The Fine Art of Plagiarism

Rating: 8/10 (7 March 2013)

www.eattheblinds.com
The last time I spent Xmas Day with Quentin Tarantino was in 1997. On that day, Jackie Brown and QT's shout outs to 70s Blaxploitation made my holidays worthy of celebration. From the good (White Dog), to the bad (Mean Johnny Barrows), to the flat out nasty (Maniac), B-movies have remained my greasy burger cure for Hollywood hangovers and nobody understands this craving better than Tarantino.
Because of Death Proof, I marked 2007 as the end of Tarantino's short, but impressive career. Inglourious Basterds made me realize my prediction was a tad premature and last night's Xmas screening of Django Unchained had me swallowing my half-eaten words. In short, props are due: Quentin Tarantino -- the fast-food auteur -- is back on the map. What's also back is his talent for turning plagiarism into art and elevating the B-movie into art house splendor. Derivative yes, but this is a special talent no other rip-off artist has done as exceptionally well as QT. Tarantino doesn't merely copy, he cuts and pastes, and if plagiarism is art, Django Unchained is 2 hours and 46 minutes of glorious B-movie cinema spooning.
While Django Unchained is a Runaway Slave flick bacon-wrapped with Spaghetti Western sauce and splattered with 'Argento Red' buckets of blood, it's also a monument of empowerment for a no-bullshit Hero who happens to be Black and proud. Despite refusing to watch DU, Spike Lee argues Tarantino is trivializing Slavery, an argument ignorantly reminiscent of the Catholic Church's attempt to smear Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. The fact is, Tarantino's portrayal of slavery (and white supremacy) is contemptuous. Over and over, Tarantino exposes viewers to the viciousness, brutality, and ugliness of slavery and the racists responsible for it. He then ridicules these racists before he sends them all to hell at the hands of a true (Black) Hero.
There really is only one thing to hate about this film and it comes in the form of a self- indulgent Director's cameo. Distracting beyond words, the scene is fortunately short lived and tactfully punctuated by Tarantino having himself blown to smithereens. Nitpicks aside, Django Unchained is steeped in so much of the 70s it looks, sounds and feels like golden age deja vu. With deserving cameos from Franco Nero (the original Django) and Bruce Dern, to the countless flashbacks recalling Peckinpah, George Roy Hill, Jeremiah Johnson, and volumes of others, Django Unchained is a cinematic standout in a digital age gone wrong. Do yourself a favor this holiday season and go see a brand-new Classic...on film (if you can).