"Oh, a Haberdashery, it's a joke."

Rating: 10/10 (24 May 2016)

I had the suspicion watching this again that this could become like another JACKIE BROWN for Tarantino - a film that is somewhat (not altogether but somewhat) under-appreciated and will gain in following and status over time. It's a difficult film to embrace, and yet watching it again I don't know if I can call it completely 'nihilistic'. That's the belief that everything is meaningless, in nothing. I think that these characters, or some of them, want to believe in *something* - hell, even Daisy has a family, right, that has some meaning to it - but it's really about the *FAILING* of meaning, how meaning is screwed up by the promises and hopes of the American dream.
The Lincoln letter, the leaders of the confederacy and the "Renegade Army" and of course what slavery did and continues to do, so that even those who are "free" like Marquis Warren are never really free, not in their own life time (and if you read in-between the lines this is much more of an ex-slave getting revenge than Django, who was ready to go on his merry way once he got his bride), these are all things that poison and distort the truth of things.
So in a way it's actually an extremely moral film - well, EXTREME and MORAL as a film put together when you think about it - and that it's all acted by the gathered performers without a missed note (seeing it again the depth to which Madsen gives Joe Gage sticks out a little more, the image of the "Cowpoke" who is a twisted nightmarish killer), and while I don't think Tarantino is an overtly political filmmaker he's certainly seen his rather large fair share of spaghetti westerns and many of those were very political, plus he is not untouched by the world around him so in a way this reflects the country we're in far more than anything else I can think of in the past couple of years.
Not to mention the direction, seeing as this is all shot on gigantic 70mm cameras and there's no space for things like hand-held shots or zooms like on other films, he has to shoot much of this straight on. We can't look away from these mother****ers, QT may be saying, and with the way he frames shots it makes a stark, delicious contrast: often exquisite cinematography (not only the shots of the bitterly cold wilderness, an ideal backdrop for this story where nothing green or natural grows, but those details in the confining Haberdashery), and the subjects themselves are mostly rotten (except for Warren who is my favorite character, bar none, and Jackson makes him vivid and awe-inspiring and yet very human and vulnerable by the last act ).
Also, it does have a lot of stuff Tarantino's done before - theatrical "acting" to win over other characters' trust, verbiage that almost goes on too long but hey, hell with it, he can do it better than anyone and every word feels like it should be there (cut out one and it might start to unravel), and some gruesome violence (though on repeat viewing it's not THAT gruesome - I'd say it's about on par with Pulp Fiction on the scale, so much less than the Kill Bills or Django or Basterds, so if there are a lot of bodies that hit the floor and blood that flows in the 2nd half, it stands out because of how we've come to this.... okay, the throwing up of blood is still sick, but hilarious) - but when it's Tarantino and I love his stuff, I can't complain.
good times, QT salad.