Plot
It’s 1858 and America is on the brink of civil war. On a fortuitous evening, enslaved Django (Jamie Foxx) is freed by loquacious bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to help him in the hunt for the Brittle Brothers, Django’s former enslavers. After a swift vengeful retribution, Schultz takes Django on as a partner in exchange for helping him free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who has been sold to ruthless plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).
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| That Upper Decker didn't go down as well as they hoped. |
Review
‘Quentin doesn’t make films, he makes movies’ said Samuel L. Jackson in a recent interview, the apparent difference being a juxtaposing emphasis on either arty seriousness or fun. And he couldn’t be more right.
Quentin Tarantino is not a man prone to fear. He makes what he wants to make, what he likes to make, and if you don’t agree with it…well, he’ll shut your but down. He’s also not a man prone to the constrictions of that little thing called ‘history.’
Inglorious Basterds offered QT’s characteristically brutal, hilarious and raucous cinematic persona plastered throughout a fictional retelling of WW2 and inversion finds itself in the crosshairs of Django Unchained. Although the bounty doesn’t so much come from historical shenanigans than it does ‘Hollywood convention.’
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| 'You will NEVER guess where I got this from.' |
Django has had a big marketing push (naturally so for an Oscar contender) much of which has been predicated on its treatment of slavery. Now this isn’t to say that Django is some epic dramatic cataclysm of a tear-trip á la Lincoln, far from it. It’s a frenetic, gloriously violent, hopelessly idiotic, undeniably cool thunderslap of an experience. Albeit one that tackles slavery with an attitude of visceral brutality hitherto unknown within Hollywood circles. Lashings, lynchings, the hot-box, ruthless Mandingo fights: it pulls no punches in an effort to emphatically state ‘hey, all that slavery s**t that went down, it was actually pretty goddamn horrendous.’ An obvious statement perhaps. But for all of the bloody battles strewn liberally throughout American history and celebrated on shiny celluloid, slavery is not one of them. It’s been, oddly enough, almost entirely ignored.
And then QT happened. And now we’ve got a film that not only illustrates the whole horrifying nightmare with graphical intensity, but one that actual utilises it as a narrative framework. It’s a technique that works admirably within Django, the omnipresent blind antagonism towards and ferocious treatment of black people empowering and constructing the eponymous hero’s bloodthirsty quest for righteous vengeance. Forget the masterly script and fantastically imagined characters: it’s the simplistic care and clear passion towards context and historical source that justifies Django’s narrative credentials.
However, such a commitment to genuinely gritty and (shockingly!) realistic violence jars unsettlingly with those other QT staples: buckets of crimson and the blackest of comedy. Outside of torture scenes violence comes in classically QT sized quantities, namely vats upon vats of the gooey red-stuff. And while the ridiculousness of a goon’s multi-blasted derriere vomiting geysers of sludgy crimson doesn’t actively impose upon Django’s more discomforting scenes, it could quite easily perturb the experience for some.
Were this film made by a director without the passion for cinema and eye for entertainment that Tarantino wields, this could have been a film-breaking issue. But, fortunately, it wasn’t and Django Unchained remains all kinds of rampant, old-fashioned, fun. Sight gags? It’s got that. Moronic pre-KKK group of hopeless sack-heads? It’s got that. Erroneous bunch of baffling Australian bandits? It’s got that. The music too is brilliantly ridiculous - alternating from archetypal country crooners to rap tracks – and, maybe apart from the Grinch and Tommy Lee Jones, it won’t fail in raising a smile. It is, in a word, undeniably badass.
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| This years 'look the most murderous' competition is off to a strong start. |
Like with the rest of QT’s (largely) exceptional back-catalogue, it is the cast that gallops most confidently here (apologies for these Western puns, they’re neigh-on irresistible). Christoph Waltz is electric and infallibly engaging as the mentorly Schultz, perfectly transposing the eloquent charming verbosity of his previous QT performance Hans Landa. Everything from vocal inflection to nuanced mannerism (never has there been a cooler moustache twirl in cinema) screams individuality, an authenticity of character lucidly conceived and expertly transmitted. Leonardo DiCaprio – for the first time filling the villain’s shoes – skillfully conflates sinister ferocity and childish pomposity, an infantile Francophile caught in the gravity of an explosive power-trip. Kudos too, to Samuel L. Jackson – also playing against type in a villainous role – who, as the head slave Stephen, is similarly despicable, all bulging eyes and detestable sycophancy, albeit with an obligatory dash of coolness.
It’s something of a shame then that the sheer strength of the supporting cast highlights the deficiencies of the leading pair. Or, rather, singular. Kerry Washington’s Broomhilda, while an effective vessel for the brutality of slavery, unfortunately doesn’t progress much further than an ‘enabler,’ a veritable human MacGuffin for the valiant hero to fight for. That there being the problem. Django himself (Jamie Foxx) while a likeable hero in his own right, falls far short of the benchmark set by Waltz and DiCaprio, feeling surprisingly one-dimensional and simply lacking the strength of his peers. Ultimately, it is the one-note love-story between this Westernised Broomhilda and Siegfried that most disappoints.
One of the major critiques leveled at Django has been its surprisingly long running time and yet, while some scenes could easily be cut to zero narrative detriment, everything seems to work. It is a master class in pacing, mixing ambling scenes of gripping dialogue with the darkest of humour. Action climaxes escalate and populate the running time in a way that feels organic. Films that push the three-hour boundary won’t be to everyone’s taste and could lead to some severe cases of numbbumitis, but if you can give yourself over to world QT has created, it will fly by. Fortunately then, Django is absolutely gorgeous. From sweeping sweltering rocky outcrops to wintery vistas, it is an aesthetic joy as well as a visceral one.
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| What you can't see in this picture are the skateboards. |
Verdict
Django Unchained is an unabashed achievement in balls-to-the-wall cinematic entertainment. It never takes itself too seriously and yet still manages to engage in an historical dialogue far too often ignored. Hilarious, unsettling, with characters that will live long in the memory, it is a Jackson-defined ‘movie’ through and through and never pretends to be anything else. With all the heavy-duty dramatic dramary drama that comes hand-in-hand with Oscar season, Djangois a welcome oasis of that one thing more movies should hope to be: entertaining.
5/5
Have a mosey at this here trailer, it be darn tootin':
As a final note, please follow me on Twitter: @smariman. You'll get told of updates and new posts as soon as they happen as well as the odd desperate attempt at being funny, entertaining and likeable. Such is life.
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