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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 9392819" data-attributes="member: 23484">Some Hateful Eight love.A good Western is hard to make, and at least since Unforgiven (arguably since High Plains Drifter), the writer and director need to understand both what makes a good western and what new thing they can bring to it. H8 gets both parts right. Since the 50s, a Western needs to love the landscape, and the landscape has to become a character in the story. Not as a cliche, not just with gorgeous wide shots, but as something that has a personality, is unique, and has an impact on every character that encounters it. H8 (predictably) plays with this -- the snowstorm, the environmental threat, the door of the cabin needing to be nailed shut, all mean the environment is oppressive and individual. (Canadians can refer to Margaret Atwood's 1970s lit crit Survival, and see echoes of her observations on Canadian literature). The horsecart in the barn, the narrow mountain pass, the need for travel time and mutual protection, the wilderness as a place of refuge and escape... all of this are dead-on perfect for a great Western. (Compare the hideout in Reservoir Dogs -- great location, visually interesting, but not a character.)There have been winter Westerns before, but he gets it. And with that landscape (not just a setting) everything else follows. Including why all the strangers are holed up in a cabin, which lets QT add the Agatha Christie mystery frame to the Western -- one of the things that the film adds. That's the second part, but it's also why H8 is less rewatchable, I'd suggest -- the narrative core is a mystery, and we know the ending. I'm not disagreeing with anyone who would put H8 near the bottom of the list -- its certainly in my back half -- but I think it does some wonderful things -- just not cinema-shifting ones, like Pulp Fiction, Basterds, Django, and (possibly) OUATIH.</blockquote>

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