© 2013 by James Clark
We can always count on Quentin Tarantino to challenge us with a daring film. Hitherto the dare concerned digesting heavy odds weighing upon integrity massively at odds with those solaces and supports which have served for thousands of years. Lurking within a foreground of conflict so fulsome as to convey an Armageddon of deliverance against adversaries failing to attain to human stature, the films prior to Django Unchained (2012) have eked out a substratum of intimations of expansiveness soundly crushed by inertia of one’s own sensibility as augmented by thus twisted billions violently cleaving to mores conjured from out of disinclination to get real. Tarantino’s restless vision has, with the movie up for grabs these days, proceeded to invoke a whole new territory of daring, apropos of managing not to be crushed by the juggernaut of world history. This he accomplishes in rendering for our consideration an adjunct of cancerous tradition, namely, the institution of slavery, specifically in its form of Black slavery in the early years of America.
Django Unchained presents for us the dismaying and dangerous precinct that was the South in the era of slavery. At the same time, it draws us into the even more dismaying and dangerous precinct of latter day rational civilization (the lady of a house in the swampy periphery of a Mississippi plantation finds satisfaction [or at least diversion] in viewing through a stereoscope that centre of ancient Greek glory, the Pantheon) metaphorically being a thrilling thing to trash. Consequently, our consideration of this brilliant study of violence must try to measure its provision for the wider context of that conflict, intrinsic to not simply American and not simply the rest of the world’s population, but intrinsic to nature itself.
There is a scene at the Mississippi hot spot, where the guiding light for the employment of the dubious men folk related to that student of Greek civilization, and the master of a domain reaching far beyond agriculture, namely, Calvin Candie, confronts a pair of challenging dinner guests with his slant upon the rationality of owning and using slaves. His startlingly destructive consumption of that situation dovetails with a thesis in phrenology to the effect that three “dimples” in the skull of all Blacks reside at the site of the brain generating servility, whereas those same marks touch upon the creative aspect of the brains of Whites. (Solid rationalists, Newton and Galileo, are cited by him as unequivocal giants of discernment.) That stab at empirical science serves to confirm a stream of institutional dominance infected, in Candie’s case, with improvisations speaking to a rabidly impoverished sensual exigency. His so-called Candieland is awash in the feline dandy’s sweet tooth for cultivating and convening gladiatorial, bare-handed battles to the death (Mandingos) between muscular field hands. (He and his sister hover about a strangely infantile brush of affection.) The episode of this edifying habit we do see takes place in a nearby town, at a venue called The Cleopatra Club (capitalizing on European smarts dominating African sexiness, but unable to stop paying homage to it), where he first meets the visitors. It features arms being noisily broken and a defeated fighter being beaten to death with a hammer, at Candie’s lubricious instigation. Its psychotic concomitants display their entropic core in a moment en route to the bucolic centre of Candie’s kingdom, where a fighter belonging to him has been treed by hounds belonging to the barely sentient family whose better half perused the Pantheon. No longer having any appetite for such forced combat, the fugitive had run away, and now he hopelessly pleads to be respected in that disposition. One of the visitors offers to reimburse the blood-sport speculator, in order to free his animal from that line of work. But his partner quashes that approach, whereupon Candie finds his money’s worth in watching, along with the bayou boys, the dogs tearing his former property to pieces.
Interestingly enough, the guests at that dinner table—a former dentist, now a bounty hunter persistently countering savagery (he it was who tried to save the runaway); and a Black whom he had made a freeman in the course of the latter’s assisting him in identifying a family of murderers—have a lot to resent about Candie, but the roiling of the narrative clearly discloses he is someone who can be profitably bargained with. They are there because the former slave, Django, had been intent on finding his wife, and the vaguely distributed doctor, King Schultz, had seen fit to prepare and assist him in the search—which has led to Candie’s mansion, where the woman in question is consigned to provide “comfort” to the farmer-cum-showman’s steady stream of friends and clients drawn to the opulence and cruelty of those fight nights. They are being forcefully inculcated in Mississippi phrenology because their host has just been apprised that that those odd-balls (masquerading as blue-chip purchasers of Mandingo performers) were in fact only seeking to relieve him of Django’s wife. (Delicate negotiations—a skill King has often effected by way of court documents as to the “dead or alive” conditions regarding his prey—for a commodity named Eskimo Joe comprised a snow-job whereby they would return in a few days with all the legal provisions covered, and hand over the cash—meanwhile having floated the notion that King was very fond of that pretty woman, whom he had brought to his [and Django’s] suite the night before, and that she would be tossed into the mix as a perk.) A Beast is certainly on the scene (a bit like Pink in Reservoir Dogs); but he’s a Beast who relishes the give-and-take of commercial negotiations. His first response to the bad news is, “If it’d been a snake, it’d bit me!” Bringing Django’s wife to the table, he has another hammer in his hand, and threatens to mess up the perk if they don’t hand over the $12,000 they were pretending to invest in Eskimo Joe.
Of course they do. But the always witty and poised King does not run true to form, due to the cumulative, sickening blood-bath (especially the dogs’ feeding frenzy, and the white trash—Candie occupying an intriguingly variable kinship with them—going into paroxysms of glee in witnessing life reduced to brutality), brought too close for comfort by the hammer at her head. King coldly retires to an adjacent room, Candie bantering, “You’re just mad I got the better of you!” They sign the woman’s freedom certificate, and the effusive host tells the big-spender, “A pleasure doin’ business with y’all!” King reaches back, not only to the devoured victim’s name, D’Artagnan, but to an associate of the Master telling him that Candie was “a bit of a Francophile,” in keeping with his supposedly advanced rationalism. He sniffs pedantically, “Dumas would not have approved” of the slaughter. In response to Candie’s supposing that Dumas [whoever he was] was a “Nigger lover,” the proud erudite scores a cheap point in noting, “He was Black.” Candie counters by insisting they shake hands, adding that no Mississippi transaction is complete without that step. King, visibly out of control, blusters about that idea, and when his enemy persists he rushes up to him, as if to capitulate, and shoots him with a miniature pistol, through his neat little boutonniere. He quietly tells Django and us, “I couldn’t resist.”
The paucity of blood leaving Candie’s chest is quickly compensated. King is blown away by a member of the late bon vivant’s little army, wielding a sawed-off shotgun. Django gets his hands on the rifleman’s pistol and at point-blank opens quite a hole in his chest. Thence begins an almost astronomical disturbance of the peace, such as it was. The scene at the dinner table had disclosed King and Django sitting there, as though in a pressure cooker, as the rationalist cited (and displayed) the Black woman’s scars on her back from whippings courtesy of that master race, and the supposed sub-human subservience of the victim (and Django). The tiny blast from King to Candie represents a (questionable) release of that tension. But the slaughter of a goodly percentage of Candie’s retinue takes us far beyond the contretemps with the wordy slaver. Getting his hands on that truncated shotgun, Django delivers to the local king’s followers a shredding of flesh reminiscent of what the dogs did to the retired fighter. (One hapless clodhopper gets carved out at close range, and, as he screams in pain, Django [who had in the early days with King trained long and hard for extreme proficiency in marksmanship, learning apace that being a dead-eye addressed agendas over and above picking off outlaws with a price on their head] uses him as a sort of sandbag from which to mutilate the great unwashed (many of whom coming to be positioned by the railings of an upstairs walkway—thus giving us a reprise of the Crazy 88, in Kill Bill. Several of Django’s opponents add to the bloody porousness of that [in his eyes, questionably human] shield, giving his body the look of a fiercely boiling pot of pasta sauce—the Spaghetti-Western tradition, including its music, salient in this work.)
The denouement of this battle differs pointedly from that of the (temporary) satisfaction of Beatrix who, as you’ll recall, wipes out the entire 88 mob down to the last entrails. Django’s is a markedly more nuanced, more self-questioningly sensual Beauty than hers. (First and foremost, he has been primed by the [usually] wise King to play “parts” as the means to effective incursions into disgustingly unforthcoming precincts.) One of the Crazies thinks to put a pistol to the $12,000-prize’s head and Django has to surrender his weapons and submit to a spate of indignities at the hands of extremely resentful adversaries. They ship him off to a mining career, but en route, he convinces a trio of Neanderthal shippers (one of whom rather tentatively played by Tarantino himself, seemingly putting a Candie spin on being a dolt) that some easy bounty is nearby, he kills them, returns to the plantation, and more extermination comes about, including a more crystalline and provocative establishment of the trickiness (Beatrix’s name signalling a lacuna for her in the matter of such problematics) of our current Beauty’s cutting down stunned little honkies as if they were weeds. His first stop is the all-purpose room of the swamp-dwellers (a significant percentage, as it happens, of the surviving 88), where the Pantheon is being enjoyed as far as possible. Django puts them all away, as if they were midway targets. Then he finds Schultz’s body and the affidavits as to his and his wife’s being free; before leaving his friend’s body he kisses his own hand and places it on the regal head. He finds his wife, lying terrified on a bed in an outbuilding, and their reunion is regally restrained and gentle. The funeral for the Lost Opportunity has been underway, and, as the greatly reduced complement of mourners returns to the Beast’s palace, Django, now playing the part of a Beast, as conceived from having had a fill of irrevocable vermin, proceeds to slaughter them from that vantage point so useful to the 88. The guy who was a second away from castrating him (called off in favor of the more excruciating punishment of being relentlessly worked to death) gets some peripheral disintegration, screams loudly and has his head blown off to shut him up. The gleeful reaper tells a couple of women kitchen slaves he grants freedom to, to say good bye to Candie’s sister (one of the brains behind the shortened mining career), and as they head for one doorway, he pops her off through another doorway, as though she were a tin can. The elderly boss slave, Stephen, who had alerted his master to the visitors’ flimflam, and who relished conveying to Django that he would live henceforth and die with complete degradation, comes in singing, “In the sweet bye and bye/We will rest on that beautiful shore…” Django is pleased to inform him he’s headed there a lot sooner than he expected, kneecaps him, delights in hearing him scream and declaring that Candieland will outlive him, lights a wick of dynamite and goes out to the yard to watch the place loudly become countless shards of fire. Before heading on horseback with his wife, for what King had termed, “…a more enlightened area of the United States…” Django puts the Palomino he had lifted from the mining detail through some will-o’- the-wisp spins and slow high-stepping and stutter-steps, exactly the sort of Ballroom malarkey Roy Rogers—whose image was a mockery to Beatrix—would use to celebrate yet another easy win for good over evil. Before disappearing in a surge of Motown, he smiles and calls her “Little Trouble;” and she returns the compliment, calling him, “Big Trouble.” The lyrics run, “He’s always cool, he’s the best…” They form a continuity with something he “couldn’t resist,” namely gloating to Stephen, “I’m that one Nigger in 10,000!” Hence we’re saddled with a Beast far more difficult to fathom than Cocteau’s prototype. (And he’s running with a Beauty, who, for all her powers of endurance and affection, is unproven as a force of equilibrium. The Minnie Mouse gesture of plugging her ears and flashing a cute smile in face of the firebomb is not encouraging.)
On first beholding Django in his role of being so callous toward enslaved Blacks and so insultingly fearless toward his 88’s, Candie shone with delight and called out, “He’s one Nigger in 10,000!” (The briefest of flashbacks has him telling the guests, “There are specimens who overturn the [phrenological] determinants. And they’ll be more frequent in the future!”) That was perhaps an understatement; but the point is lodged that we are confronted by a super-physical figure disadvantaged, marginalized, maligned and endangered not only by race but by the quality of his consciousness, his sensual sensibility over and above his historical status as livestock. Candie—his first name is Calvin—ever the traditionalist when the chips are down, would fetch around for some crudely material (crudely rational) basis to account for, as he puts it, the “rambunctious” aspect of an entity that should, by sacred authority, be subservient. The more than far-fetched, singlehanded pulverization of Candieland traces to the looming defeat of the South and its overt brand of slavery (the narrative takes place in 1858). But, far more interestingly, it takes into account that other, far less celebrated brand of enslavement, to massive compromise by gross powers in effect since long before the slave trade in the United States. Django Unchained is, in the last analysis, about primordial outrage with a far more benign face than that of Mississippi miscreants, and as such it addresses a very different order of reflection from that of rational (religion and science inspired) morality, an order of reflection which puts the non-African segment of the audience in the driver’s seat, not that of a passenger, however agitated. Its take upon conflict with the salt of the earth leaves, of course, something to be desired. But its sensational and heart-gripping exposure of the necessity of conflict is most remarkable, and endows this work with compelling problematical suspense. The key to making headway with this nightmare, to tempering the extermination mode of the film’s surface, lies in the passage preceding the eradication of the puerile constituents of Candieland.
Seen by us till now as a passive and errant figure, Dr. King Schultz comprises the initial protagonist of the film, generating both contrarian disturbance and sang froid that intriguingly keys the narrative for vastly unorthodox discoveries. A sort of horse and buggy wheeler-dealer within the opportunistic and dangerous business of killing killers, he has, at the outset, hunted down Django being taken, along with a few others, to be sold at a market in Texas (and made to shuffle like Mandarin ladies, by virtue of the shackles impeding the prospect of vigorous strides), because his intelligence has informed him that that hardly free agent can be useful to his taking on a trio of brothers he does not know by sight, going by the bemusing name, Brittle. The Brittles had played a part in Django’s former life on a plantation where he and his wife worked—the boys being part of the place’s security force and loving their work of whipping, among others, the young couple for attempting to become free by simply running away. In the course of acquiring his new associate, Schultz evinces kingly qualities in facing down a populace strikingly incompatible with his articulate and codes-indifferent progress. This first scene is most important in vigorously proffering a primal and lethal incompatibility between conventional citizens and those working with a set of priorities leaving them outlaws anywhere they might go. (Tarantino has, with mordant irony instilled his scenario with an agent of the law hugely offside.) The two slavers fit perfectly within the honorific, “good old boys,” gracious as long as the juke box is playing the same song ad infinitum, but tending toward the psychopathic when confronted with the unknown. It’s a cold, dark night, and the jiggly little parade comes upon one of those damn surprises—a distant light and the sound of a wagon advancing. True to form, even before they’ve seen the interruption, they’re salivating to kill. Shotguns cocked, blood-lust in their eyes and voices, one of them roars out, “Who’s that stumbling along in the dark?”—a phrase, as it happens, largely capturing the alien modus operandi. Getting a clear look at the intrusion does nothing to set their minds at ease. There is a shed of sorts, sporting a large-scale model of a molar, erected on its roof. (The moment is, in many ways, about bite.) Schultz, by contrast with the rudeness of that salute, greets them as though it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance, assuring them gently that he’s “a fellow weary traveller,” a plunge into kinship quickly undermined by, in addition to giving his own name, giving that of his horse and describing his intent by way of the far from Texas gambit, “I wish to parley with you…” (“Speak English!” they roar.) Finding Django, and confirming that he will be useful, King gets right down to making the purchase, requesting they prepare a bill of sale. Now, given the dynamics from the outlook of the merchants, it’s a lock they will dis him forever. Those rifles are aimed his way, and he’s directed to get lost. Schultz remonstrates that they’re being unfair, and the boys love to retort, in giving him a few more seconds to leave, empty-handed, “Last chance, Fancy Pants!” Therewith he shoots off the head of one and kills the other’s horse, having it fall on him, to the tune of much anguish and many salty phrases. Schultz directs Django to use the dead man’s coat and horse, and he directs the other former prisoners to deal with the noisy cripple as they like. In a flash, then, we realize that he hates them as much as they formerly hated him. The whiff of venom, exploding thus, provides an intensely incisive touchstone by means of which to fathom the rock and rap fuelled massacres that ensue; and to assimilate the enormity of the task of graceful, sufficing interaction on the basis of a nature never imagined by classical rational civilization.
The trail of the Brittles (that name now more comprehensible in view of an omnipresent volatility) comes down to delineation of Django’s evolution from subservience to formidability, a process with hearty measures of both upside and downside. In return for providing the almost magical King (a surprising Beast; but recall that Cocteau’s Beast was also a bit of a Fancy Pants) with what he lacked and needed, Django (a surprising Beauty; but in time revealing depths of love) becomes the recipient of expert tutelage in maximizing his carnal resources. Their partnership far outlasts the crunching of the Brittles, because both realize that, notwithstanding extraordinary powers, theirs is, largely, a life of “stumbling along in the dark.” After infuriating a Texas town by having a Black ride a horse beside a white man, and then mowing down the Sherriff, and collecting bounty money on his corpse, they get wind of their prey being in Tennessee; and thence begins Django’s training as an actor, playing a part to facilitate finessing stumbling blocks like the good old boys. In order to penetrate the plantation where the Brittle boys are employed, King devises for himself the role of wealthy investor (in cotton), and for Django the role of his valet. Getting to choose his own costume for the show, Django fixes upon a foppish, eighteenth-century design in robin’s egg blue (he is, after all, the Beauty here, tentatively). King stresses that, “During your act, you can never break character.” It might sound like a simple thing to do (on the order of wearing a goofy costume); but, on being shown around while his partner continues to disarm the crusty racist, Big Daddy, who initially tossed some weight about in excoriating them for messing with the hierarchy, Django not only spots the prey savaging the personnel but becomes seared by the recollection of them beating his wife while he pleads with the master to let him take her place. The master gloats, “I like the way you beg, boy!” Breaking character (not for the last time), he sprints over to the two nearby, drills the one reading Scripture in one hand and cracking a whip in the other, takes that whip to lash the other dozens of times, and then, addressing the slaves who have assembled in disbelief at what they’ve just seen, he asks them, “You want to see something?” He picks up the whipped man’s revolver and empties its contents into his head. (This is a line from another film where a generally cool guy goes berserk with a hammer, namely, Nicolas Refn’s Drive. The way King urges, “Play the part, all the way,” reminds me of the old director in Mulholland Drive encouraging Betty, a figure proving not to be up to a nasty abyss.)
King steps in, the third Brittle becomes toast, and, as per the Sherriff, Big Daddy, far from impressed by this anarchy on his picturesque farm, has to fork out the toll. The latter’s retaliation dissolves into marvellous farce, noteworthy as an instalment of wholesale discounting of underachievers, and as a spotlight upon malignant clannishness usually more discreet. The offended (and financially damaged) chieftain leads, under cover of darkness, a party of his vassals to the caravan where those uppity oddballs (this time both horses were introduced by name, by way of anticipating an unnamed but huge specimen coming at the end) are presumably sleeping. We see the indivisible gathering on horseback, pouring down a hill by torchlight, and their Ku Klux Klan bearing is concentrated on an abbreviation of the full ecclesiastical raiment, in the form of what appears to be flour sacks over their head. As they reach the wagon, we hear them burst into complaints that the positioning of the eyeholes is all wrong and that no provision has been made for breathing. The man whose wife has gone to the trouble of doing that craft takes noisy umbrage at this critique; and we see that one of the rednecks ripping off the offending garb is played by Jonah Hill, erstwhile uber-rationalist (in another shaky science) in Moneyball. They’d be dangerous if they weren’t so timorously stupid, and it’s that venom coming from palpably blinded and self-strangled lives that convenes King’s setting off, from a distant vantage point, with a single gunshot report, a big wad of dynamite at the wagon, killing most of the complainers outright. Big Daddy has missed being torched, but they don’t miss gunning him down as he tries to escape and continue his benighted business as usual.
Between the torching of Big Daddy’s empire and the torching of Candieland, King welcomes Django into his efforts on behalf of bounty. That alliance is not formed from out of the need for more firepower, but from the consummate problem-solver’s (a magical Beast, of sorts) being inspired by Django (an affecting Beauty, of sorts) as intent upon rescuing his wife in face of epochal odds. (“I didn’t think you people married,” Schultz had remarked, on learning about his friend’s unsuspected range. Django replies, “We [at least] do.”) The challenge to courage and love emergent in this narrative—and the infrastructure of King’s regal profession—receive accentuation by a conversation between them, not long after the chaos at the molar, concerning the woman’s having been taught to speak German, at a very early age, in order to provide conversational diversion to a German-born (as was Schultz) slaver’s wife. As a result of this role, the girl had been given the German name, Brunhilde, which Schultz is quite eager to explain as tracing to the German legend (closely implicated in that poetic and incendiary repository of German idealism the bounty hunter understood very well) of a Princess imprisoned by the powers-that-be and needing deliverance by the monumental efforts of her lover. Amidst Alpine wintry forests of primeval beauty, which gives access to the sensual homeland of both men, and the crux of their partnership, King imparts to his brave, strong but unfocused associate the ways of proficiency in instruments of death and the ways of pulling the trigger, sentimental concomitants notwithstanding. Signalling a new level of action, they visit another haberdashery, and now Django is dressed lean and mean. And he’s got a new saddle, with a big D on it. This being Tarantino, a D grade is pretty good going, in face of the kind of odds he knows about. This being Tarantino, he cradles their launch to dazzling heights by way of a country-western soundtrack selection, Jim Croce’s “I Got a Name,” that manages to capture, breathtakingly, the depths of that other legend operative here, that of Beauty and the Beast.
“Who led me down the highway?
Who led me down the highway?
Who lent a hand, so life won’t pass me by?”
Though missing the essential, up-to-the-minute audio component, and the volume, I’m including this clip in hopes of establishing a bit of the all-important visceral design informing the necessary complexities of Django Unchained. The film poses to movie audiences one hell of a learning curve. But it’s far from quantum physics. It’s about what quantum physics doesn’t get. Yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHVBzLGAIbU
Getting to Ground Zero, they find that Brunhilde is not on a picture-perfect promontory, but in a “hot box,” a steaming hole in the ground, serving time for having tried to escape by way of her own inadequate resources. From there, nearly gagging from rage, Django, here occupying the role of hard-bitten warrior expert and already overplaying the kick-ass possibilities with Candie’s whole entourage and with Candie himself—needing to be taken aside by his mentor and warned, “Don’t get so carried away by your reputation,” only to brush aside that sound advice with the bathos-clogged riposte, “It fascinates him”—is the picture of a mass murderer struggling against initiating an Armageddon. Having come so close to (willy-nilly) engineering a cosmic coup and a season of love, the road-warriors taper off. Following through to King of the Cowboys simplism (the Frankie-Laine-like anthem washing over the credits at the outset readying us for flaccid attitude), the film leaves us with a task far more prominently one of wit and agility than a reign of terror. And yet it also establishes a large herd of carnivorous impediments not effectively amenable to wit and its field of love.
King’s wagon came with that big tooth on its roof, an object he used as a safe, holding all his earnings on the trail of bounty. Bite and bounty, their exact constitution and relation a matter of strenuous riding (whereby a measure of irony overtakes the title’s “Unchained”), perhaps well advised to be harbored in the lightheartedness implicit in Trigger’s whimsical dance.
Jim,
This is a well written piece for sure, but unfortunately for me, much of this falls on my deaf ears. I have several issues with the film: the fact it seems to restart about 3 times, the protracted second half, the repetitive bloodletting that seems like it wants to be cool but is actually just same old same old (which was already done 40 years ago by Peckinpah), Jamie Foxx’s bland portrayal, Leo’s histrionics, the allusions to Spaghettis which fell limply by the side (those films were already a subversion to begin with…..you can’t subvert subversion). I also don’t find anything here regarding slavery that is worth discussing. Same as there is no point in discussing The Holocaust in relation to Basterds……it’s not that kind of film. I have loved a few films of Tarantino’s: Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Basterds. I did not think Django was as well written (including as funny), as well paced, as well acted, or had setpieces as well designed as any of those other 3. Of course I’m never going to convince anyone of anything here……I’m just here providing some thoughts to the contrary.
Thanks, Jon, for raising very pertinent questions about the presence of a movie like Django as a communicative design. Your remarks implicitly bring into view a problem about dealing with such offerings as fascinated by historical crises. There are crises that are accessible to nearly everyone; but the whole thrust of contemporary reflection finds itself struggling with crises that are not (for the present, anyway) accessible to a large constituency. The Jim Croce soundtrack piece—which I hope you checked out—faces this matter in the lines, “I got a song, I got a song/And I carry it with me and I sing it loud/If it gets me nowhere, I’ll go there proud…” And Tarantino’s work, I think, also is suffused with that dilemma—a dilemma well anticipated in the confusing (but readily assumed to be transparent) Bresson film, A Man Escaped.
Yeah good point…..I myself wonder at times if Tarantino is much ado about nothing…..however when he’s at his best, it’s sure a fun bunch of nothing. However here, even the fun seems sapped out to me. Maybe that’s my biggest complaint of all….Django is boring to me…..Tarantino sapped and tapped out.
Interesting how we can look at the same material and reach polar opposites. Not only was I completed riveted and immersed in this film, but so were Lucille and every one of my five kids. For sheer entertainment clout this film was unmatched in 2012. But fair enough, we came up with different observations.
One thing I will not do with this film (and be rest assured you didn’t) is play the film school game and look hard for imperfections. Anyone who does that didn’t really care for the film in the first place.
Jim, this is quite a spectacular essay on the film, one that calls attention to both the artistic underpinnings and some of the controversy that has surrounded the film despite some of the best reviews Tarantino has received in his career. Spike Lee has flat out refused to see the film, claiming it’s a slur on his ancestors, though some of his same color friends and associates have condemned his position, noting Tarantino’s long standing commitment to hiring African-American actors and for the fact that the film’s resilient hero is also black. The release of the film sadly coincided with our nation’s unspeakable tragedy of December 14, and it’s exceeding violence was the last thing anyone wanted to negotiate during the holiday season. But this is Tarantino’s visceral bread and butter, and it’s application in DJANGO UNCHAINED is strictly of the send-up variety. Within this framework he crafted some of the most entertaining set pieces and made a film with a long running time actually seem too short! A quartet of spirited performances by Christophe Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson and Jamie Foxx inject real charisma into the proceedings and the gloriously raunchy humor vividly recalls the same tact taken by Mel Brook sin BLAZING SADDLES. Unlike INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, where some of the violence was deeply disturbing, we have some spaghetti western caricatures here, and uproarious sequences like the one near the end where human flesh is used as body shields. And Tarantino has himself blown up in the delirium. Nobody does this kind of thing better than Tarantino and DJANGO UNCHAINED is absolutely the best film he has ever made.
Thanks, Sam. I share your sense of Django as a very special film. And you get right into its distinction, I think, when you note that the violence “is strictly the send-up variety.” Although the Mandingo factors are sharply infected by Candie’s sado-masochistic perversion, and as such they come to us as a dose of nasty wakening, the other blow-ups speak to the molten fantasies which the crucial impasse elicits.
Jim, one of the likable things about the movie is something you mention late in the essay: Tarantino’s appropriation not just of western motifs on behalf of black liberation, or liberation of the oppressed in general, but also the Teutonic mythology so beloved by self-identifying Aryans. In this sense Django Unchanged is as plain a statement of Tarantino’s artistic principles and purposes as he’s ever put on film, but overall I join Jon in ranking it low in Tarantino’s canon and wondering why some who’ve seemed like skeptics toward the director have rushed to praise it. Could it just be to spite Spike? Not in every case, certainly, but I’ve yet to hear a convincing case for its superiority to Tarantino’s earlier work or why anyone repulsed by the brutality in Inglourious Basterds might enjoy similar brutality here. Does context matter that much, or is the violence and gore more palatable somehow in a “western” setting? As one for whom the violence posed no problem either time, I’m just curious.
Unchanged is as plain a statement of Tarantino’s artistic principles and purposes as he’s ever put on film, but overall I join Jon in ranking it low in Tarantino’s canon and wondering why some who’ve seemed like skeptics toward the director have rushed to praise it.
Oh no Samuel, I’d seriously contest this. A good number of the reviews were written BEFORE Spike Lee made his public disclaimer. As you probably know literally every critic under the sun on both sides of the Atlantic have issued well-deserved effusive praised for this film (God at Metacrtic, the site that displays the reviews of any critic worth a salt- the numbers are staggering, 37 favorable, 5 “mixed” and NOT A SINGLE NEGATIVE!)
37 favorable
5 mixed
0 negative
I would think that tells you what America’s film intelligentsia thinks of DJANGO UNCHAINED. My own favorite review of the lot was written by the normally cynical Stephanie Zachareck.
The reason why people are praising the film equates to the deliciously frantic entertainment quotient and the satiric underpinnings that sustain the film’s long running time. You are always free to dispute it’s ineffectiveness on a personal level, but I think you’ll be hard pressed to find many that are in agreement with you, not mind you that you are necessarily seeking agreement. And to be sure I have been on the other side too saking my head at a resoundingly favorable concensus on other films like TABU and BEASTS.
I was never a big Tarantino fan, so my coming here to praise him was nothing I remotely expected. The film was barrels of fun, and a splendid homage to the spaghetti western genre with some creative embellishments by way of dialogue and set pieces. Loved it!
Sam I am with Samuel here and astonished by the fact that people who do not like Tarantino, like this one. Furthermore, the fact that most are praising the film, roughly 9/10 at Rotten tomatoes, means nothing. This really means nothing as far as comparing it to his other films, it’s only a general feeling of whether people think it’s good or not….doesn’t tell you HOW good it is on that scale. Good movies that 100% of the people think are good, are going to have 100% rating even though it’s just a “good” movie and not a “great” movie. I’m not interesting in a GOOD movie from Tarantino. He’s made GREAT movies before. If he just makes a good movie, then I’m not interested in it. When you set up precedent and expectations with more interesting stuff he has made and then he makes this sort of off-handed film that meanders a lot and never really does anything as well as it’s done in his other films, then it’s a huge disappointment to me. Tarantino is in repeat mode here. As enjoyable as this film is to many people, he does nothing here that he hasn’t already done…..he’s just transferred his scenario to a different genre. That’s not doing something different, that’s just changing scenery. We also can’t say he’s subverting westerns. They were already subverted decades ago. Again, more of the same. I don’t care how enjoyable a film is….if I’ve seen it done before, I’m not interested.
Jon, I was not using RT as the gage here, I was using MC, which DOES tell you the extent of the ‘liking.’ The ’100′ ratings from some of our best critics is telling. Not that you, I or anyone else should be intimidated by this, just to respond to the query about reception posed above. As always I greatly respect your views.
That’s true you’re right about that. I don’t go there often.
“Like “Inglourious Basterds,” Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness.” —-From NY Times Blurb…A.O. Scott
“What Tarantino has is an appreciation for gut-level exploitation film appeal, combined with an artist’s desire to transform that gut element with something higher, better, more daring. His films challenge taboos in our society in the most direct possible way, and at the same time add an element of parody or satire.” ——From Sun Times….Roger Ebert
I hand picked a couple quotes from MC. These were from “100″ reviews. I don’t see anything here that couldn’t apply to any movie Tarantino made. You could literally take these quotes and paste them onto any other movie. That’s my problem with it. I understand people are entertained for the most part. That’s not enough for me. I literally get tired of being entertained by something I feel like I’ve seen before. I guess I’m trying to explain why I’m disappointed with the film and that’s what I can boil it down to. I’m still waiting for someone to offer up something that Django does that is beyond just entertainment here and beyond what he’s done before. Entertainment from Tarantino is a given, but his best work has transcended just the word entertainment.
Well, Jon, I can’t make you see it the way I have seen it. The tone was unique and the execution fabulous. For once Tarantino wasn’t earnest with a lot of the matters that disturbed me in the past. But your arguments are sound for sure.
I’m with Jon on this particular point. While everyone knows I’m not a huge Tarantino fan, I don’t see anything in Django Unchained that would make it superior to past efforts like Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, or Inglorious Basterds (which are all better IMO). The only thing I could think of is that fans of spaghetti westerns are more willing to accept what Quentin is offering here. It doesn’t particularly stand out otherwise on any discernible level.
Sam, I don’t dispute anyone’s enjoyment of the film. The big question remains why so many people seem to like it better than Basterds, for instance, which otherwise seemed at least as deliciously frantic as the current picture. I’m left wondering what’s different in form or content about Unchained to get this positive response.
“The big question remains why so many people seem to like it better than Basterds, for instance,”
Is this really the case?? I think Basterds is generally looked at as Tarantino’s second best after PF. I find that while most people like Django, there is definite recognition of it basically aping IB’s whole raison d’ etre.
Maurizio….if there’s general recognition that Django is a repeat of IB, then why on Earth are they praising it? Those people need to get new jobs. Either that or their standards need to be raised.
Samuel—-exactly… what’s different in form or content here.
Has anyone seen a demographic breakdown of this film’s audience? Is it playing to mostly white audiences, to African-Americans or to an equal mix? By incessantly invoking the N-epithet can a white director help detoxify the most odious of racial slurs, or is that the exclusive province of African-American filmmakers and actors (the copious use of “that word” in past Tarantino films, and the laughter it evokes in white audiences, has always made me uncomfortable, even when Samuel L. Jackson is spouting it).
Just asking as a qualified Tarantino admirer. I haven’t seen ‘Django’ yet.
Great comments, Samuel, in their pressing for as much clarity as possible for this issue of (here cinematic) nuances speaking to integrity.
What I’m quite prepared to grant Tarantino’s understanding and applying in Django (as well as his other films) apropos of the German idealism of King Schultz is its tracing back to pre-Socratic reflection—specifically, Heraclitus, who could well be described as the proto-Surrealist, and his subtle sense of “war.” Such early Greek efforts were steamrollered by Platonic disclosures as sustaining the classical rational tradition still in force today (but not, to some, happily).
The violence of Django is, as you say, a difficult matter to pin down. As Sam notes, it has a metaphorical side, far more volatile than the violence of, say, The Hunger Games. But its hyperbolic exuberance carries a serious menace and poses a difficult challenge to equilibrium in non-Platonic terms—the core of Django’s narrative, and a factor of its attraction to many viewers..
A strange thought, the one on the violence I mean, saying that many would view it more in tune with the genre setting of a Western (strange because INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is placed into two genres—the war film and the ‘men on a mission’—that are at least as violent as the (Spaghetti) Western and often moreso by their very milieu (the war film is by its very nature probably the most violent of all genres as war is the business of humans murdering other humans). Rather I’d say it’s a litany of factors based on the modern (hypocritical) neoliberal perspective. A perspective that cherishes causes and subjects it feels are both beyond approach or recontextualizing (the Holocaust) while other genocides that are no less horrific and devastating (the implementation of Slaves and the Slave trade) are somehow distant enough from us that we can watch as voyeurs from afar in perverse entertainment (Tarantino makes only one false step here in my eyes, and that’s the inclusion of modern hip-hop music at the start of one intense gun battle at one of the films chief climaxes). Even if, in 2013, the use of Slave labor on planet Earth is at the highest point (in shear numbers) that mankind has ever seen. The passing of time has something to do with this of course, but I’d argue it’s more about how American culture has processed and doled out blame, and how poorly we view the exploitation of labor (paid or unpaid).
Tarantino seems to get this simple fact (one that Spike Lee will never); that Slavery isn’t inherent to any one race (and thus its blame or its suffering is not owned by that one race as well), but simply a dehumanizing interchange between two people that turns devastating when adopted on such a large scale. It would appear that Tarantino’s usual glib handling of history or reality here actually does him wonders; he’s able to comment on the history and the present while also speaking quite succinctly on the fundamental nature of the dynamic.
You’re right to say there is almost more Tarantino in this then any of his other films (regardless of where I feel it belongs in his canon), and it also says many things about race (and other subcultural implications drawn from race dynamics such as dress and ‘slag’ dialect etymology), racism in America, and how racism culturally evolves from nothing (my favorite bit: Django, a black man, can read but struggles with two words that are foreign to him on a poster: ‘gang’ and ‘robbery’. That’s a wonderfully sly subversive point; the white man must teach the black one these things. The film is filled with such moments). Plus there is also a moment where Tarantino clearly states the morality of the artist (both himself and the larger ‘Artist’), or rather the artist as harbinger of morality in culture; and yet still I read countless hipsters saying Tarantino is up to nothing but pop culture references; it’s a point that only stands when everything else he has put in goes over their head like an ill-aimed Winchester buckshot. I want to tell them to see it again; this time with their eyes open and their thinking caps securely fastened.
Plus, viewed with INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS it corrects another Racist view in our society: that Germanic culture in its entirety isn’t the 15 or so years it was misguided into following the Nazi agenda. It’s not an accident that Tarantino is championing German culture with such great fervor here.
_ _ _ _ _
Great analysis here, that seems trite to immediately turn into a discussion about personal feelings of up or down votes on the film in question.
Mom, I love your name, and I love your response. You take on, with gusto, two of the most virulent pitfalls this film poses—its seeming to be focused on racial slavery; and its seeming to be a mindless romp.
I agree that one of the most captivating factors is the non-macho essence of the protagonist, despite projecting and stumbling into macho roles.
Your view of the hip-hop music is interesting. I had seen it as part and parcel of the cargo of over-assertion he’s in the midst of dealing with.
Yeah, suffice to say I’m spellbound that people are saying this film says nothing about race/racism (and it’s said in this thread). I suppose the version they saw was missing all the reels with Samuel L. Jackson’s performance and implications? That’s the only conclusion I can come to.
Racism is here for sure, but it’s similar in tone to the way Brooks used it in BLAZING SADDLES. Who pray tell on this thread is dismissing it as a tangible context? Certainly not I. Tarantino’s hero was African-American. I watched every last reel and second in this film in successive days during the Christmas break. Seems the lion’s share of the African-American community aside from Spike Lee are not at all taking issue with Tarantino’s rather satiric approach. The racism here clearly condemns the whites who employed it.
I’m speaking on RACISM as a subject the film is broaching and attempting to say something original about. I don’t view the film as Racist (though, as I said I think the hip-hop placement in the gun battle seems forced enough to leave me uneasy), and the comment I’m chiefly talking about is this: I also don’t find anything here regarding slavery that is worth discussing. Same as there is no point in discussing The Holocaust in relation to Basterds……it’s not that kind of film. That’s mind-boggling to the point of no longer being a subjective comment but just an nonfactual one.
OK I see you are referring to something Jon said. I’m sure he’ll be back here. I understand what he is saying, but I won’t pose to put words in his mouth.
Oh I see I’m being called to action. So sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Okay what I’m meaning is that in Tarantino’s vision here I don’t believe this is a message movie. Same as I don’t feel Basterds is a message movie. We all know that Tarantino’s methods are far too hokey and jokey to take anything really seriously. Is there any film he has made that can be called a real message kind of film? I don’t see precedent for it. If he was trying to create a message film, then he should have done it some other way. I’m totally open to a message film on slavery…..but I don’t buy the credibility of Django doing such. It has far too much fun being an exploitation film to really let me think on anything in a credible manner.
Mom- You write very similarly to another person I know who has disappeared from this blog. Hmm….coincidence?
Yeah honestly, if someone wants to view this as a message film on Slavery that’s fine. Explain the point I’m missing then and exactly why that makes the film great? I haven’t read one review of the film that isn’t solely focused on the entertainment value of it. That’s my problem! I don’t think it’s entertaining! I wanted it to do more and I don’t think it did well enough.
‘Your Mom’ has argued with vigour and intelligence, bringing this thread to life. This can’t be argued. I am still trying to figure out why I like DJANGO more than other Tarantinos, and while it is difficult to pinpoint it with certainty, it may have to do with what Maurizio posed about spaghetti westerns, but perhaps that American slavery is a subject deeper to our roots than the Holocaust. I’ll have to ponder this further.
Sam I think your viewing of 89 spaghetti’s (or something like that) during that run at The Film Forum could be a possible factor lol.
Interestingly, I really liked Samuel’s piece on Django….posing questions of this film’s ability to truly evoke and capitalize on the Spaghetti pastiche. It was a well written review. Samuel knows Spaghettis perhaps more than anyone I know.
True Jon, but Sam basically caught up with the whole genre by never leaving the Film Forum for 2 or 3 weeks straight.
Haha! Maurizio very true…..I think Sam took the crash course version of Spaghettis.
And both Sam and Samuel have seen far more Spaghettis than I have….let’s make that clear. They each have very different views on Django’s success though, interestingly enough.
Yes. Afterwards his voice and lips were out of sync for weeks.
Bwahahahaha!!!! LOL!!!
LOL!!!!! Very good ones here!!!!!!
So Taratino is a Marxist? Get me outta here!
“I also don’t find anything here regarding slavery that is worth discussing. Same as there is no point in discussing The Holocaust in relation to Basterds……it’s not that kind of film.”
Yeah I think Jon should certainly elaborate further….
Meaning I don’t think these are message films. I would gladly choose to be wrong, but I don’t view Tarantino that way.
There are messages struggling for recognition in Django — for me the most provocative question is why Schultz couldn’t help himself at the crucial moment when Django might well have shaken Candie’s hand if invited; the incident seems like a commentary on a certain liberal mentality — but the film’s haphazard construction — scenes apparently created on the fly to accommodate pals; others cut out — that you could well believe that you’re getting a message by accident.
Haha! That’s a good one. Yes and if there had been something more here that came to the fore, I would have viewed this film very differently.
Haphazard construction? Nah I didn’t se that at all. As I say a fan of this film wouldn’t even pose to go there.
The lazy scriptwriting is probably the most disappointing thing about this film. It’s rather amazing from Tarantino, whose films are usually constructed about as tightly and carefully as you can imagine. This one is completely lacking the usual structural games, and even as a straightforward tale it’s clunky, a bit awkward, and resorts to more than a few gimmicks to get from one point to the next. And the ending – plays like he wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t think of any way out except mayhem. Seemed, even while I was watching it, to depend a little too much on characters suddenly turning into someone else to move the plot along… given some time to think about it, the impression just gets stronger. It’s all very entertaining, but seems to fizz away in the memory…
WS— I am sorry you found it this way. The film is just as vivid now to me as it was when I left the theatre back during the Xmas break (when I saw it twice)
This should be of interest for this discussion
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12704
His thoughts on Ford (around 24:00) should make a few around here happy….
Wow! Just now finished listening to this! Fantastic! Essential! I agree with Your Mom that everyone should give this a go!!!!
Tarantino said similar things about Ford (and basically dismisses Spike Lee’s objections to his project) in a predictably sprawling interview with Henry Louis Gates ( http://www.theroot.com/views/tarantino-unchained-part-1-django-trilogy) that I found interesting for (among many things) his description of how he had to break down Jamie Foxx’s desire to play the part in heroic mode from the beginning. On that point, at least, he took the correct course.
Well Quentin doesn’t get into specifics but his general disdain of Ford is one that I share for sure. It’s an opinion and point of view that will gain more traction over time I think (especially after most of the baby boomers die out).
Leone and Peckinpah all the way…
As much as I love the interview in general, the disdain for Ford isn’t something I am much in agreement with. Ha!
I already know QT’s opinion from the earlier interview…….this doesn’t surprise me. Just because he felt this way though…..does this really add to the film as it plays out? Is there enough meat in the film to stand out from the entertainment? I still say that in this film of Tarantino’s, he borrows and takes more from history/cinema than he gives back. .
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