Django Bound by Stories

Rating: Null/10 (14 March 2016)

Have you noticed how some people are better suited for a certain age? The teenage jock who was popular with girls looks miserable in middle age, the awkward bookish loner is finally comfortable in an adult skin. Think of Michael Madsen and Mel Gibson as the former. Some people are the best version of themselves early, others late. It's a blessing to be able to transcend self and evolve without qualms so that there's never early or late.
I'm reminded of how immaturely Tarantino has aged every time I see him in interviews and compare with earlier memories. Starting out, he had infectious energy and a boyish charm that bulldozed through formality. He was natural as infant terrible. I'm talking about the person here, but as that factors into the work. Fresh was the word that came to mind to describe both Pulp Fiction and the person who made it.
Now my gut reaction every time I see him is of a churlish, crude 50 year old, bloated in his idea of self-worth, the rock star carelessness of youth now registering as impatient sloppiness. I pick up a sense of combative inadequacy that comes with knowing that the best version of yourself is in your past. As if to make up for it, he's more absorbed with each year with the importance of his own filmic universe.
His lack of growth in a cinematic sense is that he decided he wanted epic scope after a point but never bothered to learn how to use the camera. Leone grafted situational Italian humor only after he had mulled long and hard about the operatic fabric, being a Milanese maestro first and then a Roman joker. Tarantino pressed ahead with just bullish ego, writing, and visual effects. The result, starting with Kill Bill, was these lumbering patchworks of dialogue scenes and separate visual interludes and montages that linked actions.
You will see this on display in very first few minutes of this. A theatric scene of dialogue, and then wholly separate a visual interlude of horses running in slow-motion. The first thirty minutes are colorfully snarled explanations about who each character is one after the other.
But either by consequence or design, he wrote a set-bound story around a few characters this time, and once they hit the cabin, this eliminates most of his weak spots. Now the place imposes limits on how far he can sprawl. Now he doesn't have to be visual more than he was in Reservoir Dogs. This among his late work is the one that most recalls his early days of Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
Different characters as unreliable narrators. The whodunit is inconsequential, the thrills come from reinventing characters and story. He is as inflammatory and provocative as ever but a lot of it comes from the swap of stories. A most harrowing scene that rivals Marsellus Wallace at the basement is obviously a story spun to elicit a reaction from the racist general. Offended pundits will be too angry by that point to notice that this Django is later emasculated and has to rely on the Confederate sheriff.
All of the on-screen action is still crude and theatrical. Tarantino doctors viewpoints and has them swapped from the mouths of characters, none of it organic. But I perceive a more honest thing here, structured as it is around storytelling and mediated truth. He even offers a measure of emotional realization by the end; a letter that urges reconciliation in a divided country that he wrote to be able to make his way in a world ruled and bound by stories. It's all in the bittersweet timing of the reading; when he's a broken man who was bushwacked, not a cocky bastard.
But the most marvelous thing in all of this I thought was Jennifer Leigh. Just look at what she does with so few words; it's all body language, face, posture, how she leans in. They're warden and prisoner with Russell but didn't you also get a sense of husband and (abused) wife? That's almost entirely Leigh. She gives a masterclass in embodied acting while everyone else struts like peacocks.
The row about Oscars being white was obfuscation. The tragedy for me is that an actor of her caliber isn't gracing us yearly with works worthy of her. I see that Lynch has nabbed her already for Twin Peaks.