Last night I watched Django Unchained with a friend and his father. It was a surprising two hours and forty-five minutes long, but undeniably entertaining throughout. Would I recommend it to most people I know? Probably not. The truth is, Tarantino produces uncompromising content. Scenes are visceral, even to seemingly gratuitous effect. But you have to understand that the violence onscreen consists of two significantly distinct types:
Slapstick Justice
Django's trailer essentially contains the first scene of the movie: a freezing chain-gang of African slaves are marched through the night to the music of the late Johnny Cash (a song which appears in both the trailer AND the movie, much to my delight). Former dentist, now full-time bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) bounces into the grave scene with the decorum of a mildly sober Friar Tuck. After infuriating the slave-wrangling brothers with his egalitarian treatment of their stock and superior vocabulary, Dr. Schultz is ordered at gunpoint to leave at once.
In the trailer you see him utter: "Very well" as he drops his lantern. He draws his six-shooter like lightening and fires two shots.
But what you don't get from the commercial is the Nickelodeon slime-fest that was the head of one brother and the other brother's horse. You don't get the sense of triumph as an audience member that an outnumbered character with morals evolved beyond the time dispensed justice so efficiently. The slavers are goofy characterless archetypes; they were never any match for the charismatic German.
This keeps up for the first forty to sixty minutes of the movie. Django (Jamie Foxx), now with Dr. Schultz, are a hot knife; the South is their butter. Only when we meet "Monsieur" Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) do they meet any resistance.
This breed of violence is borderline Monty Python and the Black Knight. The audience laughs at the gruesome well-deserv'd fate of life's villains. This violence isn't any more real than the exploits of Curly, Larry, and Moe.
Then there's...
Nightmare Fuel
And I don't call it that lightly. Django is set in 1858 (much to my disturbance, the movie is compelled to contextualize with the addition "two years prior to the Civil War" -- which, I thought, began in 1861 at Fort Sumter) and with that epoch of American history comes the inhumanity of the institution of slavery.
Two scenes in particular made me emotionally sick. The first occurred when Schultz and Django first meet Candie. For the sake of the movie, Quentin Tarantino invented mandingo fighting, an unobtrusive extension of the cruelties of slavery. Akin to gladiating, rich owners pit their trained fighters in a bare-fist brawl to the death. Candie is the premier dealer in this sport. We watch one of his stock disable, blind, and the kill his opponent with a literal hammer-blow to the skull.
In and of itself the violence might offend some, but I wasn't bothered by the countless other slayings. No, what is troubling here occurs on a more psychological level. Candie deprives his fighters of any morality. In other fictional accounts of gladiators (Gladiator, STARZ Spartacus, etc.) the gladiators have embraced the culture, to a degree. No where did I see the stomach-wrenching abomination represented in Django Unchained. After he murders a fellow slave in kill-or-be-killed wrestling match for the pleasure of their two wealthy owners, Candie's mandingo is rewarded with a tall beer for his performance. A dog rewarded.
Again, later in the film when Django and Schultz have begun their infiltration of Candie's plantation, they witness the treeing of a runaway mandingo (named D'Artagnon by the francophilic Candie). The slave is ripped to shred by dogs while Django and Schultz stoically look on in order to cement their reputation as heartless slave-traders themselves.
In a discussion following the movie with my friend's father, he identified that scene as the most upsetting; I would agree. It was tailored to be that way, itself motivating significant action from Schultz (it turns out that a cocktail of injustice and Beethoven generates Teutonic retribution when given to a German). But to me this was one of the movie's most important scenes.
Quentin Tarantino told the Guardian:
Will I ever recommend this movie to anyone in my parent's generation? Fifty, sixty plus? Absolutely not. A lot of my friends would find the violence completely offensive as well. But what I will tell of Tarantino's latest effort is that it shows a keen awareness of cinematic techniques and affecting an audience. In a time where violence's prevalence in media is under scrutiny, Tarantino demonstrates that panache (a sense of showmanship) is everything. A man's death can be a triumph or tragedy in cinema, and ultimately it shouldn't be entertainment's responsibility to educate the world on the value of a life. Sure, he ironically treats death as a punchline for 95% of the movie, but that's because those deaths are the murder of fictional villains. Real people: heroes and the innocent are treated with reverence. If you want a movie about redemption, don't see Django. The Bad are Bad and the Good are Good, more or less. No one is going to change teams.
I don't know if I ever need to see it again, but I'm glad I saw it once. I don't want to relive the experience, if only to preserve the authentic disgust and rage the movie's more empathetic moments evoked.
Finally, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson all delivered magnificently. Jamie Foxx was engaged, but I think the direction of his character came second to action of the movie, requiring choices that conflicted with Django's authenticity. I don't know how these things are determined, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of the first three are put up for Academy Awards.
Slapstick Justice
Django's trailer essentially contains the first scene of the movie: a freezing chain-gang of African slaves are marched through the night to the music of the late Johnny Cash (a song which appears in both the trailer AND the movie, much to my delight). Former dentist, now full-time bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) bounces into the grave scene with the decorum of a mildly sober Friar Tuck. After infuriating the slave-wrangling brothers with his egalitarian treatment of their stock and superior vocabulary, Dr. Schultz is ordered at gunpoint to leave at once.
In the trailer you see him utter: "Very well" as he drops his lantern. He draws his six-shooter like lightening and fires two shots.
But what you don't get from the commercial is the Nickelodeon slime-fest that was the head of one brother and the other brother's horse. You don't get the sense of triumph as an audience member that an outnumbered character with morals evolved beyond the time dispensed justice so efficiently. The slavers are goofy characterless archetypes; they were never any match for the charismatic German.
This keeps up for the first forty to sixty minutes of the movie. Django (Jamie Foxx), now with Dr. Schultz, are a hot knife; the South is their butter. Only when we meet "Monsieur" Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) do they meet any resistance.
This breed of violence is borderline Monty Python and the Black Knight. The audience laughs at the gruesome well-deserv'd fate of life's villains. This violence isn't any more real than the exploits of Curly, Larry, and Moe.
Then there's...
Nightmare Fuel
And I don't call it that lightly. Django is set in 1858 (much to my disturbance, the movie is compelled to contextualize with the addition "two years prior to the Civil War" -- which, I thought, began in 1861 at Fort Sumter) and with that epoch of American history comes the inhumanity of the institution of slavery.
Two scenes in particular made me emotionally sick. The first occurred when Schultz and Django first meet Candie. For the sake of the movie, Quentin Tarantino invented mandingo fighting, an unobtrusive extension of the cruelties of slavery. Akin to gladiating, rich owners pit their trained fighters in a bare-fist brawl to the death. Candie is the premier dealer in this sport. We watch one of his stock disable, blind, and the kill his opponent with a literal hammer-blow to the skull.
In and of itself the violence might offend some, but I wasn't bothered by the countless other slayings. No, what is troubling here occurs on a more psychological level. Candie deprives his fighters of any morality. In other fictional accounts of gladiators (Gladiator, STARZ Spartacus, etc.) the gladiators have embraced the culture, to a degree. No where did I see the stomach-wrenching abomination represented in Django Unchained. After he murders a fellow slave in kill-or-be-killed wrestling match for the pleasure of their two wealthy owners, Candie's mandingo is rewarded with a tall beer for his performance. A dog rewarded.
Again, later in the film when Django and Schultz have begun their infiltration of Candie's plantation, they witness the treeing of a runaway mandingo (named D'Artagnon by the francophilic Candie). The slave is ripped to shred by dogs while Django and Schultz stoically look on in order to cement their reputation as heartless slave-traders themselves.
In a discussion following the movie with my friend's father, he identified that scene as the most upsetting; I would agree. It was tailored to be that way, itself motivating significant action from Schultz (it turns out that a cocktail of injustice and Beethoven generates Teutonic retribution when given to a German). But to me this was one of the movie's most important scenes.
Quentin Tarantino told the Guardian:
"When slave narratives are done on film, they tend to be historical with a capital H, with an arms-length quality to them. I wanted to break that history-under-glass aspect, I wanted to throw a rock through that glass and shatter it for all times, and take you into it."Mission accomplished sir. Quentin Tarantino approaches the horrors of our nations past (and more broadly, the subjugation of human life wherever it occurs) and wraps it up in a bear hug. He doesn't forgive it, he doesn't have that power. But he refuses to forget it, or allow it to be forgotten. This isn't about "white America" "owing" anything to "black America"; it is a lot like Inglorious Basterds: ugly, ugly shit happened, if I could write history I would have had Adolf Hitler gunned down by Jews. I didn't, but here's what it would have looked like, and during the drive home, remember how it really played out.
Will I ever recommend this movie to anyone in my parent's generation? Fifty, sixty plus? Absolutely not. A lot of my friends would find the violence completely offensive as well. But what I will tell of Tarantino's latest effort is that it shows a keen awareness of cinematic techniques and affecting an audience. In a time where violence's prevalence in media is under scrutiny, Tarantino demonstrates that panache (a sense of showmanship) is everything. A man's death can be a triumph or tragedy in cinema, and ultimately it shouldn't be entertainment's responsibility to educate the world on the value of a life. Sure, he ironically treats death as a punchline for 95% of the movie, but that's because those deaths are the murder of fictional villains. Real people: heroes and the innocent are treated with reverence. If you want a movie about redemption, don't see Django. The Bad are Bad and the Good are Good, more or less. No one is going to change teams.
I don't know if I ever need to see it again, but I'm glad I saw it once. I don't want to relive the experience, if only to preserve the authentic disgust and rage the movie's more empathetic moments evoked.
Finally, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson all delivered magnificently. Jamie Foxx was engaged, but I think the direction of his character came second to action of the movie, requiring choices that conflicted with Django's authenticity. I don't know how these things are determined, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of the first three are put up for Academy Awards.
