This Just Might Be My Masterpiece: A Review of 'Django Unchained'

"Django Unchained" is a necessary evil. Unlike films like "Precious" and "The Help," "Django Unchained" inspires honest, provocative, and intelligent discussions about race and violence, whether you think the movie is good or not. Indeed, some of the best reviews of "Django Unchained" criticize Quentin Tarantino's decisions as a filmmaker (see Armond White's review and some of Jermaine Spradley's article).

I can't remember another movie quite like "Django Unchained." As I walked to my car from the theater, I couldn't determine whether I liked it. All I knew was that I had experienced something. I got to hear a black woman yell "Whip him! Whip him!" in the theater as Django went to town on an evil white man. I got to hear white people laugh frequently as "nigger" was said again and again by both white and black characters.

I was eventually confused by my own reactions to "nigger." I personally didn't find it funny when any of the white characters said "nigger" - I just took it as a sign of the time and a reminder that people still use the word in the traditional sense. But when Samuel L. Jackson finally came on the screen, I found it difficult in a couple of instances not to laugh at his use of the word ... what the hell? Was it because I'm a hypocrite? Or was it simply the irony of Jackson's delivery? And why did I laugh much more at "nigger" in "Blazing Saddles" and never feel guilty about it?

Much has been said about whether "Django Unchained" functions as a black fantasy or a guilty white liberal's fantasy. Based on my observations, I'm pretty sure it's both. The black woman in the theater mightily confirmed the black fantasy. In a much different way, Christoph Waltz's character, Dr. King Schultz, confirmed the guilty white liberal fantasy. In the film, Schultz decides to kill Calvin Candie (a scarily effective performance by Leonardo DiCaprio) because of a troubling flashback involving a black man being ripped apart by dogs on Candie's order. The tricky part is that Schultz knows he will endanger two free black people, Django and his wife, by killing Candie! Repulsion obviously plays a part in Schultz's misguided use of violence, but guilt is also a factor: Schultz didn't prevent a black man from being killed by dogs. Schultz is overcome by guilt and repulsion because he had frequently allowed blacks to be mistreated by whites. The dogs simply highlighted what might happen when good men sit back and watch.  

Strangely, Quentin Tarantino is neither a guilty white liberal nor a black man, as explained in Armond White's "Still Not a Brother." At the same time, Tarantino is closer to black than to, say, Australian, as evidenced by the terrible accent Tarantino uses in his "Django Unchained" role, the worst cameo by any director in film history.

Tarantino has proven one thing throughout his career and now especially with "Django Unchained": he is the best living director at provoking extreme feelings. He's like a teenager who loves to push buttons for the sake of pushing buttons. You might think a movie like "The Human Centipede" is revolting, but if "Django Unchained" offends you, it easily tops the gag reflex. And what separates Tarantino from provocative directors like Sam Peckinpah is how his ideas often clash rather than complement each other, whether these ideas relate to genre, taste, morality, history, or whatever is on Tarantino's mind.

The last scene of "Django Unchained" disturbed the hell out of me, particularly when Django proceeded to shoot the knee caps of Samuel L. Jackson's self-hating head slave. Fuck fun and games and fantasy: the scene was not right in a moral sense.

But my moral response was soon put to rest. I felt extreme nostalgia upon hearing Tarantino's final song selection: the theme to "They Call Me Trinity," a comedic western that I watched with my family at least 25 times.