‘Hateful’ misogyny fishing for stupidity – Tarantino on battles behind his latest film

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This image released by The Weinstein Company shows Tim Roth in a scene from the film, ‘The Hateful Eight.’ (AP)
This image released by The Weinstein Company shows Tim Roth in a scene from the film, ‘The Hateful Eight.’ (AP)

LOS ANGELES, Dec 27, (Agencies):  Ever since “The Hateful Eight” first unspooled at industry guild screenings last month, whispers of misogyny set the film up for a possible backlash. Throughout Quentin Tarantino’s Western, the dastardly Daisy Domergue (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) finds herself on the receiving end of a lot of violence. And all of it — whether a gun-butt crack over the skull or a back elbow to the nose or a dousing of hot stew to the face — gets an audible reaction.

According to Tarantino, that’s by design. “When John Ruth [played by Kurt Russell] cracks her over the head that very first time, you feel this ripple going through the audience — because it almost does seem like one of the last taboos left,” the two-time Oscar winner told Variety in a recent interview. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh my God. John Ruth is a brutal man!’ That is what you’re supposed to say. I want your allegiances, to one degree or the other, to shift slightly as the movie goes on, and frankly, depending on where you’re coming from.”

With the film heading out into release this weekend, reviews are of course taking note of this element. But reaction seems intriguingly split, and not necessarily along expected gender lines.

“The more gets hit, the more she grins and cackles, as if she were drawing banshee strength from the abuse — a notion that may seem like misogyny but is in fact its triumphant opposite,” Time critic Stephanie Zacharek wrote earlier this week in her review.

Justified

Retorted The New York Times’ A.O. Scott two days later, “At a certain point, the n-word gives way to the b-word as the dominant hateful epithet, and ‘The Hateful Eight’ mutates from an exploration of racial animus into an orgy of elaborately justified misogyny.”

Justified? Thoughtful? Superficial? Deep? Obviously — perhaps refreshingly — there is no definitive answer.

What hasn’t been too thoroughly considered, however, is that the relationship between Ruth and Domergue is played with a complex touch. Whether he’s carefully assisting her down from a coach or wiping food from her face with a fatherly touch, it’s all part of a film that keeps you on your toes and guessing. In one scene that has Domergue plucking a guitar while singing an old Australian folk tune, Ruth shifts on a dime from peacefully listening to splintering the guitar against a post with rage (admittedly riled by a casually antagonistic line in the song).

Character

Leigh first addressed all of this herself in an interview with Variety earlier this month. In claiming she never once worried that the treatment of her character would be perceived as misogynistic, she said, “She’s a leader. And she’s tough. And she’s hateful and a survivor and scrappy. I thought it was funny, but I didn’t think it was misogynistic for a second. doesn’t have an ounce of misogyny in him. It’s not in his writing. It’s not in his being.”

Indeed, ask “The Hateful Eight” backer Harvey Weinstein about such a perception and he’s quick to point out Tarantino’s track record.

“This guy is the most pro-woman ever,” Weinstein said in an interview. “Uma Thurman, Pam Grier, Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger (in “Inglourious Basterds”). If there are cries of misogyny, we will sit down and make them watch ‘Jackie Brown,’ and at the end of the ‘Jackie Brown’ seminar, they will have to say, ‘Hey, we’re just fishing for stupidity.’”

Adds Leigh, “Quentin writes the best parts for women out there. He really does. He writes very brave, bold, insane, fabulous women. Nobody writes women like he does.”

Ultimately — and with space of course allowed for interpretation — Zacharek’s reading of the film is closest at least to what Tarantino says he intended.

“Violence is hanging over every one of those characters like a cloak of night,” he said. “So I’m not going to go, ‘OK, that’s the case for seven of the characters, but because one is a woman, I have to treat her differently.’ I’m not going to do that.”

Tarantino is waging wars on multiple fronts.

His eighth and latest film, “The Hateful Eight,” is his loudest, brashest defense of celluloid in the battle between film and digital. He shot it in Ultra Panavision, the dormant widescreen format of “Ben-Hur” and other ‘60s epics, and he’s releasing the film first in a 70mm roadshow beginning Friday, a week before a trimmer, digital version lands in multiplexes.

For even Tarantino it’s an audacious gambit to release a three hour-plus film (complete with an overture and intermission) in a method that few theaters can still project, let alone know how to. In a multi-screen era, “The Hateful Eight” is an invitation to a full meal of Movie Night.

Divide

The movie, too, sits on a divide; Tarantino calls it “a blue-state, red-state Western.” Part Agatha Christie mystery, part post-Civil War explosion, “The Hateful Eight” is about an ex-Union soldier and bounty hunter (Samuel L. Jackson) holed up during a blizzard with an assortment of suspicious characters and a handful of proud Confederates (Walton Goggins, Bruce Dern). As tension builds, politics and lies slowly peel away.

Tarantino, 52, has also been swept into a political battle of his own. After the filmmaker attended a New York protest against police brutality in October, police unions called for a boycott of “The Hateful Eight.”

But if ever there was a filmmaker who welcomes confrontation, it’s Tarantino. In a recent interview beside a roaring fire at an East Village hotel, a calm and confident Tarantino, fighting a cold, reflected on the conflicts that surround “The Hateful Eight.”

AP: For you, does the racist clash at the heart of “Hateful Eight” relate to contemporary problems?

Tarantino: I was excited about trapping these exciting characters in a kind of “Reservoir Dogs” Western, and interested in throwing my hat into the mystery genre. But during the last year of making it, things in the news just kept happening that made the movie more relevant and more relevant. I don’t want to go to dinner on that too much. The movie has to work as the movie. But the murders at the Mother Emanuel Church is sort of what this movie’s about to some degree or another.

AP: How do you feel about race relations today?

Tarantino: Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

AP: You provoked quite a reaction from police groups, one of which threatened “a surprise” for the release of “Hateful Eight.”

Tarantino: You should be able to criticize civil servants for what you think is wrongdoing without being painted as a cop-hater. I don’t feel the police are all corrupt, however I do feel they are suffering from institutional racism and there needs to be a top-to-bottom examination of the way they practice and the way they criminalize young black and brown males. The fact that they seem to have backed off from it seems to suggest they realize they overreacted on me and it looks bad.

AP: Your film will play in two versions: a scaled-down roadshow, followed by a wider released version.

Tarantino: The movie that plays in most theaters and most malls and stuff, artistically, everything, it’s the exact same movie. It’s a little more audience friendly, a little less impressed with itself.

But if you go see the roadshow version, if you go to that, you’re mine. It’s like you’re seeing Placido Domingo at the Paris opera house, or you’re seeing La Boheme at La Scala or even Pacino on Broadway in “Iceman Cometh.” You get the program and the overture and intermission: That’s what you’re doing that night. Everything else you do is secondary to going to see my movie that night.

AP: “Let’s slow it down,” as Jackson’s character says, seems to be ethos of the film, which slowly, deliberately gathers suspense.

Tarantino: I really considered doing it as a play first. I might literally do it as a play, as soon as next year. I don’t know. I have to go around the world tour and see if I still have the juice for it. If I don’t have the juice now, I could easily do it three years from now. In fact, that’s kind of the plan.

AP: Do you worry about the audience’s patience?

Tarantino: If it’s too much for people, if audiences don’t accept it, well I guess that’s just the way it is. I’m not being cavalier when it comes to my financial partners, but I think I’ve earned the right to do my thing my way. While I really want it to do well and it would be lovely if it’s popular, movies are for a long time. I’m really proud of the piece. If it ends up not connecting with audiences, I won’t be heartbroken. I’ll be a little disappointed, but I won’t be heartbroken.

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