First, some background.
Django Unchained was the most anticipated film for me after the summer, and even during parts of it. I was rather bummed that I was unable to finish the bounty hunter game that was going on during San Diego Comic Con this year. But I digress. Not only is it a Quentin Tarantino film, but it was a western—which, if you haven’t learned by now, is my favorite genre of all time. I knew he was going to pull from spaghetti westerns and the usual late 60s, early 70s trash, including the 1966 Django, from which this movie gets its name (and the greatest theme song of all time). So, like a good fangirl, I decided–for once–I would try and prepare myself for the movie, and do some research. Over the summer and fall, I saw nearly three dozen westerns—mostly revenge and bounty killer plots—some for the first time, some for the thousandth. When I walked into Django Unchained, I was certain I was going to know every crook and cranny of this film and it was going to love me the way I was bound to love it.
I was wrong about those things. Django Unchained came at me in ways I never could have expected. It was the anti-thesis of everything I thought I wanted and expected. Granted, there was some patent Tarantino sensationalized violence and blood ridden carnage; there was also some parts that were so brutal I found myself on the verge of tears (Franco Nero‘s cameo in the parlor scene was just enough winking at the camera to help my emotional jets cool and feel safe in my seat again). While many people have and will just write this off as another pastiche, a modern day blaxploitation film, I will go on record as saying this is Tarantino’s most ideologically mature work, because for the first time he seems to actually be saying something about society rather than just waxing poetic on popular culture.
When Tarantino called it a Southern, I will admit that I did not understand what he meant. I doubt many of us going in could really understand, because that part of US history is rarely talked about with any kind of depth or maturity. When talking about the 1850-60’s, Americans can go on at length about the western expansion and the Civil War, but we always view the latter through the eyes of the North. The rare exception being if you’re from one of those rebellion States in the South (and therefore aren’t over it), but even then you tread very softly on the topic of slavery. “It’s about State’s rights.” And while that may indeed be the case, it is ignorant to suggest that the latter did not go in line with why a person might have fought so hard for those rights. Additionally, since the war was fought and won by the North, it will be impossible to prove if slavery was truly “on the way out” thanks to Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin, as so many claim. Which brings me back to Django Unchained.
The review in brief.:
The film is set in the south just prior to the Civil War. Django (played by Jamie Foxx) is a slave on his way to auction, after having recently attempted to runaway from his former owner. He is soon purchased by a German dentist and bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who offers him his freedom in exchange for some information on a couple of bounties. Django agrees, and soon has his freedom. When asked what he plans to do with his freedom, Django says he plans to purchase his bride, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), give her her freedom and live happily ever-after. The name “Broomhilda” has personal significance to Schultz, who vows—as a German—to aid Django on his quest, which eventually takes him to Candieland, the plantation run by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character Calvin Candie.
As a movie, it serves. This is Tarantino’s first film since editor Sally Menke passed in 2010, and her presence is dearly missed. The out-of-sequence, chapter storytelling is gone, and the third act in long and out of place from the rest of the film, although it is 100% Tarantino. As usual per Tarantino, everyone is a villain, except for Broomhilda who is less a character than a prize. The violence is great, some of it shocking; between the Mandingo fight and a man being torn apart by dogs, you may want to save your Christmas Chinese for after the movie. Every actor is at the top of his and her game her. Despite the shock in casting, Jamie Foxx is fit to play the cowboy, even riding his personal horse, Cheetah, in the movie. Leonardo Di Caprio’s is exceptionally disturbing in his role as Calvin Candie, the pleasure he takes in his slaves’ plight is unnerving, and the ease in which DiCaprio seems to play him is frightening.
It is a movie I recommend, as to be expected; but I do so for its social commentary rather than it being the cream of the grindhouse crop.
The review at length (plus some unexpected soapbox).:
There is an element lacking among the characters here that is present in the rest of Tarantino’s films and that is respect. Usually in his movies, the parties involved respect each other; those who don’t typically die unnecessarily (I am looking at you, Vince Vega). In this movie, no one respects anyone (with the exception of Schultz—who may very well be Tarantino’s apology to the Germans for Waltz’s character in Inglourious Basterds) and that lack of respect is very important to the story telling and also what makes me believe there is more to this flick than just grindhouse, blaxploitation “fun.”
“Nigger” is said 115 times (plus or minus 5, as I did not have a pen or paper ready while I was tallying). Many will say and have said that this is offensive and only done to piss off Spike Lee or defend it as being historically accurate. I will do neither. What I will say (and why I brought up the number to begin with) is this: Tarantino has used the word liberally in his other works, but there is something about it this time that makes it different. The source from which it is said.
In Pulp Fiction, for example, it is said either by a person of color or a person very close to a person of color (you may or may not recall that Tarantino makes a point to show that Bonnie, the wife of his character Jimmie, is black), and therefore may be able to have a “pass” at using the word. Here, however, the word is only used with hatred. To hurt and belittle; show ones place of superiority over another. Truth be told, I cringe and cower like a child every time I hear the word, no matter the context, but this time I felt it was being delivered at me rather than to a character. And this is why I believe this may be Tarantino’s most mature work in terms of social commentary. I may be giving Tarantino too much credit, but since Obama’s election (and re-election), the United States has become increasingly racist (the reactions to Rue in Hunger Games or the introduction of Miles Morales as Ultimate Spider-Man should be proof enough) and Django Unchained pretty much just lays it out for you in a way that can be pretty hard to watch. It’s like rubbing a dog’s nose in its own shit to try and teach it to stop crapping on the floor, or forcing a child to smoke an entire carton of cigarette when caught smoking one. If you want to do something, know what the hell it is you think you’re doing, and know what it’s like to do it all the time before you allow yourself to build a tolerance. But for the betterment of yourself and society, just don’t do it. This doesn’t apply just to Whitey McSlaveowner Candie, but also to head slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) and our hero Django.
Racism is a theme present in the original Django, as well. Like Foxx’s character, Nero’s Django finds himself fighting the KKK and dealing with racists. In that film non-KKK members comment on the silliness of how a person can be judged by the color of his skin (that movie was made towards the end of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, two years before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from whom Schultz no doubt gets his name, was shot), while here we actually have a plantation owner explain how it is a white man evolutionary superiority that allows him to rule over another person, especially a negroid. The latter would seem laughable and out of place in the 21st century, if I didn’t recall someone telling me a similar tale four or five years ago while I was a college student in Texas.
Django Unchained is the movie America deserves, if not the one we want. While I do not believe it is the role of the son to pay for the sins of his father, it is his job to learn from them. If we continue to perpetuate the kind of racial hatred that forces the Master of Trash to momentarily grow up and put out a movie as painful and soul crushing as this, then we have a lot of growing as a nation.
