The movie Quentin Tarantino considers his “most political”
At the beginning of his career, it seemed like Quentin Tarantino was steering well clear of any kind of politics in his movies. What the iconic filmmaker was really keen to do in his first handful of works was to pay homage to his favourite movies of all time, and throughout Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill, Tarantino showcased a style not entirely his own.
The films largely centred on a world of criminality, with Tarantino becoming a master of the crime movie. However, following the release of Death Proof, Tarantino began turning his attention to more historical and political modes of cinematic address, beginning with his World War II reimagining Inglourious Basterds.
Slavery was then given Tarantino’s attention in his revenge spaghetti western film Django Unchained, while his eighth film, 2015’s The Hateful Eight, also revised the old canon of western cinema. Such films saw Tarantino tackle politics, particularly those of a racial nature, for the first time, which leads to the question of what the most political film the director has ever made is.
Thankfully, Tarantino responded to the question of his “most political” movie in an interview with Time Out, and when he was asked whether The Hateful Eight should be considered as the answer, he simply replied, “Yes. But when I first started writing it, I didn’t know it. I’ve dealt with race, in terms of black and white, in a lot of my movies, in all my movies, to some degree or other.”
Tarantino continued, explaining the main political theme behind his 2015 effort, “But I do think that dealing with black and white in America and with racial conflicts is something I have to contribute to the Western genre. That has not been done by anyone else – at least not in a meaningful way.”
The Hateful Eight saw the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Demian Bichir and Bruce Dern come together to play the titular strangers who seek refuge from a dangerous blizzard in a haberdashery lodge at the conclusion of the American Civil War.
The 19th century in the United States was naturally a politically charged period of history, seeing as it was in 1865 that slavery was abolished in the country, the process of which had largely led to the Civil War taking place. The Hateful Eight is set in 1870, and with white and black characters being shacked up in close quarters, Tarantino felt that he was, at least in some way, concerning himself with race politics.
Interestingly, those kinds of politics were still important nearly 150 years after the film was set, i.e. when Tarantino’s eighth film was released. “When you’re making a western, you can’t help deal with the American zeitgeist,” the director had admitted. “Ten or twenty years from now, hopefully, you’ll be able to look at The Hateful Eight and get a good picture of the concerns of America at this time.”
So it’s Tarantino’s effort of 2015 that he thinks serves as his “most political” movie, and compared to many of his earlier films, he may just be right. Perhaps along with Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight was a moment in which Tarantino confronted the kind of racial politics that has hung over his native United States for centuries, something that he was not entirely used to doing.
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