Django Unchained
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Written By: Quentin Tarantino
Photography: Robert Richardson
Starring: Jamie Fox, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio.
Country: USA
Year: 2012
Oooh Djangoooooo!
Quentin Tarantino isn't your run of the mill film school graduate, he's the video store clerk who set up a production company named after a Godard film (much to Godard's displeasure), making throwback films to all the exploitation and spaghetti westerns he loves so much. And Django Unchained is nothing if not yet another homage to films that came before it, most notably films like Mandingo and obviously Sergio Corbucci's Django films. Tarantino's known for being a massive admirer of the great spaghetti western director, Sergio Leone, and I think everyone was expecting Django Unchained to be the grandest ever love letter to Leone's westerns. But there's a surprising lack of influence from Leone, it was there more in Inglorious Basterds. To me, Django Unchained is a Sam Peckinpah movie more than anything else, not thematically but in style; the slow motion gunfights and the strong violence. Given that he essentially invented movie violence, Tarantino owes quite a debt to Peckinpah.
Many people may be tried of Tarantino's fanboy filmmaking, it's 21 years now since Reservoir Dogs premiered at Cannes and I can see how for some people the joke may be wearing a bit thin. I still find a lot of fun in what Tarantino does. My problem with Tarantino is he's wasted talent, he's undeniably a very skilled director, if he wanted to, I'm positive he could be making films to the caliber of Paul Thomas Anderson's. But he doesn't want to.
After some of the coolest opening credits ever, the film beings at night with two slavers making there way through a forest carrying a chain line of slaves behind them. Towards them comes a wagon ridden by Dr. King Schultz, a bounty hunter posing as a dentist. It becomes clear that this isn't a coincidental crossing of paths, Dr Schultz wishes to acquire a specific person in the two slavers' company, Django. To cut a long story short, this is a three hour Tarantino movie we're talking about, Django becomes an assistant of Dr. Schultz's in the bounty hunting trade. After a long winter of Bounty Hunting in the mountain, Dr. Schultz agrees to help Django free his estranged wife, Broomhilda from the infamous plantation, Candyland owned by the villainous Calvin Candie.
Many people have made comment about the run-time of the film, that it's unnecessarily long. The film runs for 165 minutes, which is long and strange for something that's essentially an exploitation film, which tend to run for about 80 minutes. But honestly, I didn't have a problem with the run time it never dragged. Actually, I would have liked it to be longer, I wanted to see more with Dr. Schultz and Django bounty hunting in the mountains.
There's always controversy surrounding the violence in Tarantino's movies, but this time more so given recent events. I have many opinions on movie violence and it's relation with real life violence, but I'll save that for another time as I don't want to digress. What I will say is that to call Tarantino's films mindlessly violent is an example of looking at a film rather than watching it. Think back to the scene in Reservoir Dogs (SPOILERS) when everybody dies, as the bodies lay cold on the floor,it's at least 5 seconds before it cuts, Tarantino is forcing us to see the consequences of violence. Django Unchained has a sense of humor within it's bloody cathartic violence. But it's depiction of the slave trade is uncomfortably brutal. Tarantino is a much more intelligent director than some people give him credit for. *cough* Mark Kermode *cough* Spike Lee.
Perhaps it's hyperbole for Tarantino to be boasting that he's getting people to talk about slavery like they haven't before. The slave trade's been talked about. But I've seen many films in my time that touch on the slave trade, but I haven't seen any films that depict it's brutal reality as unapologetically as Django Unchained.
Tarantino is a brilliant actors' director, he can pull performances out of actors that they can't release with any other directors. Jamie Foxx is brilliant, Samuel L. Jackson is great, Leonardo DiCaprio is really good if maybe a little miscast, and Christoph Waltz is basically playing Hans Landa again but who cares because Hans Landa is one of the best characters in recent cinema history. One of my biggest frustrations with Django Unchained is that all the female characters suck. Neither Laura Coyouette or Kerry Washington are never given anything to do. And I know Tarantino can write good female characters; Jackie Brown, Mia Wallace.
The soundtrack as usual from Tarantino is fantastic. It's a mixture of contemporary R&B and classic Ennio Morricone scores with a Johnny Cash song thrown in there for good measure.
The film is very long and it has no pace, but it's extremely fun and more intelligent than some people would have you believe. Quentin Tarantino's best film since Jackie Brown.
