The Hateful Eight: 8 Reasons It's Quentin Tarantino's Best Film Since Pulp Fiction

3. It's Epic Yet Intimate

The Hateful Eight was shot in Ultra Panavision 70, widescreen lenses that haven't been used since the mid-sixties. This cinematography decision (aided with a heavy use of deep focus allowing you to take it all in at once) ensures the film feels massive - the vast Wyoming landscape looms over the characters and even when the film is just two people chatting, Tarantino places the participants at the extremities of the frame, giving everything a heightened sense of scale. And yet, despite that size, the film is focused on a small group of characters and their interactions. Is this just unnecessary visual style, then, something done out of Tarantino's love for the art form that doesn't serve any real purpose in the story? Nope, quite the opposite; it's the director experimenting in how to tell what is a rather personal story. Of course this epic scale makes for an awe-inspiring watch, but it also manages to draw us further into the intimacy of the events unfolding; making things so big means we're experiencing the dwarfing landscape (and thus the personal events of the film) from the point of view of the characters. It's not just the technical side of things that creates this contrasting feeling though. You see, while the more we learn about the motivations behind various characters, the more the story becomes increasingly intimate and personal, in terms of message the movie only expands; the final sequence is narratively pretty tight, but how it impacts the films themes - of justice, of camaraderie, and, on an even bigger scale, of the make-up of America - is massive.