The Farce and The Epic
This weekend I watched two movies The Hateful Eight and Into the Heart of the Sea. I watched Into the Heart of the Sea first. It’s a story told through Brendan Gleeson’s character relating his memories to a pre-Moby Dick Herman Melville, played by Ben Wishaw. We follow the last voyage of a whaleship as it battles against a giant white whale. The main characters aboard the ship are the first mate Owen Chase and the captain George Pollard. The movie follows the narrative structure of an epic, meaning that there are increasingly difficult challenges that befall the ship. Owen Chase is a stylized natural leader who we are meant to feel sympathetic to. We are introduced to him on land as a man who is doing what he can to support his family. Then on sea as a highly competent, experienced sailor. Pollard is similarly stylized as the rich ship owner’s son. He is aloof and inexperienced at sea. This contrast creates the main narrative tension; that Chase should be the leader of the ship but doesn’t have it by birth right. Unfortunately Chris Hemsworth, who plays Chase, isn’t charismatic enough to pull off this role. His air of superiority actually works to make his character unlikeable. Pollard’s role is similarly dull.
I wasn’t looking to this movie for its great characters though. My hope was that there would be some good scenes of the whale attacking the boat. I was actually excited by the poster which showed a person swimming with a spear next to the Whale’s eye. I thought “that looks cool.” Visually though the movie was extremely lacking. The cgi from the introduction throughout was appalling. With the modern turn towards authenticity in cinema with such films as The Revenant I was hoping that a sense of being stranded at sea would come across. Other than Hemsworth’s weight loss this was never achieved. James Cameron has set the bar high in The Abyss and Titanic for movies where you believe the actually are at sea. The only bit which I thought was visually interesting was where young Brendan Gleeson’s character has to enter a Whales body to extract the oil, this was at least visceral. The rest of the visuals were stale.
There isn’t much more to say about this movie other than I wonder how much Wishaw was paid to sit in a room with Brendan Gleeson for a couple of days compared to how much Hemsworth was paid to lose 50 pounds. There are certain token nods to Moby Dick but as the visuals lack depth so do the themes.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Hateful Eight. First of all, the film looks beautiful. The opening shot of a statue of Jesus on the cross in the snow pans out to see a stagecoach driving through the snow. This set the scene and tone of the movie perfectly. It shows the environment to be hostile and it shows the violence of the world. The film is a classic farce due to its extravagant plots twist and turns, cartoonish characters and the setting being in one place. That place is Minnie’s Haberdashery. An exquisitely laid out barn of sorts with a chess table, jars of sweets, a stove and coffee and a bar. The choice of location was brilliant and I never grew tired of having the movie unfold in the same place. Particularly excellent was the only door to the haberdashery. Every time it needs to be opened or closed it has to be nailed shut because the handle is broken. Symbolically this has a great effect. It means that every time a character enters it is a pronounced announcement. It also means that the characters are trapped in the one place, both by the harsh weather conditions and by the door.
With Tarantino movies there are certain things you expect. A non-linear narrative, good dialogue, and ultra-violence/ physical blood effects. So the question becomes has he become formulaic and therefore boring with his movies? Is there a checklist he has that he has to tick off as he’s shooting? If I was a bigger Tarantino fan I would probably be more cynical to this. However, I am happy to just dip my toe occasionally and enjoy the movies for what they are. He uses all of these devices to good effect in this movie. The non-linear narrative is well done and completes the turn of the events satisfactorily. The dialogue is always sharp. Also, I don’t think it was Tarantino’s intention to shock with the violence of the movie. I didn’t even blink when one characters brains are blown onto the face of another. It’s like he’s set a standard for himself where he’s afraid to make his films any less violent than his previous ones have been established to be. Neither do I think that Tarantino was trying to be overtly political in the themes of the movie or particularly contrarian with the length. I get the idea with Tarantino that he is in service to making what he thinks a good film should be. Making something that he would like to watch. It’s the media who have created the idea that he wants to be controversial, shocking or satirical. Ron Howard, who directed Into the Heart of the Sea, comes across as more cynical in his film making. The whole movie feels like he’s trying to give the studios what they want.
Another difference between Into the Heart of the Sea and The Hateful Eight is that in the latter the characters are fun. In both films they are clichés but Tarantino seems more aware of this than Ron Howard and plays to it. I particularly enjoyed Tim Roth as Oswald Mobray an English hangman in The Hateful Eight. Specifically the line “The man who pulls the lever, that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion, is always in danger of not being justice.” With a farce it is imperative that the dialogue is strong and Tarantino delivers.
In conclusion, neither film goes beyond its mandate to deliver something special.
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