD that his influences were series like THE VIRGINIAN, BONANZA,
and THE HIGH CHAPPARAL. “Twice per
season, those shows would have an episode where a bunch of outlaws would take
the lead characters hostage. They would come to the Ponderosa, or go to Judge
Garth's place — Lee J. Cobb played him — in The Virginian and take hostages. There would be a
guest star like David Carradine, Barren McGavin, Claude Akins, Robert Culp, Charles Bronson, or James Coburn . I don't like that storyline in a modern context, but I love it in a Western,
where you would pass halfway through the show to find out if they were good or
bad guys, and they all had a past that was revealed. I thought, 'What if I did
a movie starring nothing but those characters? No heroes, no Michael
Landons. Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling
backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room
with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.”
Samuel L. Jackson & Walton Goggins
What happens, very entertainingly is the
HATEFUL 8 – it’s full of the droll characters and crackling dialogue that
helped make Tarantino famous. And this
kind of claustrophobic DESPERATE HOURS sort of story is the kind that he excels
in, as he proved in RESERVOIR DOGS (1992).
Are the characters over the top?
Sure, but they’re meant to be: this is stylized story-telling, not
docudrama, and the ensemble is a delight to watch.
Tarantino loves to shock us, of course, and
there is a lot of blood and vomiting, and there is an extended sadistic
story-telling sequence where Warren psychologically tortures General Smithers
with what may be a real story, or one as invented as the characters’
identities. It’s too ugly, and too long,
but at least its flashback gets us out of the cabin for a bit.
Michael Madsen
Of course, Tarantino has fun with his
inside jokes. Samuel L. Jackson’s
character, Major Marquis Warren, is a nod to novelist, independent Western
filmmaker and screenwriter Charles Marquis Warren, a protégé of F. Scott
Fitzgerald, who was one of the great story talents behind GUNSMOKE, RAWHIDE and
THE VIRGINIAN series. Tim Roth plays
Oswaldo Mobray as a delightful impression of British character Alan
Mobray. And Michael Madsen’s Joe Gage
character is a wink at Nick Adams’ character, Johnny Yuma, from THE REBEL
series, a former soldier roaming the West and writing about his experiences.
The acknowledgment of THE REBEL is
particularly interesting because, while this sort of snowed in ‘Zane Grey meets
Agatha Christie’ story can be found in other series – the STOPOVER episode of
THE RIFLEMAN, directed by Budd Boetticher and written by Arthur Brown Jr, is
particularly memorable – an episode of THE REBEL, entitled FAIR GAME (1960),
written by Richard Newman and directed by Irvin Kershner, is unexpectedly close
to HATEFUL 8. It’s fascinating to see
what Tarantino does expanding what was a thirty-minute plot to 168
minutes. The entire run of the exceptionally
good THE REBEL series is available from Timeless
Video, and after you’ve seen the feature, it’s definitely worth your time
to watch the short, as well as the whole series.
One of the great joys of HATEFUL 8 is
the new score by the maestro Ennio Morricone.
Although he made his name putting music to Sergio Leone’s ‘man with no
name’ films, he hadn’t scored a Western since MY NAME IS NOBODY, forty years
ago.
One of the great virtues of HATEFUL 8 is
the beauty and grandeur of its outdoor visuals for the brief time that the
story is out of doors. Thrice
Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson has shot several other films
for Tarantino, as well as for Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone: he knows how to
get details and definition out of what could simply be a whited-out snowscape
in other hands. It may seem like a crazy
film to shoot in 70mm Panavision, but that decision halted Kodak’s plan to
shutter their movie film stock production entirely.
The whole presentation sentimentally harkens
back to the time of road-show movies of the 1950s and ‘60s, when seeing a big
movie was a big deal, like going to the real
theatre. People dressed up, the seats
were reserved, there was a musical overture, and an intermission. Moviegoing, like the rest of life, is less ‘special’
today. People go to real theatre today attired in a way I wouldn’t dress to mow the
lawn. So, see HATEFUL 8, and if you can,
see it in the longer road-show version, with the overture and
intermission. And maybe dress up. Just take off your Stetson when the lights go
down and the curtains part.
THE KEEPING ROOM – a
Film Review
Brit Marling takes aim
In 1865, in a location identified
only as ‘The American South’, three women survive on a crumbling plantation,
trying to keep body and soul together, and just barely managing. Augusta (Brit Marling), perhaps twenty, is
the daughter of the plantation’s owner who has gone off to war. She hunts rabbits for stew. Mad (Muna Otaru), a young slave, searches the
overgrown fields for edible vegetables.
Louise, (Hailee Steinfeld), is sixteen, Augusta’s baby sister, and unable
or unwilling to face the realities of war; she refuses to work, and seems at
times to drift into a fantasy world, donning her late mother’s elegant clothes
when she should be dressed for picking and planting. When asked by her sister to work, she refers
tersely to the woman who helped raise her.
“The nigger should do it.”
Her sister Augusta
responds, “Like I told you, Louise. We
all niggers now.”
Unbeknownst to the
three women, greater danger than starvation is on its way. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman is
coming, cutting his bloody slash “…from Savannah to the sea.” And in advance of his army come his foragers,
or as they were known, ‘Bummers,’ men sent to seize supplies or destroy them, to
prepare the ground for invasion. Mostly they
are unregulated, many of them destructive, sadistic, and homicidal. A pair
of them, Moses (Sam Worthington) and Henry (Kyle Soller) introduce themselves
with an apparent rape and several murders that mark them as men without
conscience.
Sam Worthington
Back at the plantation,
the power shifts between the three women with each challenge they face, until
everything comes to a head with a potentially disastrous accident: Louise is
bitten by a raccoon, and they lack the medicine to treat the infected
wound. Augusta heads to town looking for medicine –
the ‘town’ being a single business, a store, saloon and brothel – and comes to
the attention of the Bummers. She barely
escapes, and soon the Bummers are on the hunt for Augusta and the other women.
Not a traditional
Western or War Movie by any measure, THE KEEPING ROOM is also a suspense and
adventure story, and above all a character study of three finely drawn, very
different women. Elegantly written by
first-timer Julia Hart, it’s directed by English-born Daniel Barber, whose
previous Western, the short THE TONTO WOMAN (2008), from the Elmore Leonard
story, garnered Barber an Oscar nomination.
Muna Otaru
Cinematographer Martin
Ruhe, known for filming crime thrillers like HARRY BROWN (2009 – directed by Barber), and THE AMERICAN (2010),
worked with natural light and source light – lanterns and candles – to give an
authentic and often beautiful look to
the interiors. The exteriors,
forest and field, are equally convincing. Remarkable to think that they were found not
in Georgia but in Romania, where COLD MOUNTAIN (2003) and HATFIELDS &
MCCOYS (2012) were also filmed.
The structure is
unusual, and often admirable. Among the
highlights are a pair of intercut sequences where the women are separately
stalked. Author Hart has a fine ear for
dialogue, and the script is at times unexpectedly generous, allowing a
humanizing of the Bummers, and raising intriguing questions of how life might
have been, had the characters met under different circumstances.
Hailee Steinfeld
The cast is tiny – only
seven actors have speaking parts, and only two scenes have any extras at
all. This serves to make the story
intimate and personal, and it also puts a great burden on a very few
individuals to carry the entire story, which is fraught with tension and
suspense. Fortunately, the triumvirate of
actresses are up to it. Muna Otaru, a
relative newcomer, seems all the more powerful for her halting, soft-spoken
performance. Hailee Steinfeld, playing a
weak and self-centered character diametrically opposed to her Matty Ross in
TRUE GRIT, turns us off, then wins us over when her character rises to the
occasion. And blonde and beautiful Brit
Marling, half Matty Ross herself, and the better half of Scarlet O’Hara, is who
we all wish we’d be when the chips are down.
Of course, no film is
perfect. The smallness of the cast can
be a problem: would Sherman ever send just a two-man force, and if he did, why
didn’t the Southerners just pick them off?
And as smart as Augusta is, why does she keep ignoring warnings to leave
the store, and why does she keep making eye contact with men she should know to
avoid?
Highly recommended, THE
KEEPING ROOM, from Alamo Drafthouse,
will be available on VOD in early January.
PLENTY HAPPENING AT THE
AUTRY IN JANUARY & FEBRUARY
Kenneth Turan, renowned
film critic for The Los Angeles Times
and NPR, will be introducing the first two film programs for 2016 in the Autry’s
monthly What is a Western?
series. On Saturday, January 16th
at 1:30 pm he will introduce the John Ford/John Wayne classic THE MAN WHO SHOT
LIBERTY VALANCE (1962). On Saturday, February
13th, at 1:30 pm he will host a double feature, SEVEN MEN FROM NOW
(1956) and RIDE LONESOME (1959). Star
Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown had formed the Ranown production company, and these two films are part of the
fabled ‘Ranown cycle’ of
exceptionally fine, tiny budget Westerns, all starring Scott, all directed by
Budd Boetticher, and written by Burt Kennedy.
Also screening at the
Autry on February 27th at noon are a double-bill of Gene’s films,
BACK IN THE SADDLE (1941 Republic) and RIDERS OF THE WHISTLING PINES (1949
Columbia).
On Wednesday, January
20th at 12:30 pm, Rob Word will present the Cowboy Lunch @ The Autry. After
lunch it’s Rob’s A Word on Westerns discussion. This time the topic is KINGS OF THE COWBOYS,
and as we get closer to the date I’ll let you know what exciting guests Rob has
lined up.
For folks who still
remember how to read (there are still quite a few of us), One Book, One Autry is a
year-long series of programs focusing on Owen Wister’s genre-creating THE
VIRGINIAN. The first two events are Saturdays,
Feb. 20th & 27th, with more to come. If you don’t have your own copy, you can get
one at the Autry Store. (And you can
read it, and learn that the great HIGH NOON is actually plagiarized from the
last seven or eight chapters).
Sunday, January 3rd
is the last day to see the magnificent exhibit Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and The West. From February 6th through March 20th
you can enjoy Masters of the American
West, and if you have deep pockets, you can buy!
Between book signings, performances
and other events, I’m barely scratching the surface. You can learn more by visiting the official
Autry website HERE.
And admission is free
on Monday, New Years Day, and free Saturday and Sunday, the 2nd and
3rd, to Bank of America card holders.
THAT’S A WRAP!
I hope you had a
wonderful Christmas (see above, a favorite gift from my wife), and I wish you a
Happy New Year! I’ve got a lot of stuff
cookin’ but I don’t want to say too much and jinx myself. But I’m very excited that I’ll be a guest of
Jim Christina and Bobbi Jean Bell on THE WRITERS BLOCK radio show on Thursday,
January 7th at 8 pm, when the BIG guest will be LONGMIRE creator
Craig Johnson! If you haven’t tuned in
to this entertaining and informative interview show about the art and craft of
writing, here’s the link: http://latalkradio.com/content/writers-block.
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Content
Copyright December 2015 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
With Tarantino's penchant for Spaghetti westerns you can see he took made a nod toward The Great Silence with bounty hunter Klaus Kinski who stored his wanted men in the snow until he could transport them to town on the incoming stage and The Ugly Ones where Tomas Milian uses his girlfriend to rescue and free him on his journey to the penitentiary. Nice write ups Henry look forward to the next one.
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