"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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
After reading about Django this would have almost been one of the rare times in my life where somebody changed my opinion on something (film watching wise) but not quite. It's something entirely different from anything that's come out since well Tarantino's last feature but the varying and always changing tones in the film don't work for me, how it works like you said, smashing buttons on an elevator panel yes. In one sweeping shot combined with the right music I feel for Django and his quest but then I'm emotionally unchained :), when the last act of violence done feels like it was created out of inspiration from a looney tunes cartoon, his wife plugs her ears, the house goes boom, his ride off on horse, there are other examples all over. Like you said I couldn't tell whether I liked it or not when I was walking out but my mind stayed like that till these very recent seconds right now. Dailouge, the hard hitting action, music and look of the film, there's a lot of incredible stuff, I just don't like the way it was all handled, his signature isn't as unqiue to me as it was in the 90's, just his way I suppose. 7 whips out 10.
Post a Comment