Star Rating: ****
There's one thing that is essential to understand about "Django Unchained" before you see it: it's purely fiction, a fantasy. It is violent, it is profane, it is disturbing... but it doesn't mean any harm. It is a creation from a filmmaker who loves movies and preserving and embodying certain passages of film history in his own films. With that in mind, it is not a societal drama and it is certainly not
That's not to say it won't smack you in the face with its content--because it will! In fact, a more appropriate title for the film would have been "Tarantino Unchained". For in "Django", Tarantino is more violent, more bloody, and more profane than he's ever been. The bloodshed here may not be in such frequent quantities as in "Kill Bill", but it looks more realistic, which makes it worse. There are several shootouts, and one incredibly rough scene where a slave is savagely ripped apart by dogs. Just when I thought onscreen violence couldn't get any worse, there's always Tarantino.
The profanity: Tarantino goes a little ape with the "n" word. True, this may have been appropriate because of the time period, but it does get bothersome. I have to wonder if he was having fun and got carried away while writing the script.
Now for those of you who are not familiar with the premise (but why would you be reading this if you weren't) "Django Unchained" is a homage to spaghetti westerns, which specialized in action, thrills and violence. The setting is the deep south in 1858, three years before the Civil War, not two as the title card suggests. A German dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) recruits a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) to help him find a group of murderous outlaws who only he (Django) could indentify, in exchange for his freedom.
After the outlaws have been seen too, Django sticks on with Dr. Shultz to search for his wife who had been sold off years earlier. Django and Dr. Shultz search every plantation they come to for Django's wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). They eventually learn that she's on the most horrible and brutal slave plantation in the United States, Candyland, owned by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Shultz and Django masquerade as potential customers, and go to Candyland in search of slave to purchase: Broomhilda.
Leonardo DiCaprio has certainly blossomed as an actor. He's no longer the street-smart love struck Jack from "Titanic". That ship has sailed. After several movies with Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, DiCaprio has become a very serious leading man. Calvin Candie is a charming, seemingly level headed individual. And yet it is Candie who orders the execution of the slave who is, in a word, destroyed by vicious dogs in a scene as jarring and disturbing as the ear cutting scene in "Reservoir Dogs" twenty years earlier. Here is when we are convinced of Candie's cruelty and malevolence. It's not enough knowing he owns the most brutal slave plantation in the country, we have to see it for ourselves.
Tarantino is known for writing quirky characters with fascinating interests, such as the religious Jules from "Pulp Fiction", and the "detective" SS Colonel Hans Landa (also played by Christoph Waltz), from "Inglourious Basterds". In "Django Unchained", bounty hunter King Shultz used to be a dentist, and he uses his dentistry credentials as a cover. He drives around in a carriage with a large tooth attached to a spring on the top. There's a small "cavity" in the tooth where he stores wanted posters. Calvin Candie is a "Francophile", and has a good deal of interest in French culture, but doesn't speak a word of French. I really like the way Tarantino writes his characters. They are who they are, and aren't sorry for it. And neither is he.
"Django Unchained" is a very well made movie, with good characters, an eclectic soundtrack, and a great script, though not as talky as Tarantino's others. It has incredibly funny moments and incredibly disturbing moments. Sometimes the disturbing moments are funny. It strongly resembles "Inglourious Basterds", which may not surprise you. Both movies are period pieces, and deal with difficult times in history.
In both movies, Tarantino is having fun with subjects that are really touchy, even today. He claims that he wanted to make a film about slavery, but he wanted to do it like a spaghetti western, rather than a social issues movie. He calls it a "southern", rather than a western. I can see he does care about slavery, but it's his style to do entertainment movies (Hiscock). It was the same case with "Inglourious Basterds". He has the same message about slavery that he had about Nazism, and it's right there: it's bad. It's no deeper than that. What you see is what you get. And he makes that point, as if he needed too.
Revenge is a theme that both films have in common, and has been prominent in Tarantino's work as far back as "Kill Bill". In "Inglourious Basterds", Shoshanna wanted revenge against the Nazis for the slaughter of her family. Now Django wants to get revenge on white slave owners, specifically the ones who harmed him and took his wife. Let's just say that the body count at the end of both movies are enormous.
I hear one more revenge drama is the cards for Tarantino. The project, still in development, called "Killer Crow" about three black soldiers during World War II who go AWOL, and shoot their white superiors. This should conclude Tarantino's "American History/Revenge Trilogy" (Gates, Jr.). That should make one heck of a box set.
Tarantino makes excellent movies that you almost feel guilty for liking because of how violent and controversial they are. But there is no denying his talent, or the quality of his work. With "Django", he has made what is possibly his most controversial work. This film is not for everybody. Only the selected few who can appreciate this is for what it is: an art-house film that knows what it is, isn't sorry for it, and doesn't even pretend to be.
Hiscock, John (April 27, 2007). "Quentin Tarantino: I'm proud of my flop". Telegraph.co.uk.
Retrieved 8 February, 2013.
"Django Unchained Trilogy and More: Tarantino Talks to Gates". theroot.com. December 23, 2012.
8 February, 2013.
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