Django Unchained *spoilers*

Is a fantastic movie. It is fascinating and it has a lot to say---my friends and I talked about it for hours after we saw it, which is unusual. It's too long, but besides that I don't have much criticism. I'm trying to get my thoughts down, there's a lot I'd like to say about it, this will be a little jumbled.

So the movie is a revenge fantasy of an escaped slave murdering his odious masters and getting his wife back. The whole setup is fascinating, especially in light of Tarantino's last film, a revenge film about murdering nazis. The meta narrative of the movie is particularly strong and thought provoking, so I'm going to talk about that primarily here. My strong sense is that Tarantino fans and most hardcore movie fans are white. I don't have the stats to back that up but I'm pretty sure that's true. Our Austin viewing of it was 98% white. The repugnant racism shown and the revenge in response is therefore particularly subversive. You are watching a film about murdering terrible white people, showing it to a white audience, and having the white audience laugh and enjoy it. It provoked a great deal of thought afterwards.

This movie sits next to his last film, about killing nazis. He casts the worst nazi in the previous film as the German who is disgusted by slavery, an inspired move. I think Tarantino is saying, hey, look at this---you know how it was ok to torture and murder nazis in the last film and you gave it little or no thought? You laughed because everyone can agree Nazis were bad? Well, European public opinion about slavery had largely turned by the early 19th century, so the German's feelings are actually reasonably historical. Let's take a look at an equally shameful episode in American history, with almost unimaginable brutality, and make an action movie where the good guy wins. Funny how there are almost no movies truly about slavery in the United States besides a smattering of 70s movies or miniseries (Roots comes to mind)---yet it should be an easy setup for a "underdog beats evil enemies" action movie. So where are the avalanche of anti-slavery movies coming out? It's a pretty clear good vs. evil situation. There aren't any. I think this movie asks why there aren't, knowing full well what the answer is. I think it even asks why, forgetting trivial action movies and the like, there are not tons of "Schindler's Lists" or similar dramatic explorations of slavery and race. There are some, particularly about the civil rights movement, but it's sparse. It's an area would expect to see movies grapple with, given its centrality in the history of our country---yet there are countless excellent explorations of something like the Holocaust, relative to slavery.

What is particularly telling is that while a bit of the violence is over the top (some of the shooting scenes, some explosions, for example), much of the violence is actually reasonably straight. Most interesting is that brutal and frank depictions of slavery play realistic. Shit like mandingo fighting, many of the horrendous punishments used on slaves... these are all given a very unflinching, largely unexaggerated retelling and put alongside the revenge fantasy tropes (blowing the woman away through the door, blowing the dynamite Australian up, etc). What makes this so interesting is that I cannot think of a major movie that showed the true horror of slavery in such an open manner. The near gelding of Django, the terrible masks, chains, etc of slaves, the punishment for escaping slaves, I could go on and on. Then it juxtaposes these with the excessive violence in the action fantasy portion, which just screams for comparison---a terrifying, unsettling comparison where you realize that not even Tarantino or the film industry's wildest dreams of a gross action movie could come close to real, historical slavery.

Then there's the racism. This is a film I would actually love to hear interviews with the actors on, the material is really so uncomfortable, despite the exaggerated Tarantino and action tropes. Samuel L. Jackson's role, for example, must have been truly difficult to act and come to terms with. I laughed my way through a lot of the funny/violent/racist Tarantinoism stuff that happened until about the plantation, half way through, at which point the oppressive racism really started to just sit on me like a terrible weight. I stopped laughing and started feeling incredibly uncomfortable about shit I had been chuckling about earlier in the film. Reflecting back, it was an amazing piece of directing to do that to me, to take me through all the typical reactions to racism---laughing it off, rationalizing it, being horrified, and just being sad about it.

I have a lot of other stuff I have been chewing on and I talked with the people I went with about for hours after the show, most related to race, slavery, and its whitewashing in media. But this is a start. I'd love to hear what others thought of it. I think as a genre revenge film/western/action romp it is well made and entertaining, but I think it has SO much more to say that just that.

Some great points. Django Unchained has all of Tarantino's strength's and weakness as we've come to know them.

I hadn't thought about the mostly white audience thing before but it's an interesting idea wether intended or not. Same with your interpretation on why he chose Waltz for his role here... I'm not sure I buy either one buy possibly that's the case.

Here's what I wrote about it in the movie thread... all I can really add right now is that I think the movie should have ended with a handshake and maybe a mischievous glance on Django's part. I guess we wouldn't have got our blood bath but that part of the film felt tacked on anyway... it was still fun but it just didn't need to be there and each second of it felt more inevitable then the one before. If the movie ended with a handshake I would have been truly shocked and delighted, I would have been writing about Tarantino's new found restraint. But instead I'm writing about his umpteenth example of excess.

The race issues are fascinating when you think about how unwilling Hollywood has been to make movies about America's own dirty history on the level that this movie goes into on occasion. But I also don't like the way he's treated these villains. In Inglorious Basterd there is the movie precedent of Nazi's to contend with, in all of his films (being as much about movies as the topic they profess to discuss as well) this is the case. In this one not as much and hence we get a vision of slavery from Tarantino without any other movies to really compare it to. It comes off as pure sensationalism that way and much less a play on other movies.

In any case like I say below any problems I have are nitpicking, it's worth seeing.

JonJacob wrote: So unlike the rest of the nerd population I decided to see Django Unchained instead of The Hobbit.

Sure, it's the same film as Inglorious Basterds but I couldn't help myself. Did Leonardo DiCaprio learn from watching Daniel Day Lewis play Bill the Butcher up close, is Samuel L Jackson tired and treading territory too familiar to us, can Christoph Waltz do it twice for Tarantino??? , and so many more questions.

Well, this is to Inglorious Basterds what Master of Puppets is to Ride the Lightening. The same thing.. an echo.

But wasn't Inglorious Basterd the same as every other Tarantino flick in some ways? Not as much as these two are, I think they could safely be called a series at this point.

Bottom line: I had a great time. I sat, alone mind you, in the theatre drinking my gin and juice and enjoyed every minute... even the two times I checked my watch. Man is this film long. DiCaprio doesn't even show up for the first half of the film.. but he commands it once he does show up, so does Jackson for that matter and Christoph Waltz is highly entertaining as well.

Jamie Fox is a bit dull, as a hero he doesn't seem to get the same great lines everyone else has, he has to play his cards closer to his chest and his character is simply less interesting then the others. He's not bad though, just... too simple in comparison, too obvious.

I found it irritating how awesome the slaves make-up looked, there were times I thought he was just writing in this time period so he could get away with writing nigger as much as possible, it certainly feels sensationalistic but at the same time it's so honest and clear in it's conviction you can forgive these small details. Some of the pop music was a bit much and jumped around too often and the action was pretty silly. In fact the big pay off of action in the end made me question my problems with Kill Bills ending. Maybe the soft quick fight is better. For me the movie could have ended a bit earlier than it did and the ending felt... inevitable in all the wrong ways. Like he had to put that final stamp on it. There is a scene about two hours in where I felt the movie wanted to end but Tarantino needed some killing to get done and kept it running anyway. That's the very definition of gratuitous but then again, isn't that the very definition of Tarantino too?

This movie is all of the things right and wrong with Tarantino and he makes all of those things work to make a film only he could make, even with a million copy cats out there. He's still not a favorite director of mine but I think he does make films worth seeing that are accesible. That's a pretty good mix really and if you've liked anything he's done you should check this out at some point.

... the music isn't bad either, when it's not pop songs and, as is usual with Tarantino, when it is sometimes it works and sometimes it's jarring.

Here's an interview with Tarantino I just read that's talking a bit about what I was working on above:

www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospec...-on-django-unchained

I saw this movie the other day, and loved it. I am a big Tarantino fan. I liked this movie better than Inglorious; I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was just more 'fun', despite equally nasty subject matter. Highly recommended, as long as you can stand hearing the 'n-word' 10 times a minute.

Half in the Bag review of Django Unchained