Is "Django Unchained" a nifty historical revenge fantasy by Quentin Tarantino or simply the result of him once again trying to fit his B-movie sensibilities into an A-movie budget and finding that the shoe doesn't really fit? In truth it's a little of both with pretensions of being a lot more than either. It also thinks it's a spaghetti western though from the first frame the action moves south.
Culled loosely from a real Spaghetti Western by Franco Nero the film opens with the setup: Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave being marched across the wilderness to auction. Dr King Schultz (a retired dentist turned bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz) intervenes and excises Django from his fate . Django it seems had some dealings with Shultz's quarry and Shultz wants Django
along to make a positive ID. In the best B-movie fashion it quickly
becomes apparent that this Django is no ordinary slave and that Dr
Shultz is a lot more like Robert Downey's version of Sherlock Holmes
than anyone that might have actually existed in 19th century
Mississippi. The two superfriends go on a pillaging and bountyin'
rampage, earning boatloads o' cash for killin' whitey until finally
Schultz becomes so enamored of his butchering buddy that he decides to
help him find and free his wife.
This leads the dynamic duo to Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie, a sister-loving dandy of a plantation owner who wants to be called Monsieur though he can't speak French himself. Candie, it seems, owns Django's wife and doesn't seem to be of a mind to part with any of his "help". Schultz and Django then devise an elaborate ruse whereby they figure they'll be able to leverage Mrs Django away from Candie by adding her purchase to another larger (but fake) transaction almost as an afterthought. It's all going along swimmingly until Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen, Candie's black right hand around the house, picks up on the vibe between Django and his Mrs and alerts Candie.
The movie touches on some sensitive issues (see: Stephen) without resolving anything and plays fast and loose with history ala "Inglorious Basterds". It's all very cool and hip and packed I'm sure with lots of super subtle things to be learned and unlearned. Like the fact that plantation owners weren't the cultured, gentlemen farmers of "Gone With The Wind", but were in fact hideous, sadistic, incestuous, bloodthirsty scoundrels of the highest order. I hate to break it to ya QT but most of us already knew GWTW was a racist fantasy. And the fact that most people are already aware of the mechanisms of racism past and present is a pretty good point of departure for talking about what's wrong with this movie, which is this: Tarantino is dealing with a subject he has little innate business dealing with under the guise of educating us ignoramuses about racism. But most members of his loyal fanbase are already pretty well educated in that area thank you and those ignoramuses in the audience ain't gonna get what he's sayin' anyway. So the film's justification simply doesn't hold water. What seems far more likely as a rationale for this film is that Tarantino simply needed a revenge spectacle big enough to fit his big Hollywood budget and he'd already done his wacky sendup of the Holocaust, complete with new ending to WWII.
Is it well crafted? Sure. Is it full of Tarantino's patented projectile bleeding? Sure. Is it packed with tons of really nifty dialogue delivered with alacrity by a stellar cast? No doubt. But is it "important"? No. Does it tell us anything we didn't already know? No. Is it a decent revenge flick at least? Yes. It is that. But it's easily forgettable and not even close to Tarantino's best. He should go back to making smaller, more personal movies before he loses his seat at that table and leave history to those who don't see laughs in each and every apocalypse. What's next Quentin? A lively spoof of the Cambodian genocide?
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