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Taking no prisoners. A few shots in the direction of Hateful Eight, the new film by Quentin Tarantino. A few years ago I had a chance to talk with the American filmmaker Paul Morrissey. I asked him about Lonesome Cowboys made in the 1968 with Andy Warhol, a kind of anti-Western or satire of the genre. I tried to interpret it but Morrissey told me that his definition of Western is simple: when you see men in cowboy hats and on horses then that's it! To be honest, I don't agree. I think it's somewhat more complicated. In fact, I'm quite fascinated with the evolution of the genre and possibilities of its cinematic re-writing and thus reinterpreting. I was excited when I discovered that the new film by one of my favourite film directors would be a Western. And actually the second in a row, after Django Unchained made in 2012. Besides, his whole oeuvre looks to me like struggling with Westernian myths and values; is it there something significant in this fact? If we listen to Tarantino himself, he declares: 'One thing that’s always been true is that there’s no real film genre that better reflects the values and the problems of a given decade than the Westerns made during that specific decade'. And then he adds: 'Finally, the issue of white supremacy is being talked about and dealt with. And it’s what the movie’s about'.* If we agree that the main character is Major Marquis Warren played by Samuel L. Jackson (in any case he dies last), it is also true, as in Django, that the protagonist is a black man who wants revenge. However, bloody revenge is the subject of many of Tarantino's films, now we've got it to the extreme and at the end of the day everybody is dead. In addition, in chapter four (the film is divided into five chapters) we learn that all the potentially good people died even before the action started. So, is there any hope for us? Maybe it is also about the fact that finally a time came for trying to cope with the wounds in some other ways? After all, the film in many fragments is, as usual with Tarantino, absurdly funny. I like Tarantino's films also because I'm a feminist. And concerning Hateful Eight I really like an idea of a woman being a bosstress of a gang of naughty boys. Even if she is so bad and ugly as the character played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lady Daisy Domargue (well, I know... in Westerns 'We’re all Sons of Bitches'**). Once upon a time I also had a black eye but nobody noticed. Notes: * See: http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/quentin-tarantino-lane-brown-in-conversation.html ** This is a reference to John Maclean's Slow West (2015). The dialogue goes like this: 'Jay: I am Jay Cavendish, Son of Lady Cavendish. Officer: We’re all Sons of Bitches'. Text Copyright© Kamila Wielebska, 26.02.2016 |