Django Unchained (2012)

You’ll be hard pressed to find a more playful director than Quentin Tarantino. As he grew up and watched movie after movie after movie, he absorbed everything he saw like a cinematic sponge. Once his career as a writer and director got started, this was his opportunity to wring all these influences out onto paper and call it a screenplay. The result has been one of the most audacious careers in filmmaking history, and somehow his formula has not grown old with the public. If anything, he’s as popular now as he’s ever been. His last film Inglourious Basterds was also his most successful, despite the fact it was 153 minutes long, brutally violent, most of the dialogue isn't spoken in English, and Brad Pitt really isn’t in it all that much. Everything about it screams box office bomb, yet the public seemed to buy in to what Tarantino was selling.

Since that movie was such a hit, one would imagine that his new film Django Unchained has the potential to be even more successful. (The only thing holding it back might be its Christmas Day release date. I can’t imagine going to see this as a family.) Despite it being the longest movie Tarantino has ever made, it is also the most straightforward. It is told in chronological order with only a few brief flashbacks, it doesn’t have a huge ensemble, and it only has one major story on its plate. Essentially, Django Unchained is just the tale of two fellows going on a murderous adventure through the deep south on the eve of the Civil War. One of these fellows is a German bounty hunter named Schultz (Christoph Waltz), and the other is a freed slave by the name of Django (Jamie Foxx).

Django has all the Tarantino hallmarks that people have come to expect. There are long scenes of showy-but-mesmerizing dialogue that wind up with one or more people getting shot, multiple sequences set to anachronistic music, some stylish camerawork, and he makes a cameo near the end that winds up being more distracting than anything else. I shan’t reveal the context, but it’s not one of his finer moments. Still, it’s hard to hate on a guy who always seems willing to do whatever the heck he wants to do, and it’s up to us to decide whether or not it works. If you’re a die-hard Tarantino fan like myself, it’s hard to imagine you’ll be disappointed. When you drop 10 (or more) dollars to see a movie by Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained is exactly the kind of thing you sign up for. If nothing else, this serves as proof that he is not a filmmaker that is going to mellow with age.

In fact, this may be one of the most aggressive films he’s ever made. Tarantino has always made violent movies, and on a few occasions he’s been accused of using racial epithets too frequently in his writings. Well, Django Unchained has both of these things in spades. Not only is it violent, but unlike past Tarantino films it seems to linger on the violence for longer periods of time. Some shootouts happen in slow motion, and the audience usually gets a nice long look at each of the entry wounds. When these impacts don’t kill the character, we get to watch for quite some time as he/she screams in pain. In his past films, the violence hasn’t always had a great impact because he tends to remind us at every turn that we’re simply watching a movie. His style hasn’t changed all that much here—Django is still a movie that seems fully aware it is a movie—but here it feels like we’re supposed to reflect on the violence a little bit more. This film gets downright savage at times, and since he’s dealing with a subject like slavery the brutality feels like it carries a bit more weight than it used to. I’m not entirely sure what it means yet, but at least he’s not holding back.

The exact question of what exactly Tarantino is saying in Django Unchained may take some time to decipher. His films are so unique and so painstakingly executed that it often takes multiple viewings to figure out what exactly it is going for. It took many people quite a bit of time to get anything significant out of Inglourious Basterds, and the reception when it came out was but mixed-to-positive. In the three years since its release, Basterds has become one of the most respected films he’s made. (For my money, it might be his best and most intelligent.) As such, I don’t want to rush to too many conclusions after my first viewing of Django Unchained. I do know that it’s terrific, but a Tarantino film throws so much at you over the course of two and a half hours that by the time it’s over you tend to feel dizzy. I was definitely on board the entire way through Django Unchained, though I wonder what non-Tarantino fans are going to think.

Like all his other films, Django is very, very long and episodic. Each of these “episodes” involves Django and Schultz going about their bounty hunting business until they decide to end the film with a slightly more personal mission. One of the first chapters involves our two heroes stopping by a plantation owned by “Big Daddy” Bennett (Don Johnson) to kill the three Brittle Brothers. A subsequent scene involves a group of bumbling racists who set out to teach Django and Schultz a lesson about their ways, at which point the film takes a sharp left turn into Mel Brooks territory for five solid minutes. It’s jarring to say the least, but somehow Tarantino makes it work. I don’t know if it entirely fits with what the rest of the movie was trying to do, but it was sure entertaining.

In the movie’s second half, our heroes focus all their energy on Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a wealthy plantation owner who trains his slaves to either fight or become prostitutes. They do not intend to kill Candie, but instead take back Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Things do not go as planned, mostly thanks to Candie’s nosy right-hand man Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), who smells something fishy from the moment Django and Schultz arrive. Here is where the film really takes off into greatness, and it’s all driven by one of the most memorable performances of DiCaprio’s career. After a few years of playing stoic, troubled protagonists, the Candie character finally gives him a chance to cut loose in a way I’ve been waiting a long time for. If you were ever starting to doubt DiCaprio’s abilities, you won’t after watching what he does here. In particular, there is one scene in which he delivers a classic Tarantino monologue that slowly reveals the depths of his character’s brutality. It’s awesome to behold.

Anyone who has watched Tarantino movies for the last two decades shouldn’t be surprised by this. He has an uncanny ability to get great performances out of almost anyone; especially those actors that some people were starting to dismiss as one-trick ponies. (Not that anyone was saying that about DiCaprio, but still.) Foxx’s transformation as Django over the film is great as well. His character begins the movie as a submissive slave used to getting pushed around, and by the end he is in control of every situation. Tarantino’s old friend Samuel L. Jackson also delivers one of his better performances in recent memory, and his new favorite person Christoph Waltz proves that there may be no other actor more perfectly suited to Tarantino’s style. He’s hypnotic in the way he says the dialogue, and it’s always believable when he descends into full-on psychopath mode. He’s charming in one moment and ruthless the next.

One interesting note about Django Unchained is the lack of interesting female characters, and if this film were made by any other filmmaker it might be a legitimate gripe. Instead, we’re talking about the guy who has given us such characters as Mia Wallace, Honey Bunny, Jackie Brown, The Bride, O-Ren Ishii, Vernita Green, Shoshanna Dreyfus and many others. Considering that history, it’s hard to complain. It’s just an interesting note that he decided to focus almost exclusively on men when he typically goes the other direction. The one major female character in the film (Broomhilda) really doesn’t get that much to do. She mostly exists to be a damsel in distress.

Otherwise, Django Unchained is another fantastic example of Tarantino using cinema to create cathartic stories of revenge. Kill Bill was about a woman looking to destroy the man who wronged her. Inglourious Basterds allowed a small group of Jews to destroy the entire Nazi party in one burning movie theater. Now, Django Unchained tells the tale of one 19^th-century slave who was given two things: his freedom, and a gun. In the Tarantino universe, there is only one way for that scenario to play out.

Grade: A-

Django Unchained will be released on Christmas Day. Get your whole family together and go to the movies, why don't you? Trick them into thinking it's Les Misérables.