In Which The Hateful Eight Reminds Me Of My Horse

The Lincoln Letter

by ALEX CARNEVALE

The Hateful Eight
dir. Quentin Tarantino
167 minutes

Inspiration had to run out at some point. Quentin Tarantino made the most fun motion pictures around for the past two decades. Now he has stopped caring completely. His use of the n-word becomes rather tiring at some point during The Hateful Eight, so that the movie becomes something truly hateful rather than joyful. The fact that this is yet another historical treatment of the slur by Tarantino makes all his modern films, filled to the brim with the sobriquet, kind of embarrassing in retrospect.

Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) could have been an inspiring hero — a Civil War veteran reduced to submitting the corpses of wanted people to make his living as a Wyoming resident. The concept of such a character as a detective is the only compelling part of the turgid three hours encompassed in The Hateful Eight.

The film disappointingly takes place at one location: Minnie's Haberdashery, a waystation for travelers passing through to the town of Red Rock. There is no much to this setting; it is basically one large room in a wooden building. Tarantino has taken such effort with his locations in the past — we think of the fantastic Japanese palace in Kill Bill, or the diner in Pulp Fiction or the mall in Jackie Brown. The $60+ million spent on The Hateful Eight must have all gone to the cast and crew. Here is just a room, and we barely ever leave its confines.

The actors in it are his usual regulars, most of whom are pretty familiar with the extensive sentences that are part and parcel to Tarantino's oeuvre. Tim Roth appears to be doing an impression of Christoph Waltz, Michael Madsen mumbles through scene after scene, and Kurt Russell intones every line as if it might be his last.

The new performers are all serviceable but get very little play. Jennifer Jason Leigh mostly just sits and grumbles the entire movie, while Channing Tatum seems badly underwritten and out of place here. Rising Mexican star Demian Bichir has his face covered the entire time, and Keith Jefferson barely gets three lines.

Walton Goggins is the major new addition. He is the new sheriff of Red Rock who joins the caravan of Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell on the way escorting fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh) to town. Goggins has not been hurting for work this past year, but I begin to miss the hardened subtlety he displayed on The Shield. He is just as broad and wide open as the performances of his fellow passengers, and in The Hateful Eight it feels like shouting to be heard most of the time.

This can be wacky Tarantino-like fun, but in The Hateful Eight none of the conversation, most of which is about the Civil War, ever goes anywhere. The plot mostly concerns the identity of gang members who are trying to prevent the timely death of Ms. Leigh. Answers are not very surprising and what mystery there is in the film's plot is extremely dull to watch unfold. It feels like Tarantino wrote this all out in a morning and decided to see if he could put so much style around it that we would not notice there is no substance.

The film feels especially thin because this would have been exactly the moment to do something dramatic and important with Jackson's character. Instead we have a budget version of the black man's Civil War story. In one scene Major Warren describes making a confederate soldier suck him off in the snow. The whole thing is played for laughs, but it is not really all that funny, and we feel bad for even chuckling. That's the best Tarantino can do? Gay jokes?

Westerns were numerous because they don't require much in the way of sets or costumes. The Revenant looks like it costs three times as much as The Hateful Eight, and that matters because it was worth it to not feel we were on a theatrical set. Tarantino loves cinema, but maybe he needs to realize that what was good enough sixty years ago is dull today. I know he already made an important and exciting film about slavery, Django Unchained, but this could have been the same thing, only in the Reconstruction. Instead it just needs reconstructing.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"Confessions of a Romance Novelist" - The Anchoress (mp3)

In Which We Make More From The Wallets Than We Do The Register

Walking the Earth

by MOLLY O'BRIEN

Pulp Fiction
dir. Quentin Tarantino
154 minutes

It is precisely right that Pulp Fiction begins and ends in a diner. Diners are places where ordinary things happen. Breakfast, small talk, “Garçon, coffee.” But one minute you’re having a Denver omelet, and the next minute somebody’s sticking a gun in your face.

Pulp Fiction is not science fiction, but it does have a sci-fi element of the uncanny. It is about big visuals and big sound, warped reality and warped morality. To watch a Tarantino movie is to be manipulated somehow, and Tarantino manipulates the viewer quite nimbly — after all, a man with a foot fetish is categorically required to convince people that certain unattractive things are attractive. Watching the film can make you believe that everyone should carry a gun, that jobs in offices are boring and not worth having, that cocaine, while dangerous, is an attractive alternative to heroin.

Real life becomes mundane when each scene is peppered with gunshots; real life becomes a space in which all the steaks are either bloody as hell or burnt to a crisp; real life is when Vincent Vega says “We should have fuckin’ shot guns” with the casual swagger of a small-town mayor.

If Seinfeld is a show about nothing then Pulp Fiction is a movie about a little bit of everything — just not in chronological order. Anyone who says Tarantino revolutionized the concept of nonlinear narrative will be beaten to death by James Joyce’s black-hatted ghost, but he took often unfriendly style of storytelling and turned it into something mainstream audiences can swallow. There is something to be said for the way the film artfully skips from Butch’s breezy “Zed’s dead, baby” line to the recapitulation of the Ezekiel 25:17 speech. Time isn’t real! Or maybe it’s real, but it doesn’t matter. “Next time we see each other it’ll be Tennessee time.” “Que hora es?” “Any time of the day is a good time for pie.” “If I’m curt with you, it’s because time is a factor.”

The storyline that is the bread of the Pulp Fiction club sandwich concerns Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta), two hitmen for L.A. kingpin Marsellus Wallace who are responsible for retrieving a glowing briefcase from a handful of strangely yuppie-ish youths. Did these kids really have an appetite for Big Kahuna burgers at 7:22 in the morning? Would a Big Kahuna burger involve some sort of grilled pineapple accoutrement? Having gunned down all the mini yuppies, and having miraculously survived a hailstorm of bullets from a third, hidden mini yuppie, Jules and Vincent leave with the precious cargo only to shoot their underling Marvin in the head by accident. It is a rough day at the proverbial office.

They go to Jimmy’s (Quentin Tarantino) house, put on his nerdy collegiate clothes, scrub off all the blood and let Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) take care of the corpse. The Wolf must be Tarantino’s idea of a deus ex machina — he delegates tasks with grace and a remarkable lack of bullshit, knows which truck repair place can get rid of Marvin’s body (what’s left of it, anyway), and compliments Jimmy on his expensive taste in coffee. A human deus ex machina would definitely wear a tuxedo.

Jules and Vincent hand over the briefcase to Marsellus. He is pleased. There is one theory about the briefcase suggesting it contains Marsellus’ soul — the band-aid on the back of his neck marks the place through which one’s soul would apparently be sucked out by the devil. I like this theory because I don’t think he’s the only guy in Los Angeles with his soul knocking around like the eight ball on a pool table. When I first saw Pulp Fiction I was sixteen and had no imagination; I thought the glow from the briefcase signified gold. Now I see how foolish that idea was. Marsellus is a nasty dude, but no way would he appoint Jules and Vincent to gun down three young guys for mere gold. A briefcase full of gold nuggets has as much value to Marsellus Wallace as a bowl of Cheerios.

Vincent is a facile cheeseball who makes motivational speeches to himself in the bathroom (sort of like Bruce Willis when he guest-starred on Friends), but Jules is the only character who might still be in possession of his soul. He may quote a (fake) Bible passage before obliterating Marsellus’ transgressors, but he’s the one who, post bullet hailstorm, manages to find religion without sounding like he’s been hypnotized at the county fair. Something about Samuel L. Jackson’s mellifluous voice makes conversion seem utterly rational. “You’re judging this the wrong way,” Jules says to Vincent. “You don't judge shit like this based on merit. Whether or not what we experienced was an according-to-Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is I felt God's touch. God got involved.” Jules offers a reasonable solution for religious conflict: if you didn’t experience God, that’s okay; if you experienced God, understand that your experience may not be enough to convince others.

Jules finds the redemption, but Vincent gets the fall after his night with Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman). Taking the boss’ wife out should be as innocuous as a five-dollar vanilla milkshake, just not when both parties prepare by getting really high. The film doesn’t glamorize drugs — not with the shot of Mia OD’ing and looking like something out of Colson Whitehead’s Zone One — but it must be said that both characters look their best right after illicit consumption. Vincent has a great, shit-eating heroin grin, and Mia gets this unbelievably sexy gleam in her eye after doing a bump in the restaurant bathroom. Whoever runs D.A.R.E can’t prevent this kind of drug-induced self-confidence, not unless they base all their programs around the image of a vomit-covered Uma Thurman. By the way, a $5 shake in 1994 would be a $7.26 shake today.

Pulp Fiction is a lot like Marsellus Wallace’s house: cool, slick, big stereo, and you can’t find out where the intercom is. Mia and Vincent’s Twist scene has entered our cultural visual lexicon (does anyone have a better word for “visual lexicon”?) but I prefer Mia dancing solo to “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.” It is hot and awkward at the same time. Mia Wallace is more than a woman to me, and I would like to know what shade of lipstick she wears.

Butch Coolidge, around whom the third storyline revolves, is the opposite of Mia Wallace. He is not cool so much as he is menacing. He is sweaty and hypermasculine, a boxer who takes fights one at a time which must seem kind of wimpy to Butch, at least in comparison to his father and grandfather and great-grandfather, who were all war heroes fighting for America. Butch has one last match in him, and Marsellus Wallace wants to fix it so that he loses. When Butch sits and listens to Marsellus Wallace tell him that ability don’t last, you can practically see in the expression on his just-short-of-craggy face that he would rather be raped by the Gimp a thousand times than let his ass go down in the fifth.

Esmeralda Villalobos, the film’s sexy MacGuffin

The boxing match occurs off-screen but it isn’t difficult to imaging Butch killing a guy with his bare hands. Butch blows the fixed match, arranges to collect on his bets, meets up with his adorable French girlfriend at the motel and gets ready to book it for Tahiti or Bora Bora or wherever rich people go; unfortunately, the girlfriend forgot the fucking watch! The wristwatch that has been passed down through the men of his family for generations is back at home, and so are the men who want him dead.

Butch wears this watch all the time and it probably reminds him of the fact that he’s not a military hero like Grandpops, but he needs it anyway. He risks his life to get the watch back. He ends up in a sex-torture nightmare of a basement with Marsellus Wallace himself in order to get that watch back. Everyone has that watch. Everyone has a watch, or a Mia Wallace, or a gun-induced miracle. Is that what Tarantino is trying to say? That the events in life designed to bring about ruin are those that make life worth living?

Somebody, please, get this lovely young woman some blueberry pancakes

Some movies would rather the audience turn their brain off at the first sign of the opening credits. They’d rather not have people think about what might happen to their characters after the first kiss or the wedding or the heartwarming family hug. (Usually these films star Kate Hudson.) But with Pulp Fiction it is really fun to imagine what is going to happen to everyone after their mini-stories end. These characters are so sexy and repulsive and charismatic and grotesque that they merit much consideration for their futures. Is Marsellus Wallace going to contract some sort of sexual PTSD, or at least a venereal disease? Is Mia Wallace going to kick hard drugs and swan about in a swim cap for the rest of her life? Is Butch really going to enjoy Bora Bora? What if he loses his watch in the tranquil Pacific waters?

Most importantly, is Jules going to walk the earth, as he declares in the diner? The concept of walking the earth probably sounded insane to Vincent, at least in 1994. That was a time when you could get paid in cash for a little dirty work, a time before politicians and cops were felling bosses like Marsellus Wallace left and right. No one in their right mind would have wanted to walk the earth in 1994, but in 2011 “walk the earth” sounds like a better post-college plan than “move in with your parents and bartend at the local Texas Roadhouse.” The sex and the flash of the film are nice audiovisual stimuli as they occur, but the lasting impression may as well be the future Jules, toting a backpack instead of a briefcase, shoes worn out from walking the earth.

Molly O'Brien is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Burlington, Vermont. She tumbls here. She last wrote in these pages about Justin Bieber. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Turn Your Back On The 1990s At Your Own Peril

Elena Schilder on American Beauty

Elizabeth Gumport on Wild Things

Molly O'Brien on Pulp Fiction

Hanson O'Haver on Airheads

Alex Carnevale on Indecent Proposal

Emma Barrie on While You Were Sleeping

Jessica Ferri on The Devil's Advocate

Durga Chew-Bose on Titanic

Molly Lambert on Basic Instinct

Alex Carnevale on Singles

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"NYC" - Burial (mp3)

"Stolen Dog" - Burial (mp3)

In Which We Ingratiate Ourselves to Quentin Tarantino

The Green Leaves of Summer

by ALEX CARNEVALE

The Third Reich is too large to be absorbed from any one angle. The Nazis were the darkest enemies of mankind, and it is hard to believe they even existed. The central Nazi in Inglorious Basterds is Col. Hans Landa, a captain in the SS who got the anecdotal slag of 'Jewhunter.' Young Jewish men everywhere, encouraged by the perpetual sneer on Col. Landa's mug, rumble with plans to destroy this villainous creature. Quentin Tarantino makes the other wet dream of every Jewish boy a reality.

Only the boy isn't really Jewish, he's a Gentile. Tarantino loves all sorts of people, all different types of  directors. He's also not exactly subtle about showing off his allegiance to each of them. Tarantino's uncircumsized ex-Baptist Aldo (Brad Pitt) is Errol Flynn part seventeen, a hunkering lout of virtue and good will towards men. He joins the 800+ filmic references in Basterds, from Footloose to Godard to DePalma to Kiarostami to Kubrick and around the world entire.

Tarantino is suggesting that the culture of the Jew should be expanded to include the plight of people of color, the plight of his own Italians, and the plight of blonde-haired "Jews" with blue eyes who believe they also to have something to fear. Quentin isn't the first wannabe Jew, everyone quakes in delight at being 'chosen.' Like the formality of an SS uniform, it allows us our darker pleasures.

Because the Gentile shares the aims of the Jews, wishes to become a Jew, Aldo's mixed fighting force of Basterds is the result. Tarantino lets his horror f-buddy Eli Roth star in the film along with Jews like Samm Levine and B.J. Novak, and to no one's surprise they are all pretty terrible. The Gentile members of the crew aren't much better. Tarantino's method of shooting demands excited, if not particularly-inspired performances from his actors. Even Goebbels is more gigglish, immature fop than serious obstacle.

As Hans Landa, the villain around which ethnicities oscillate, Christoph Waltz is the exception. He carries Inglorious Basterds through the total embodiment of evil, throttling a woman if the situation demands it, or simply suggesting he'd prefer milk over wine. Each is equally sinister. It is an ongoing surprise to us all that Earth contains these creatures who ruled the Gestapo and were the hardest of the orc-like men.

In contrast, the film sets up a would-be hero and dismisses him savagely. No one is safe from Tarantino's characteristic bloodshed, and once again that's eternally the point. Looking at any part of the Third Reich can be confusing, as with the dark side of an object viewed from the front. Can we really believe that another part of it isn't there?

This movie drew a considerable Jewish audience at a theater in Manhattan, but there is much to recommend for the Gentile in Inglorious Basterds as well. Really this film is for him, for no moral query about this period could be asked of a Jew. We know his answer. The question is posed to the Gentile; he must respond to the intractable Jewish question. Should hatred and fear be countered with even larger levels of violence, or shouldn't they? Is it wrong to take pleasure in killing the men who end the world?

It isn't, and once you get that under your hat, you're halfway towards grasping the particular psychology of Shosanna Dreyfus, which to my ear is a rather Gentile-sounding name. Handed a star-making role, our Jewess heroine is no Barbra Streisand, she isn't Rita Hayworth. She is an icy blonde who confines her hirsute relationship with her French African employee to chaste kisses.

In the film's climactic moment she invites a movie star into her quarters and gives over to him more than she would a mere fling. We require the Nazis to remind Gentiles of what they can become upon giving in to such disturbing moments. Without them, how would we measure how to stretch ourselves, how much we treasure human decency and love?

War is harsh, Tarantino writes. He makes it flashy and he casts Diane Kruger for throaty Uma Thurman laughs, but there is no suitable reaction to the violence that surrounds such frivolity. At more than one point more than 20 men die in mere seconds. This is real sacrifice, Tarantino says, what war takes from its soldiers: everything.

Why did America defeat the Nazis after resolving to ignore them? Our later certainty over our moral role in the fate of Europe's Jews flattens the real debate that occurred over whether this was America's war to be involved in. Many resolved that the United States would ignore the fractious bickering of European powers.

Inglorious Basterds takes place mostly in France when it was occupied, one of the more polite occupations in human history. The French people weren't alone in being cowed by the Nazis, but surrender often looks better with victory behind you. Watching the Nazi vermin walk among the high places of France is a test run for how they might have lived with dominion over the larger world. "I'll get a few paintings from the Louvre to spruce this place up!" Goebbels laughs.

When it came to it, a Nazi in hiding in this country could look like other men, blend into the fabric of the land and renounce the evil he served. Therefore the Basterds mark those they leave alive by carving a swastika above the brow, for a permanence that no longer exists in our world, where mad ideologies comfort each other on the internet.

Tarantino puts women in the center of his action. (His part of the Grindhouse double feature Death Proof is perhaps the most feminist film of the 2007 period.) He loves women, loves to watch them press and push through the stolid workings of men. He adored Uma Thurman's earthy sexuality, and he's equally eager to worship at the altar of French actress Melanie Laurent. This is my favorite scene with Laurent, where she prepares for her life as a beautiful but deadly destroyer of Nazi-kind:

She and Kruger operate as scale models of themselves in miniature. They do what needs to be done to further the aims of the Republic. In this way, they are like Jedis, or at least highly eroticized llamas.

There is nothing else like the abandon Tarantino shows in these moments. He is a fearless filmmaker, marking the treads between people like hands on the clock of history. He may mix metaphors worse than that, but each "chapter" — as the sections of the films announce themselves — is a beginning worthy of the masters he first saw when he worked as a clerk in a video store.

Since video stores are going out of business and will soon be relegated to the place where horse-drawn carriages and telegraphs await us, it is appropriate to credit them for making Mr. Tarantino, who can foist such evil on us with a knowing delight.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"The Surrender" — Ennio Morricone (mp3)

"The Green Leaves of Summer" — Nick Perito (mp3)

"Tiger Tank" — Lalo Schifrin (mp3)

"Slaughter" — Billy Preston (mp3)