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Tarantino had asked Morricone on several prior occasions to write original music for his films, ranging from Pulp Fiction to Inglourious Basterds, but the composer had always seemed to consider Tarantino to be something of a crazed fanboy. Even after Morricone relented and wrote an original song for Django Unchained in 2012, the composer continued to denigrate Tarantino's incoherent use of his music and said he would never work with him again. For The Hateful Eight, Morricone, by then in his late 80's but still ever-productive in continuing to write new scores, initially refused a request from Tarantino to write original music, but the composer's wife eventually convinced him to tackle the project. Morricone was initially slated to just write a theme or two for The Hateful Eight, perhaps centered around its overture, and the composer even went so far as to advise Tarantino to re-use some of his own, largely unused music to 1982's horror classic The Thing. Ultimately, three cues from The Thing ("Eternity," "Bestiality," and "Despair") were tracked into The Hateful Eight, along with "Regan's Theme (Floating Sound)" from Morricone's Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1977. As the composer wrote music for this project, though, he became engaged enough in the process to bloat his contribution up to 50 minutes of new material, and while the re-used cues mentioned above and Tarantino's usual song placements remain obvious in the picture, hearing so much original music in one of his films could be something of a shock for some listeners. Recorded in Prague with Morricone still conducting at his advanced age, the score was closely supervised by Tarantino, and the director's immediate gut reaction to it at those sessions was one of confusion. Morricone had quite intentionally written a horror score rather than a Western, one that Tarantino did not expect, perhaps out of intellectual challenge or the inclination of a master composer to school a younger filmmaker. "Can I repeat for Tarantino what I've done for Sergio Leone? It's not possible, right? It would be absurd," Morricone later commented. "I didn't give that to him, because I didn't want to give him something he knew already." The maestro's intuition proved correct, of course, with the outright oppressive, psychological horror score earning him recognition from the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and Academy Awards. The style of the score is not to Tarantino's flashy standards, and that was arguably a solid choice.

It is truly difficult to ascertain just how good the original music for The Hateful Eight can be considered, and whether it can even compete with John Williams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the clear pinnacle of old-timer achievements in 2015. That is because The Hateful Eight is an incredibly difficult listening experience. It wears you down in several different ways, perfectly capturing the film's remote isolation, desperate characters, and general disillusionment about life. It's a remarkably unpleasant yet intoxicating listening experience, its masterful encapsulation of the story's tone balanced by outward attempts to unsettle the listener with an abundance of broken chords, unresolved harmony, and unyieldingly prodding rhythms. If you compare this score to another of 2015's top pieces of awards bait, Jóhann Jóhannsson's Sicario, you'll note two scores focused squarely on setting an oppressive ambient mood, but whereas Sicario is tediously simplistic in its structures and instrumentation, The Hateful Eight is precisely the opposite. Morricone's sonic palette is intellectually stimulating in most cues, taking hints of his vintage horror scores of the 1970's and Western efforts of the decade before and twisting them into a smart merging of contemplative plunges into bleak territory and aggressively mean-spirited expressions of angst that are a little more tonal. These two halves of the score are summarized in its two recurring themes. The latter is the Red Rock theme, the undeniable highlight of the soundtrack, heard summarized best in the two "L'Ultima Diligenza di Red Rock" cues. Its sixteen-note theme is sinewy and unpredictable, opening on bassoons to offer the film a croaking, throaty demeanor before the idea, over a bed of tapped cymbals and timpani, eventually, over seven minutes, is provided additional layers of orchestration until it slams you like a brick to the face, its secondary phrases only temporary respite from the main theme's march on trumpets and woodwinds to a point at which it almost becomes unbearable. At the end of the cue, Morricone presents a dichotomy of harmony in the bass and treble regions that reminds strongly of Bernard Herrmann's classic horror scores, though here each phrase nicely resolves on some semblance of a magnificent, resounding, tonal chord. The only real flair to Tarantino's taste in this theme is the rhythmic male vocal accents near its climax. The second track featuring this theme is a shorter summary, and expect the idea to work its way into places throughout the rest of the score as well.

Compared to all the overwhelming activity in the Red Rock theme in The Hateful Eight, the secondary "Neve" identity is the one that numbs you to the cold of the location and the characters' hearts. There are a number of recurring motifs that make up this theme, and some of them are wrapped into progressions related to the sixteen notes of the Red Rock theme. A little humorously, one of the main phrases of the "Neve" theme coincides with the four primary notes of the Kylo Ren theme from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a little distracting for the film score enthusiast, perhaps, but at least an easy point of reference. Expect the three "Neve" cues to lull you into a slumber on the album; they serve their purpose but are not a point of attraction on the product. The more boisterous Red Rock material spills over in volume and mean-spiritedness to "Sei Cavalli," a purely retro horror cue, and others, including "Sangue e Neve," in which the two main themes intersect explicitly. In "Narratore Letterario," Morricone take the main theme to a prickly, plucked end with continued bassoon emphasis. More airy, nebulous atmosphere takes hold from wayward woodwind lines in "Raggi di Sole Sulla Montagna," and the two "L'Inferno Bianco" cues. Among the other, less flashy cues resides "La Lettera di Lincoln," the faux patriotic trumpet performance for the reading at the end of the film, a nice touch if not outwardly funny because of the controversy about the letter and Morricone's choice to play the cue with straight nobility. Overall, the original material for The Hateful Eight is not without weakness, its secondary cues not living up to the intellectual prowess of the Red Rock theme's best moments and performance issues arising now and then (the trumpet flub at 0:17 into "La Lettera di Lincoln" is really a distracting shame). Of course, this is a Tarantino film, so the soundtrack is littered with dialogue that summarizes some of the highlighted interactions in the script but which may not make sense for someone interested in only the music and not the film. Some but not all of the songs placed in the film are included as well. If Tarantino had wanted to do a great service to his listeners, he would have dropped the quotes and purchased the right to include the older Morricone music alongside the new score and songs in their proper order. Such is too much to ask, apparently. For Morricone, the Red Rock theme is a fantastic compositional achievement atop a strong but not classic score in his career, certainly an improvement over his last mainstream American entry, Mission to Mars fifteen years prior, and deserving of the renewed recognition he has received for both this and the remarkable longevity of his career.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

• Music as Written and Utilized for the Film:  ****
• Music as Heard on Album:  ***
• Overall:  ****

Bias Check:

For Ennio Morricone reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.11 (in 9 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.28 (in 8,958 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 72:36