Django Unchained

 

Directed and written by Quentin Tarantino

With Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L Jackson, Kerry

Washington, Don Johnson, Jonah Hill and Quentin Tarantino

 There appear to be two kinds of filmgoers: those who embrace Quentin Tarantino’s

bold and bloody films (as  in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Inglorious Basterds) and those who simply refuse to watch his films.  For the former, Django Unchained is a Quentin Tartantino entertainment extravaganza, an action /revenge flick par excellence.  Mr Tarantino is a noted aficionado of B movies and spaghetti westerns, and this film pays lavish  tribute to those genres wherein the heros are anti heroes with little respect for social order.   He also has something to say about slavery.

  It is two years before the Civil War, and Dr King Schultz(Christoph Waltz) is a German bounty hunter looking for some stagecoach robber killers.  Django is a slave who happens to know where they are.  He is filthy, in chains, wearing rags.  Dr Shultz buys his freedom and they join forces to find(kill) the bounty hunter’s quarry.  In payment, Dr Shultz Offers to help Django find his wife, Broomhilda, a slave who has learned to speak German—thus the name Broomhilda.  Shultz is a businessman, but he also has a sense of humanity, unlike most of the other players in this film.  He has a distaste for slavery but thinks nothing of cold-bloodedly killing the bad guys for whom he receives bounty.

The film is a simple narrative of Django and Shultz’s bounty hunter partnership and revenge on those who enslaved Django and  Broomhilda.  Because this is a Tarantino film, the violence is over the top as the two ruthlessly kill the ‘bad guys.’  The viewer doesn’t feel bad because ‘they had it coming.’  Geysers of blood abound throughout Django, almost as in a comic strip.  Also, the ‘N’ word is heard constantly, over 100 times.  Remember it was in the 1850’s and that word was in constant use.

It is good versus evil, and the evil is really evil.  You see the relentless brutality used towards the slaves.  So when revenge is exacted, you want to cheer.   You have witnessed what it is like to be somebody’s property, not protected by the law.  One particularly violent Southerner is Calvin Candie(Leonardo DiCaprio) a wealthy plantation owner who watches his slaves fight to the death or perhaps thrown to his dogs to tear apart.

Django is not just an action entertainment.  It is a complex film with a message.  The performances are excellent.  Christoph Waltz is a sublime Dr.Schultz, often subtly moved by emotion.  Jamie Foxx is great as the single minded freed slave who will liberate Broomhilda, no matter what the obstacles which include dozens of Calvin Candie’s henchmen and the formidiable Uncle Tom, Samuel L Jackson, who is the House Slave, for Mr Candie.  Baby faced Leonardo DiCaprio is the quintessential Southern Gentleman, polite and sadistic all at once.

Django has plenty of cruelty, violence, vengeance.  After all, Quentin Tarantino is the unchallanged expert of brazen bloodshed.  There is also a lot of silliness, as when the hooded Klu Klux Klaners can’t get their hoods on straight.  The point to the film is ethically on target.   Slavery was an arrangement full of pain for the servants.  The standoff at the conclusion is astoundingly bloody.  But, remember they had it coming.