One of Tarantino's Finest Works

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2013)

With the help of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) sets out to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington) from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Take the blaxploitation classics "Boss" and "Mandingo", throw in some spaghetti westerns, stir them around inside the brain of Quentin Tarantino, and you get this: another masterpiece from the perennial film student. Whether or not one likes his directing or his acting, Tarantino's writing has always been his strong point, and he exhibits that again here.
I want to address the issue of race, as this film sort of forces us to do. Spike Lee said about the film, "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me... I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." Although I am a white man and cannot speak as the descendant of American slaves, I did find it to be a powerful condemnation of slavery unlike we have seen nearly anywhere else. The film was the flip side to "Gone With the Wind". And its moral ambiguity was done flawlessly -- Django is the hero, yet he kills mercilessly and even allows slaves to die if it helps him meet his goals. He is an egoistic utilitarian -- no harm is too much if it helps his personal greater good.
"Django" and its approach to race is interesting from the perspective of someone who has watched Tarantino's career unfold. While I would hardly consider Tarantino a racist, he has written some questionable lines over the years, and batted the n-word around more freely than most white folks would feel proper doing (e.g. the "dead n***** storage" line in "Pulp Fiction" or the exchange in "True Romance" where Sicilians were said to have "black blood" and were "spawned by n*****s"). Yet, he has frequently had strong black characters (Marcellus Wallace, and especially Jackie Brown). What do we make of this? Has Tarantino found a way to transcend race in ways few others have?
I also want to put the film in perspective. Owen Gleiberman wrote that "Django isn't nearly the film that Inglourious was. It's less clever, and it doesn't have enough major characters – or enough of Tarantino's trademark structural ingenuity – to earn its two-hour-and-45-minute running time." I am mixed on this remark. While I do think that "Inglourious" was a stronger film and more tightly scripted (some of the references and allusions are so subtle, it takes repeated views to really get them), and I definitely think "Django" could have been told in 90 rather than 165 minutes, I do not mind its length. Again, referring to the moral ambiguity, we see this evolve and move forward as new situations arise.
On the acting front, Jamie Foxx is excellent and this is his best performance since "Ray", maybe ever. Leonardo DiCaprio falls short of his best work, but is still good. Christoph Waltz is the real gem here, much like he was in "Inglourious" -- why he does so few American films is a mystery. The most debatable performance seems to be on Samuel L. Jackson. I did not find him to be doing his best (I prefer him in "Black Snake Moan"), but others say this should have been his time to be recognized and awarded. I think opportunities passed before, and hopefully will not be overlooked again, but this was not it.
Best Picture? No. Best Director? No. But I can definitely see Best Screenplay and it is great to see that Tarantino's best work has been in the last five years -- it makes me think whatever he touches next will (again) be gold.