Tarantino finally jumps the shark...maybe

Rating: 6/10 (14 September 2016)

I really enjoyed this movie 2/3 of the way through. I didn't think it was too long. I loved the dialogue and interaction of the post-civil war northern characters (jackson and Russell) and the southern ones (Dern, Goggins).
I don't think I've ever seen such great dialogue between characters of this time period. The arguments about morality and war, and race, with Jackson, as always, written such a strong, relentless, unapologetic part. I really believed all these characters were tough as nails, hardened by years of experience. Jackson's interactions with Dern's southern general character escalate to what is the film's peak, a shocking and grim revelation that is still believable, considering the circumstances, and Jackson's unapologetic view of American life. Jackson even offends a growing fan of his, Kurt Russell's bounty hunter, by revealing him to be a sucker for a story about being pen pals with Lincoln, but Jackson explains it in such perfect terms, about needing to disarm white people in America, that you understand, and maybe even learn something directly from Sam Jackson himself.
This stuff is all great. Then there is a poisoning that sets off the final act, as it were, and that's where everything goes south. First off, in what is a perfect film so far, we're subjected to Tanantino breaking the wall indulgently, as he does so often, by narrating some sequences. This is annoying, but passable.
Then we're subjected to scene two of the requisite Tarantino bloodletting, which is a flashback to a massacre of the original occupants of the haberdashery, which includes multiple innocent and friendly women. This seems, at first, to just be a pointless exercise in establishing the rotten characters of what turn out to be gang members tied to Daisy, the main female character/prisoner. The scene seems truly gratuitous, but may have another purpose...
Then we return to the scene where Jackson is finally slowed is not stopped by being shot from below by a gang member hiding in the cellar. He is shot in the testicles, and we are told this. Immediately the film loses too much reality for me. He would either be dead or totally immobilized and bleeding out, and yet somehow we are led to believe he can still shoot, talk, though he apparently can not move off of a bed.
There's a lot of grim violence back and forth, including the sawing off an arm, for no reason other than its supposed to be funny. At the end, Daisy, the main female character, is hanged over a rafter by the ex-northern Major played by Jackson, and the ex-rebel marauder, played by Goggins, in what appears to be a uniting of former enemies in the goal of hanging a woman (we are told how awful she is repeatedly, and she is verbally abused relentlessly, including tons of uses of the B word, which in a way, does not seem real period to me, but I can't possibly know.
On face, it looks like Tarantino has lost his mind at the end. He engages in pointless violence, even by his standards, and the film's end centers on lynching a woman who is part head of a terrible gang, but the film doesn't quite do enough to really villainize her, mostly because she is such a cartoon character.
The only possible explanation I can find for this film is that Tarantino is saying that even men divided by race, were still united in their hatred of women. This would also tie into the massacre scene. The race hate is clear in the movie, but the gender hate is a lot less clear.
Either Tarantino completely lost his mind, and just went for the humor and terror of abusing women, or he was subtly making a statement.
To my view, he made that point in FAR TOO SUBTLE a manner, because most of the men I watched the movie seemed to see it as carte blanche to treat women and minorities poorly. Tarantino did such a great job illustrating racial issues, I'm not sure why he had to drag gender hate into the film, and not quite outline as clearly as he needed to, because without the rationale I offer, the movie is just blatantly and pointless violent and misogynistic.
So I guess I'm a bit confused.