Another Argument for Tarantino's Crazed Genius

Rating: 10/10 (6 August 2015)

It is a preposterous meeting. It's past midnight, in the darkest part of the forest, on a brittle winter evening. Traveling by horseback from a nearby auction, in which they purchased a handful of slaves, the Speck Brothers (James Remar, James Russo) are traders of infamy, their cruelty reflected in the way they force their newfound property to travel by foot, barely clothed. The journey is slow, brutal, its stagnant pacing suddenly interrupted by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German ex-dentist currently making a living through bounty hunting. One could ask how Schultz, sans GPS (let alone technology), is able to track down the Specks in this dense Texas forest in the middle of the night — but I won't go there.
Having caught wind of one of the Specks' purchases, Django (Jamie Foxx), Schultz has sought him out in hopes to gather information about the Brittle Brothers, for whom he has a warrant. Django, it seems, has such a terrifying past regarding the siblings that forgetting their faces is an impossibility; Schultz, figuring that the slave is the man he needs to get the job done, frees him and shoots his owners. The two then embark on a risky journey, beginning with the eventual killing of the Brittles and ending with an unexpected, bloody dose of catharsis. The catharsis, dangerously, comes in the form of the daring rescue of Django's long-lost wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who is currently owned by sadistic plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Quentin Tarantino is, if not the greatest filmmaker of his generation, a provocateur. Excess is better than suggestion, so it's a relief that Tarantino likes to work in broad strokes instead of meticulous, celluloid shaded pointillism. Ever since he introduced himself to the world with 1992's groundbreaking "Reservoir Dogs", Tarantino's diverse filmography has done nothing but portray just how risky of a filmmaker he is, how he's matured, how he's gotten so comfortable with pushing boundaries that boundaries eventually become little black dots on the horizon as he rides off into the sunset in his godforsaken Pussy Wagon. That being said, "Django Unchained" is, without a doubt, his most love-it-or-hate-it film. Those who hate it will despise how it surrounds the sensitive issue of slavery with pulp flavor and violence used jokingly instead of with weight; but those who love it will relish Tarantino's dialogue (and slippery as ever), the glowing performances, the spaghetti western setting, the in-your-face treatment of it all.
As much as I loved "Django Unchained", it's easy to see how it could offend the easily offended. The splatter is more plentiful than it was in "Inglourious Basterds" (it's more reminiscent of the unrelenting carnage of "Kill Bill"), N-words abound, and cruelty becomes a language more common than English. But Tarantino, despite having a blast with his story, uses the splatter as a call-to-action, the N-word as an authentic part of the dialect the many racist characters spit out, cruelty as a reminder that times in pre-War South were nothing but long washes of atrocious bigotry and violence. The most controversial scene in the movie (and there are many), comes in the form of a crude fight to the death between two slaves, enforced by DiCaprio's Candie. As inhuman as the scene is, however, Tarantino's goal isn't to entertain but to melodramatically develop Candie's character — as a man only the Devil could rival, the hatred we feel for him is so strong that when the fiendishly bloody first ending (there are two) arrives, it feels justified; it's as though Tarantino is giving a face to all the psychopathic slave owners of the past we never got to know, presenting us with an unspeakably barbarous reconfiguring of our past while poking slight fun at the monstrous ignorance and savageness of our ancestors.
More impressive is how Tarantino can deliver such slick historical commentary while still managing to slide in hysterically funny sequences and moments of unrefined beauty. His best use of comedy comes early on during a KKK meeting: the members, planning to attack Django and Schultz following a sour meeting with a plantation owner, spend most of the grouping arguing about the tiny eyes holes in their bag masks rather than intelligently coming up with a foolproof plan. The scene, over-the-top and reflective of the idiocy of the time period, works as yet another satirical punch Tarantino executes with effortless mastery. His cinematographic delicacies fondle the Southern landscape in grande scale, mirroring the epics of John Ford and Howard Hawks; the way he surrounds the slaveowners with eye-catching affluence only reminds us that wealth wasn't always something to be desired, especially if you received it in vomit-inducing ways.
Stronger is the cast, the smallest but most extraordinary of his films. After winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in "Inglourious Basterds", Waltz gives yet another bravura performance through a similarly minded, silver-tongued characterization that allows him to deliver monologue after monologue and never lose our attention. Foxx is menacingly silent as a slave on an explosive path of retribution, Washington touching as his long-suffering wife, Samuel L. Jackson first-rate as Candie's psychotic right-hand man. But best is Leonardo DiCaprio — giving one of his finest performances here as the menacing Calvin Candie, he frighteningly goes back and forth between charming and fearsome; he is the best on screen villain in years.
"Django Unchained" is many things: it's a reinvention of the Western (or, in this case, the Southern), a splendid character piece, and another argument for Tarantino's genius. He plans to retire at 60, but such a statement is easy to ignore — filmmakers as brilliant as Tarantino are so few and far between that a world existing without anticipation for another one of his films doesn't seem like a very fun place to live.