Quentin Tarantino is back, and this time round old Quentin gives us yet another revenge-fuelled storyline set against the backdrop of slavery in mid 1850’s America. Boasting a cast and screenplay which made it clear-up at the recent batch of award ceremonies, does Django Unchained unleash it’s fury of pre-American Civil War slavery on screen? Or does it deserve to be chained back up and whipped into oblivion?
Freed from his slave life in the southern United States, Django (Jamie Foxx, Law Abiding Citizen) is on a quest to reunite himself with his missing wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington, Lakeview Terrace). Teaming up with German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds), the duo claim a variety of bounties and massive wads of money throughout a prejudiced land, before finding information on Broomhilda’s whereabouts. She’s under the ownership of plantation owner Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception) who is after an offer he can’t refuse…
In a weird move, Foxx doesn’t feel like the main man at first (coming across as lost in proceedings), despite Django being the name on the tin. The D is silent as you say his name, and almost as anonymous as he appears in most of the film. He gets outdone by the other more colourful characters and performances surrounding him, as he doesn’t really emote much; apart from being an angry black guy, which a variety of other African American actors could have done just as well. There are great elements to the character; like when Schultz is teaching Django to read a wanted poster, and his constant learning of new words and their meaning; but it doesn’t matter in the end due to Django essentially being a one-note revenge character that’s only livened slightly by an okay job by Foxx.
There’s been a lot of praise for Waltz’s turn as Schultz and… I don’t see it. His acting is terrific and he’s highly entertaining to watch, but you get the impression you’re watching Christoph Waltz playing the character of Christoph Waltz. Ignoring his turn on the polar axis of good and evil since Inglourious Basterds, there isn’t really too much difference between Schultz and the Nazi commander in his performances. Highly watchable but not as hypnotising and different as you’re led to believe.
Better was Candie, brought to life by DiCaprio; who excelled as the smarmy, charming, southern gentleman. You can tell he’s having a lot of fun in the role, showing off huge levels of charisma, and he came across as someone who could talk you into anything, and would get the best end of the deal when anyone attempted to rip him off in business. As the lead “villain” however, it’s not as easy a easy sell; Candie treats his slaves badly, setting dogs on those who try to run away and puts them in metals “cook” boxes in the southern sun, to portray him as a cruel man; the thing is, it’s reasonable knowledge that most southern slave owners did treat their slaves badly (with similar methods of punishment), and so it’s impact is lessened somewhat. There’s no personal reason for the two heroes to dislike Candie either, thus limiting his impact as a villain here, though that’s more the fault of the writing rather than DiCaprio’s stellar job; which is worth the price of a cinema ticket alone.
The most surprising and best performance by a mile is Samuel L. Jackson as Candie’s main house servant Stephen; whilst his stock has fallen slightly over the last couple of years (apart from his Marvel Comics’ films work as Nick Fury), reuniting with Tarantino has fully rejuvenated Jackson; he steps away from his typecast act to become this memorable, Southern old lame who needs a stick to walk around, and the way he betrays other African-Americans in order to appease his white taskmasters is sickening. He’s such a great secondary villain to watch, it will leave you wanting more, and his comeuppance is deservedly so.
Being a Tarantino film, there is of course typical uber-levels of violence in his trademark directorial style. Some of it works really well (like the slave mandingo fights to the death being really hard to watch in their raw brutality), but then you get the over the top, blood flying everywhere, shoot-out to set up the finale at Candie’s house; complete with fast zoom outs before the firing starts and a ridiculous volume of violence (even by Tarrantino’s standards), it all wears somewhat thin. Rather laughable stuff from a director that once made us utterly terrified of a man dancing around to Stuck in the Middle with You, before he cut off another man’s ear.
At a near three hour runtime, it takes something special to justify a film being that long, and Django Unchained doesn’t have it. Tarantino is always deliberate with the pace of his movies (which does work given the right material), but this time round it feels like deliberate time wasting and it’s hard to work out why. The middle part of the films flows brilliantly, with decent character development, but the beginning starts so bloody slow, and there are three points in the final third where the film could have easily gone straight to the ending instead of meandering on for another half hour. It left the audience burnt out in the viewing I caught, and I was climbing the walls with this near infinite wait for the credits to roll. Tarantino has had a change of editor since Basterds, but sadly he appears to not have the bottle to tell the director what needs tightening up.
There are flashes of brilliance here; with Django and Broomhilda being intimate for the first time in the film and we see their silhouettes kiss against the moonlight shining through a doorway in a really good shot; and in fact, production wise, the film is top notch; well made, clear visuals with no deterring features, it’s a pretty film to look at (which is not known enough about Tarantino). Weirdly however, he hasn’t chucked in one of his more memorable “roundtable” discussions, which is traditional for him. The overlong dinner scene comes close but the dialogue isn’t as memorable as it thinks it is. The music Tarantino has chosen works though; carrying on his work with various artists instead of one over-seeing musician, there’s plenty of R’N’B and soul music which you would have thought be out of place massively but grabs hold of the current mood on screen really rather well.
Some of the humour here tries too hard. Guess what the name of Candie’s plantation is called? If you guessed ‘Candie-land’, congratulations – you are on the same level of film writer as Tarantino. Take that for what you will. A rather self-indulgent and out of place scene occurs with the bound to be famous ‘holes in bags’ scene, with a precursor to the Ku Klux Klan group uniting to track down Django and Schultz… then proceed to argue over not seeing out of the white bag masks they wear and whose fault it is. Apart from an exceptional cameo, this feels like something that’s walked out of Monty Python and into a different film entirely. It’s okay and has a cute aura surrounding it but it’s badly out of place in the context of everything else in the movie.
As a film about slavery, Django Unchained excels. Whilst there isn’t a commentary per say (until Schultz loses it over Candie’s mistreatment of his slaves), the feel and backdrop to African Americans at this time period is encapsulated perfectly. The tone is correct with white man being higher on the social ladder than the blacks (the scene where a plantation owner called Big Daddy compares a freed slave like Django to a crippled idiot white man shows how bad it was in pre-abolished America). The punishments given out for runaway slaves are realistic, the conditions these people were subject to are accurate, and the rumoured mandingo fights would not be surprising if they turned out to be true. It’s astonishing really to think there’s not many movies made from this subject matter, when you consider it is one of America’s biggest and darkest parts of history.
There is a near overuse of the derogatory term ‘nigger’, which has baited controversy, but what people don’t understand is that the old days of slavery in the South were exactly like that; the term ‘nigger’ was bounded about as African Americans were treated as worse than second class. In the context, it’s used correctly, and given the tone of the slavery backdrop, it adds to the experience from the time period.
In contrast, it doesn’t quite capture the western genre’s essence; if you’re going to be generous and allow for little bits like title fonts, then sure they’re there; however most of the film takes part in the traditional southern states like Mississippi (with cotton plantations which are a far cry from the dusty, desert setting like many good showings from westerns). There are moments like in the first Texan town Django and Schultz come across where the western is encapsulated on a set, but then we get flung far and away from it. It’s simply not enough content wise to convince anyone that this can be considered a western movie, as it’s too far removed from traditional locations; it’s like setting a samurai warlord historical biopic in Aberystwyth.
I can’t say I enjoyed this much at all. Tarantino is undoubtedly a highly creative director at times but here he doesn’t do much for this supposed “return to form.” It is well made, the slavery and southern backdrop are enthralling, and what there is to enjoy, I enjoyed a lot more than the parts I didn’t like. But it’s near cartoonish given a serious subject matter, a lot of parts don’t work, and the top two draws don’t quite pull off a repeated revenge storyline which I’m bored of seeing from the same director. Django Unchained? Django Uninteresting more like – begrudgingly above average, and nothing more.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
