Django Unchained
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 1:55 pm
Saw Tarantino's latest last night. In his last film - "Inglorious Bastards" - he struck a bold stance against Nazism. With "Django Unchained" he takes an even bigger risk by opposing slavery. Sarcasm aside, Tarantino wants to entertain audiences with violence, but he sees the advantage of letting the audience feel virtuous for its 2 hour 45 minute excursion into slaughter. So he makes films about killing Nazis and slavers, and the audience can enjoy conscience-free blood-baths. That the stories are far fetched to the point of incredulity is irrelevant.
I must concede that Tarantino is a technical master. His cinematography, editing, sound, lighting, and direction are always superb. For good or ill, his expertise as a movie maker lends maximum impact to his films. Django stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are all in top form. Waltz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this performance.
Django uses one more clever bit of audience manipulation. Since the movie is about Foxx taking vengeance on evil slavers, white audiences might squirm, feeling they were damned by their pigmentation. That's why Waltz is there. He plays a bounty hunter from Germany who forms a partnership with Django and becomes his best friend. He helps Django carry out his violent schemes, absolving white audiences of guilt. We watch, happy in the knowledge that we are like the good Waltz and not the vicious slaver DiCaprio. (I don't remember DiCaprio ever playing a villain before.)
This leads to my one quibble with the film, which may seem trivial to many. Django remarks more than once that he abhors (white) Americans. It's made clear that it's not whiteness Django hates (like the white German Waltz) but Americans. Tarantino says the moral taint of slavery is found only among Americans. When one considers what the European countries did throughout their empires, and the history of slavery around the world, including Africa, Asia, and South America, Tarantino's scolding is a bit rich. But it's consistent with the anti-Americanism of the left, so it passes Hollywood's sniff test.
To justify Django's cruelty toward slavers, we must see some of slavery's cruelty. So the film alludes to whipping, castration, branding with hot irons, wearing iron masks, making black men fight to the death for sport ("mandingo fighting"). One runaway slave is torn to pieces by dogs (and by white overseers depicted as so backward they're little better than dogs). The worst of this happens off screen. We see snippets just long enough to suggest what's happening without actually sickening the audience.
Django wants to recover his wife, who was deliberately sold away to punish him. This is what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin - something the characters care about and which motivates their actions, though it may be irrelevant to the audience.
You may be sure that the bad guys Get Theirs, and that Django triumphs.
A highly entertaining 3 hours, if you're entertained by violence and cruelty, which most people are. Just don't take it as anything more than entertainment, unless you know anyone who still favors slavery.
P.S. "Django Unchained" excited controversy when first released because of its hundreds of uses of the word "nigger." The film is set in the pre-Civil War South on slave plantations, so the word seems historically accurate. I suspect this controversy was courted as publicity for the film.
I must concede that Tarantino is a technical master. His cinematography, editing, sound, lighting, and direction are always superb. For good or ill, his expertise as a movie maker lends maximum impact to his films. Django stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are all in top form. Waltz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this performance.
Django uses one more clever bit of audience manipulation. Since the movie is about Foxx taking vengeance on evil slavers, white audiences might squirm, feeling they were damned by their pigmentation. That's why Waltz is there. He plays a bounty hunter from Germany who forms a partnership with Django and becomes his best friend. He helps Django carry out his violent schemes, absolving white audiences of guilt. We watch, happy in the knowledge that we are like the good Waltz and not the vicious slaver DiCaprio. (I don't remember DiCaprio ever playing a villain before.)
This leads to my one quibble with the film, which may seem trivial to many. Django remarks more than once that he abhors (white) Americans. It's made clear that it's not whiteness Django hates (like the white German Waltz) but Americans. Tarantino says the moral taint of slavery is found only among Americans. When one considers what the European countries did throughout their empires, and the history of slavery around the world, including Africa, Asia, and South America, Tarantino's scolding is a bit rich. But it's consistent with the anti-Americanism of the left, so it passes Hollywood's sniff test.
To justify Django's cruelty toward slavers, we must see some of slavery's cruelty. So the film alludes to whipping, castration, branding with hot irons, wearing iron masks, making black men fight to the death for sport ("mandingo fighting"). One runaway slave is torn to pieces by dogs (and by white overseers depicted as so backward they're little better than dogs). The worst of this happens off screen. We see snippets just long enough to suggest what's happening without actually sickening the audience.
Django wants to recover his wife, who was deliberately sold away to punish him. This is what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin - something the characters care about and which motivates their actions, though it may be irrelevant to the audience.
You may be sure that the bad guys Get Theirs, and that Django triumphs.
A highly entertaining 3 hours, if you're entertained by violence and cruelty, which most people are. Just don't take it as anything more than entertainment, unless you know anyone who still favors slavery.
P.S. "Django Unchained" excited controversy when first released because of its hundreds of uses of the word "nigger." The film is set in the pre-Civil War South on slave plantations, so the word seems historically accurate. I suspect this controversy was courted as publicity for the film.
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