: (Ennio Morricone) It is without
a doubt that the works of writer and director Quentin Tarantino are an
acquired taste, his vulgar and violent depictions of human savagery so
brutal that they become oddly heroic and comical. Your ability to find
starkly romantic appeal in a movie like
will
determine your level of tolerance for Tarantino, a master at generating
interesting characters that more often than not do terrible things. Many
of his films have been immense box office hits, but 2015's
is not one of them. Although receiving significant
awards consideration for specific aspects of its production
(cinematography, screenwriting, score, and actress Jennifer Jason
Leigh), the movie did not sway critics and audiences like Tarantino's
prior entries. It remains a project true to his sensibilities, however,
featuring familiar cast and crew and ending with more than its fair
share of death. A group of people ranging from lawmen to bounty hunters,
vagrants to criminals are brought by destiny to the refuge of a lodge
during a snowstorm in Wyoming in post-Civil War America. The entire film
features tense conversation and executions regarding the bounties and
mistrust placed on the characters, not to mention the imposing influence
of the elements outside. Never mind the fact that the location is
discernably Colorado rather than Wyoming. Intriguingly, a widely
reported boycott of the film by police groups, enacted after Tarantino
weighed in on the political issue of police killings of black youths
across America, was supposedly a contributing factor to the film's
disappointing box office performance, though some sources refute that
notion. Not immune from all the usual Tarantino drama is the situation
with the film's music. There is a reason why none of Tarantino's prior
films' soundtracks had been reviewed at Filmtracks, and it's because the
director has generally preferred to pluck pieces of existing music, and
particularly that written by legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone,
for placement in his films. While this approach has been praised by
many, those with knowledge and familiarity with the original intent of
this film music can find Tarantino's re-use to be highly annoying and
distracting. In fact, at times, hearing vintage Morricone Western music
totally out of context in a modern Tarantino thriller is hilariously
awful. Some fans will disagree with this viewpoint, as evidenced in part
by the enduring popularity of these soundtracks.
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.
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- 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 3.18
(in 11 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 10,059 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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