6/10

Rating: 6/10 (10 February 2016)

This is the first time I actually come out of a Tarantino movie, majorly unimpressed. I am so sad about that. I didn't love Django as much as everybody, yet I still found lots to enjoy about it, yet this time around I really feel uninspired by it, something that never, ever happened with Tarantino. Now, I don't want to give the impression that I am the number one fan of his, I'll admit up front I am not. I love almost all of his movies and he is a filmmaker that taught me a lot about cinema, but with the exception of the masterpiece "Inglourious Basterds", I've never fallen head over heels for his work.
Yet, lets give a break to all the depression here. My vote for the film is still positive and deservingly so because it does have many things going for it that I managed to appreciate. The fact that I am talking so negatively about it is because I am so used to high standards with him it is strange to be in this place where I actually have something to actively criticize about his film.
Before that I will say that the score of the film is fantastic. The sound is fascinatingly crafted and contributes more than the cinematography in giving the film a vibe. Talking about cinematography, I'll admit I didn't see this in 70mm but on a standard screen and I found it to be pretty standard on that front. Nothing really exceptional, the thing that's really to like about it is how beautifully it is lit and how exceptionally broad and warm the color palette is, and it fits right into, thanks also to some really admirable production design. Yet, at no point in the film I thought: "wow look at that shot", it all went pretty over the shoulder.
There is an interesting conversation to be had on this film because I truly realized how the photography wasn't serving the story the majority of the time. Now, of course it is extremely difficult to make that work in such a narrow setting, "12 Angry Men" or "Dial M for Murder" being the best examples where they actually found a way to tell that story visually too, despite being locked in a room for all film. Yet here it is absolutely disconnected.
And this really brings me to the focal point of this film and it's problem: it is not ever telling a story. You take something like the opening scene of "Inglourious Basterds" which might be as perfect as scenes get. You look at what the characters say, how the camera moves, how the actors are placed. Everything there is about telling the audience something, making them feel every drop of sweat of the farmer. Now, I look at the entirety of "The Hateul Eight" and it seems the total opposite. I couldn't believe the dialogue I was hearing, for heaven's sake, the characters talk exposition for three hours straight! At no point in this film there is a genuine conversation with subtext and tension. You are constantly told by the characters on screen what is going on, what was going on and what will be going on, there is absolutely no space left for storytelling and tension. No wonder the photography is so disconnected, it wouldn't be possible to give any type of context on a screen to these conversations since they are absolutely emotionless. I was truly baffled by this, I was constantly unimpressed and unengaged and I wonder how could I have possibly been so if the film is just a three hour exposition! And it doesn't stop there because it also feels the need mid way through to get Quentin Tarantino himself to start explaining the plot to us. I truly wonder how can it be possible for someone to get emotionally engaged in such a narrative. And the more I write about this the more I realize how cheaply the film is built around this. Not to mention the fact that it is so dam unnecessarily long. There is a scene in which it takes 10 to 15 seconds for a character to get his glove off. I found myself thinking constantly: "you could have told that whole thing in two shots and two cuts" whilst the actual movie was taking twenty minutes to do so.
Basically I think the screenplay of this film is really its big weakness, because I think too that as a director, Tarantino manages to pull off some really good stuff here. Spot on casting, amazing performances from everybody, it is so unfortunate their dialogue is so boring, but thanks to some truly brilliant collaboration between the cast and the director, they manage to make three hours actually bearable. Tim Roth being the big stand out for me followed by some inspired work by Walton Goggins, that is simply brought down by the fundamental problem of the film.
This is a really big step down in my opinion for Tarantino and I realize that even more so after having written this review: it is incredible how I found the dialogue to be bad, that is surreal to say for me with Tarantino. Still, this isn't a failure of a film by any stretch of the imagination, it still offers a good serving of fun and acting that can be still enjoyed at a certain level.