In 2015, The Hateful Eight and The Revenant were brutal, fleeting moments in Pop Culture

Ages before I was spouting bullshit about cultural relevance and the like, an inextricable sentiment was established: art reflects culture just as much as culture influences art. It's an interesting process to witness, for better or worse. Whether it is intended to or not, the tone of the masses manifests itself in millions of specific little ways that dig their way into the social psyche and nest--sometimes even fester. 

 

In December of 2015, two of the most visceral and vicious films to be considered Oscar contenders in recent years were released.  While the arrival of both films was met with various levels of critical praise as well as dissent, now 1 year removed, both Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s The Revenant and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight occupy a strange space in the cultural conversation. While their images certainly linger, their brutality and blood lust came at a weird tipping point in American pop culture.

 

Coming at a time when American politics and tricky sentiments were dancing around each other with eyes on the coming tumultuous nature of 2016, The Revenant and The Hateful Eight were cathartic visions of both personal and literal war. The former, a grim odyssey of revenge and ultimate resurrection; the latter, a post-Civil War cleansing, aiming to violently separate itself from the malevolence of the old world. While both films reach their established goals through arduous strains, in retrospect, their existence occupies a surprising "thanks, but no thanks" realm that was certainly not intended. 

 

Famous not only for providing Leonardo DiCaprio with his much pined for Academy Award, but probably almost killing him with its strenuous shooting conditions, The Revenant is nothing if not memorable. The film finds director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu somehow harnessing his own distinct power of minimalism, as well as his penchant for maximum emotional carnage. The Revenant is a unique meeting place of destruction and beauty. It's a revenge tale that flirts with existentialism as much as it does savagery. A miserably immersive frontier drama, it famously uses ONLY NATURAL LIGHT and, apparently, only genuine agony to create its admittedly particular atmosphere. 

 

The Hateful Eight, on the other hand, is Quentin Tarantino finding himself taking up residency in the alterna-western genre that he hinted at in Kill Bill Volume II and explored more fully in 2012's Django Unchained. Dealing with similar tendencies towards vengeance, The Hateful Eight's tone is deliberately more exploitative and removed from reality. Though, this doesn't take away from the film's violent, purging moments and their conclusive relief. Mining elements of an Agatha Christie whodunit by way of John Carpenter's The Thing, Tarantino puts to work his expected talents for pastiche with an impressive, if not terribly enjoyable demonstration.

 

These were good films--at times, great films. However, when searching for their lasting effects, it's somewhat hard to find. The cinematic landscape has not really changed in America since 2015, but the cultural conscience has been damaged since and is aching for an overhaul. 2016 was a rough, rough year. And this is by NO MEANS trying to indicate that people don't want to see a violent film anymore. That would be utterly ridiculous. Perhaps, though, two films that were meant to be a successful culmination of violently extricating yourself from the past aren't as fun to return to when the world went ahead and found itself 50 or so years in the past one cold November morning. 

 

Culture can improve the art contained therein, just as art can improve a culture. Art from a bygone era, while relevant, can seem antiquated or lonesome when placed in the wrong light. The Revenant and The Hateful Eight had their cultural moments, but their brutal march toward relevance proved ironically fleeting as existence wanted nothing more than to turn the volume down in the chaotic year following their release. It is certainly possible (maybe even likely) that one of or both of these films will find itself very fondly remembered in the coming years. But it is not this day. Which is a shame. However, the graceful dalliance between art and culture will always have its unfortunate causalities.

 

Here are two such cases.