Django Unchained (2012)
When you go to a Tarantino movie you know what to expect.
There will be explosions. Gunfights. A great soundtrack. More obscure cultural references than you’ll hear in a 90-minute Dennis Miller HBO special. At least one sadomasochistic rope or chain scene (uggghhh). And Samuel L. Jackson.
Django Unchained is a Tarantino movie.
Like nearly all of his films, Django draws from the grindhouse and Saturday Night Drive-In tradition. In this one, Tarantino does a deep dive into the Spaghetti Western wave of the 1960s and 70s. The title character, played solidly by Jamie Foxx (A Million Way to Die in the West), is a slave in 1858 Texas, until freed by German dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz - Inglorious Basterds).
Note to the Spoiler Sensitive: we apply a 5 minute Spoiler rule at BMB: if it happens in the first 5 minutes of the film…or is in the title…(I’m talking at you Invisible Man)…we don’t consider it a spoiler! Ahem…back to the review.
As we were saying, Schultz - who seems to delight in telling everyone he can how much he dislikes slavery - purchases Foxx through colorful means in order to enlist him in collecting a particularly challenging reward. Their first quest is a success and Schultz, seeing Foxx’s talent, recruits him as a partner. We won’t spell out the rest of the film in detail but it unfolds in fairly predictable, if enjoyable, Tarantino style.
So a few thoughts on Django Unchained…
Tarantino has made a fairly good living creating films that exist on different levels. Django is one one of them. At the most basic level it is a flashy, sometimes bloody, spaghetti-style revenge films ala High Plains Drifter (a film Django gives more than one nod to). And a pretty good one.
Going a level below that…Django offers obvious commentary on race. But Tarantino is playing a more subtle game than a simple “slavery is bad (so killing slavers is good)” narrative. Throughout the film Schultz goes to pains to ensure that all of his actions are scrupulously within the letter of the law. And as if by magic, all of his opponents, however odious, immediately surrender to this authority. The unstated suggestion is that the slavers understand that they need the law to give their “peculiar institution” legitimacy. Breaking the law is the ultimate taboo because doing so would in turn delegitimize slavery. We can pull a few things from that. One is that Tarantino is trying to reveal that there is a long-standing connection between racism and the law in the U.S. Another is that when morality is removed from the application of the law, the legal system serves injustice. But of course there is more.
At the third level, Django Unchained is a movie about reciprocity. Everyone’s actions - at least in the film - are driven by the advantage it offers them. Schultz frees Django…through legal means…not because he believes slavery is wrong (he does), but because he needs him to collect a bounty. Django kills and allows people, including innocents, to die because it brings him closer to his goal. And in a series of scenes that come dangerously close to slave-master fantasy porn at times, many of the slaves in the film, most notably Jackson’s Stephen, use their position and attributes to gain advantage: sometimes over their “masters;” sometimes over other slaves.
Django Unchained is a good movie.
Although really long (2:45) the pacing is excellent and it never lags. Many of the characters are not particularly well-developed, but that isn’t always a vice. And the cinematography and music are high-quality. It is a pretty movie with solid action and more depth than visible the first time you take a dip into it.
And it is fun.
It is impossible, and would ruin the film, to call out all the nods, but three to look out for are:
A bad guy painting a birdhouse bright red right before a gunfight (color me High Plains Drifter).
An impassioned speech by Schultz about The Three Musketeers…a movie Waltz starred in back in 2011.
And my favorite - an exchange between Foxx and Franco Nero, who played the lead in the 1966 film, Django. D-J-A-N-G-O.
This one isn’t for younger audience or those squeamish, but if you like Tarantino, Django Unchained won’t disappoint. You can catch it HERE on Amazon Prime or on NETFLIX.
Four out of Five Steaming Bowls of Spaghetti.
🍝🍝🍝🍝
Have a western you’d like us to review? Drop us a note HERE.
Dig the D-Man? You might want to take a shot at one of these.
