“Django Unchained” written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

By on January 1, 2013

film icon Dan Walker on Film

 

Django Unchained

 

Director: Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds)

DIrector of Photography: Robert Richardson (Oscars for JFK, The Aviator and Hugo — one of only 3 cinematographers with 3 Oscars)

Cast:

Jamie Foxx (Any Given Sunday, Best Actor Oscar for Ray, Dreamgirls)

Christoph Waltz (Best Supporting Oscar for Inglourious Basterds, Carnage. Water for Elephants)

Leonard DiCaprio (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Blood Diamond, Gangs of New York, The Aviator)

Kerry Washington (Ray, The Last King of Scotland, Miracle at St. Anna)

Samuel L. Jackson (Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever*, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, the Star Wars prequels)

Running Time: 165 minutes

 

I like Tarantino and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns.  This movie is Tarantino’s spaghetti Western and he borrows from Pekinpah as well as Leone.

QTOther than Michael Moore (and maybe Kathryn Bigelow), I can’t think of a more polarizing director than Quentin Tarantino — an extreme case of people either liking a director or hating a director, which is understandable.  He makes too much of a statement to fall in the middle.  I remember thinking after seeing “Pulp Fiction” how natural and realistic the dialogue was.  Someone I spoke to about the movie said he hated it because “people don’t talk that way”.  They did at MY high school.  Depends on your background and perspective, clearly.

Dr. King Schultz (Waltz) is a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter in the pre-Civil War South (although the beautiful backdrops are distinctly  Western and brought to mind John Wayne’s “The Searchers”).  Django (Foxx) is a chained slave.  Schultz’s next targets are murderous brothers who happen to have also taken away Django’s German-speaking slave wife Broomhilde, (Washington).   The brothers brutally whipped Broomhilde in front of Django before splitting the couple.  Schultz doesn’t know what the brothers look like, which is why he enlists Django’s help.   He tracks down, frees and arms Django and the rest of the movie is about the situations and characters they meet along their way.  Besides Leone and Peckinpah, I couldn’t help but think of Mel Brooks’ standard-setting “Blazing Saddles” and Paul Bartel’s wonderful “Lust in the Dust” as I watched “Django”.

QTdirectLike all Tarantino’s movies, “Django Unchained” has almost-too-clever-for-its-own-good dialogue, unique situations — plot-advancing and not (the Mandingo subplot doesn’t at all go where you think it will) — inspired acting, slick production, great photography (Richardson, who’s also done great work for Scorsese and Oliver Stone) and surprising and interesting music score/song choices.  For people who say Tarantino’s movies are too violent, I explain it’s like stressing over the violence in Road Runner cartoons.  The violence is tempered with humor and/or justifiable vengeance or it’s overdone to the point of absurdity.  Tarantino has never been shy about borrowing from other directors (and himself) and there are referential touches throughout the movie.  Just listening to the score by itself would be entertaining.  You always get your money’s worth with this guy.

Foxx and Waltz prove themselves strong screen presences and good actors.  While I can understand he and Tarantino wanting to work together again after his riveting performance in “Inglourious Basterds” — Waltz’s accent, though understandable, requires some tolerance, mostly because he over-enunciates every word.  It’s clear English is not his first, second or third language (I believe they’re German, French and Italian) and you get the feeling his lines were given to him phonetically.  He has a lot of dialogue.

QT3The little I read prior to the movie talked about DiCaprio’s — who is his usual reliable but still-too-boyish self — apprehension to play wealthy, cruel and sadistic slave-holder Calvin Candie (his estate is Candieland), the current owner of Broomhilde.   What I’m sure bothered him most — like Danny Aiello’s objections to his character in “Do the Right Thing” — was the blatant racism and, especially, the excessive use of the N-word.**.   Sam Jackson, as Stephen, Candie’s main house servant, is given plenty of seemingly tailor-made scene-stealing lines and he delivers them with his usual potent authority.  Washington is pretty and effective in her (minimal) role.

Nice appearances by James Russo, Bruce Dern (remember him?), Don Johnson (remember remembering him?), James Remar, Franco Nero, Tom Wopat and, appearing in one of his movies as he does from time to time, Tarantino.  I often find QT’s appearances in his own movies distracting because they just reveal his limitations as an actor.  It works here because his lines are basically responsive grunts with a southern accent.  All the supporting characters were solid with the exception of one baffling cameo by Jonah Hill, which comes across as the result of Hill asking Tarantino to put him in one of his films and nothing more.

QT4Plainly put, if you have an aversion to Tarantino, this movie will perpetuate that aversion.  If you love Tarantino, “Django Unchained” is another great ride by one of the few writers or directors who actually has a definite vision and unique, distinctive movie-making style.   For a director to make a fresh, unique and vibrant movie every time out*** after making them for 20 years is pretty amazing, especially considering how many Tarantino-influenced directors (like Guy Ritchie and Doug Liman) are making movies.   “Seven Psychopaths”, directed by Martin McDonagh, was enjoyable and looks like it could have easily been written and  directed by Tarantino, although it was neither as showy or cohesive as Tarantino’s movies.

It bothered me that some of the characters’ dialogue and delivery sounds much more modern-day than 1858 (the year the movie’s set), especially Django and Stephen (when he breaks out of Stepin’ Fetchit mode).  I understand Django is the movie’s Man With No Name and Reggie Hammond from “24 Hours” but this is still a historical piece.  I also thought a key event at the movie’s climax was too similar to the ending of “Inglourious Basterds”.

There is never a dull moment with the movie, but I found myself getting restless about 30 minutes before the end.   I probably would have been less restless had I checked the running time beforehand.

Despite my reservations with some of the dialogue and my restlessness toward the end, “Django Unchained” is easily one of the best, most funny and entertaining movies this year**** and the one I’m most looking forward to watching a second time.

Dan

——————

SLJ1* Jackson was robbed not only of winning Best Supporting Actor that year. Worse,  he didn’t even get a nomination for what has to be one of his best performances in “Jungle Fever,” a great Spike Lee movie, full of excellent performances, the best thing being Jackson as the main character’s crackhead brother, an (unrecognizable) Halle Berry as his crack addict woman and Queen Latifah in a short but potent role as a waitress.

 

** As with Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” (one of my favorite romantic movies because the romance is subtle), Spike Lee has been publicly critical about Tarantino directing a black-themed movie and being very liberal with his N-word use.  He actually counted the number of times the word came up in “Jackie Brown”.  The more he complains about other directors, the more angry and sour grapes he seems and it detracts from his own work.  Doesn’t he have anyone around him to tell him that?  He’s even taken shots at Clint Eastwood, whose responses were typically blunt, no-nonsense and hilarious.

*** Actually, I couldn’t watch more than 30 minutes of his contribution to the double-header “Grindhouse” with Robert Rodriguez’ “Planet Terror” (which was the better movie of the two).  In the case of that movie, the dialogue WAS too clever for its own good and the violence too gratuitous, with Tarantino parodying himself to the point of tedium.   I don’t count that against him because it wasn’t a stand-alone movie and he really redeemed himself with “Inglourious Basterds”.  The same goes for “The Man from Hollywood”, his contribution to 1995’s “Four Rooms”.

**** If there was an Oscar category for Most Wonderful or Most Charming movie, Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” would be a shoo-in this year.  See it.  As I mentioned in a previous write-up, Anderson is the only director whose work I’ll see just because of his involvement.   Tarantino would be another if it weren’t for “Death Proof”.

Dan

 

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