Well, well, well looks like this is happening again. I bet you thought I was done shouting non-sequitors at my monitor and insisting on spouting pedantic complaints about movies you haven't seen. I can't say I blame you for thinking it. It's been, like, two years since a new post. I had even forgotten that this existed. Heck, I almost forgot how gifted I was at spewing snarky one-liners about talking dinosaurs. But then I saw Quentin Tarantino's "Django: Unchained," and as I was watching it, I thought to myself, "I think there are a lot of people who would love to know my opinions on this movie in absolutely excruciating detail." So do not despair, my beloved Film Scurvy-er's. I'm motherfucking back. And I'm irritated about a movie.
"Django: Unchained" is Tarantino's most recent foray into feel-good revisionist history (you may recall 2009's "Inglorious Basterds," a movie now famous for it's depiction of the murder of Hitler and inability to run it's title through spell-check). This one takes place in the deep south two years before the American Civil War breaks out (i.e. 1858), and concerns a slave named "Django" (the "D" is silent, as he is wont to point out, though how a lifelong slave knows about the minutiae of pronunciation is beyond me.... Is that racist?) and a "dentist." This "dentist," played by Chritoph Waltz (who is German. Don't ask me why he's in the US, cuz I don't know. I don't think Tarantino does either. Heck, I don't think the character even knows. I think one day he just appeared in the US and was all like, "Well, it's time to grossly misconstrue American History!") wishes to "buy" Django from some "slave traders" and totally not "shoot their fucking horse if they don't." Okay, so he's not a dentist. It's just a front for his lucrative bounty hunting firm, Schultz & Schultz Bounty Hunting Ltd.
"If we don't Kill 'em, Them can't be kilt!"
That weird thing on top is a tooth... Thus marks the first and last time I will ever say that sentence.
So after Dentist enlists Django to help him kill the film's first bounty through the use of a flimsy plot device (the first of many), the two galavant of into the sunset just killing every motherfucker that gives them the stink eye or even looks like they're going to say the N-word (which, holy Christ, is said A LOT. Like, I was expecting QT to use it a fair amount, but LITERALLY every eighth word or so is the N-Word. I can just imagine Tarantino sitting at his Mac, gleefully typing the word any chance he gets, so much so that his Mac starts getting uncomfortable (the Mac is white, and more accustomed to carefully maneuvering racial issues) and is like "Dude, maybe tone it down a little?" to which Tarantino would give that lil' smirk he does and say something like "I demand the right to speak as my characters would speak" and the Mac would fall silent because he kind of has a point. It stills makes Mac uncomfortable...). They kill some dudes and Jonah Hill shows up for literally three minutes as a klansman (don't worry that the KKK wasn't founded until several years after Reconstruction. It doesn't matter. Look! They're making light of years of horrific prejudice! HAHAHA! Jonah Hill was in Superbad!) and there is banter about the low quality of their white hoods. Where's Sally Menke when ya need her?
So to make a very, very, very long story palatable, Django finds out his wife has been taken to Leonardo DiCaprio. Soooooooo maybe just leave her there? Kind of sounds like a sweet deal, right? Sure, you still have to do backbreaking labor, but at least Leo DiCAPZ will be the MC to yo MISERY
....
.... Is that racist?
But seriously, how bad could it....
woooooAHHHHHHH! JESUS! ENOUGH WITH THE CRASH ZOOMS!
God almighty, that's jarring. It'd say you should probably use maybe eight crash zooms over the course of your career. There are, like, six in the first hour. I get it. It's an homage to a time when crash zooms were more frequent and it gives the movie a particular style that you like, Quentin. But even Kubrick only used the move in one movie (The Shining) and is was sparing. And Mr. Tarantino, Kubrick you are not.
Cuz Kubrick was FAT.
Anyway, the white guy who saved the black guy (cuz that's the only way it can happen...) go to save Kerry Washington! And in a fit of ludicrously serendipitous good luck, she is the only American slave in the history of forever, fictional or otherwise, to speak German! Happy day! Now Dentist/bounty-hunter/Christoph Waltz has a way to pretend to be interested in her as a possible business expense. But wait! Then the movie would only be a reasonable running time! Hmmm... how to fix this?
OH! I know! How about the two main characters engage in a bit of alarmingly unnecessary subterfuge by telling Leo DiCAPZ they want to buy a black slave fighter for $12,000 so they can go to the plantation and evaluate the fighter, pretend to notice Bromhilda (Kerry Washington. Yes, that's her name. Like the future Secretary of State!) and off-handedly buy her cheaply, and leave without buying the fighter instead of... just.... buying... her...? No, no, no, that doesn't make any sense. Nobody will buy that.
Orrrr.... roughly 4.9 million people will.
So instead of simply buying Bromhilda for the $12,000, which we find later they clearly have, with A LOT to spare, they try and trick Leo DiCAPZ which ends up with him cutting his hand and giving a very racist speech about African-American bone structure. Something to do with skulls. And dimples. Do black people have cuter smiles? (...Is that racist?) All of this because Samuel L. Jackson is one wily motherfucker (Oh yeah, he's in this. Which is really just tops). So they end up just paying the $12,000 for Bromhilda. What ensues is the most intense writing of sales receipts scene in the history of cinema (There wasn't much competition. The only other scene of receipt writing in cinematic history was in this movie) and it seems like the movie is winding down to a reasonable conclusion. But then... the unthinkable happens. A twist so great, so maniacal, so ingenious, it could have only been thought of by... by...
*sigh*
Okay, here's the deal. I don't appreciate lazy writing. I don't appreciate twists for the sake of twists (Looking at you, Shymalan) and if there has to be a twist, I'd like it to be at least marginally clever. If he had to have his little twist, there must have been a better way to do it than... this. So as Dentist and Django are getting ready to leave, there is a moment that occurs that I've been trying to wrap my head around since I left the theatre. Leo DiCAPZ, in a moment of total reason, requests that before the deal be official, the signers of the sale must shake hands. This is met with stiff resistance from Dentist. Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room becomes dense. Everyone tenses up, though it would appear on the surface, that Dentist is just being a little rude and DiCAPZ is being kinda dickish. The atmosphere seems disproportionally heavy to the matter at hand (pun intended
). Finally, through extreme cajoling and threats from DiCAPZ, Dentists goes to shake his hand. Something that seems totally innocuous and...BOOM MOTHERFUCKER.
Dentist straight up shoots DiCAPZ in the heart with a motherfucking concealed handgun. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.
Then he casually declares, "I couldn't resist." Really dude? You could have just shook his hand and never seen him again. It does, however, result in some fine acting from Samuel L. Jackson as he...
aaaahhhhHHHHHHHH! GOD DAMNIT CRASH ZOOM!!!
Jesus. Gonna give me an ulcer.
What ensues is a bloodbath the likes of which have been unseen since the previous Tarantino movie. The movie drags on for another half hour or so. We see Jamie Foxx's penis (Ladies). And Tarantino mercifully blows himself up (literally). Jamie Foxx makes his horse dance (unrelated to the penis). And they trot off into the night. Cue credits. Audience applauds wildly. I'm thoroughly confused.
If for a moment we decide that details in this movie don't matter (they clearly don't) and allow ourselves to view the movie as a piece of entertainment, what are we left with?
Well, for one thing, we are treated to a movie from a man who's been so successful making the movies he wants to makes, that anyone who may have restrained his filmmaking in the past is operating under the assumption that his creative process works and that to encumber it is to impede quality and profit (Again, Sally Menke, you are sorely missed). After the monstrous success of "Inglorious Basterds," anyone who was unsure of Tarantino's status as a lucrative, quality filmmaker had their minds changed in a big way. Every movie he has made to this point has been clever, well-written, precisely directed and carefully edited. Everyone had every reason to believe that Tarantino was going to do another quality movie. And in many ways, he did. This film is lovingly crafted. But it is done so by a child that believes every idea is a good idea and the adults are unwilling to cut anything because he's been so successful in the past.
What they fail to realize is that it was everyone surrounding Tarantino in the past that made his movies as impeccable as they have been. If nobody is questioning him, he is free to do what he wants. The result is a long, bloated, self-indulgent vanity picture in which he plays a small, but pivotal role (the weakest parts of his movies are the parts he acts in.) He is allowed to think he has created a cast of black characters that have truly transcended the historic tropes of black characters. This is despite the fact that the only way Django is able to make anything of himself is through the help of a white man. Despite the fact that he plays second fiddle to the only sympathetic white man in the whole movie for the first half. Despite the fact he has created a black female lead who is submissive, incomplete without her man and prone to fainting spells. Tarantino has not transcended race in this movie, despite what he may think.
I may be being a little rough on this movie. But it's partially because I can kind of see where this is going. A filmmaker (Tarantino) who latches on to a talented actor (Waltz) who are such a successful duo, nobody says no to any of their projects? That sounds vaguely familiar...
Oh.... right.
But that's enough of my pedantic belly-aching. Despite my whining, the movie was enjoyable, if long (Like this post? Oh, dear reader... you're... you're just too kind...). It was the most vapid of Tarantino's movies (except maybe for "Death Proof," but I think we're all willing to forget that one).
NOPE. NOPE, LET'S MOVE ALONG PLEASE.
But the vapidity doesn't take away all that much from the entertainment value. The problem is that it purports to be a watershed moment for film and the depiction of African Americans. It ain't. And the story telling is sloppy.... and it's too long... and it doesn't make sense....
...and there's too many crash zooms...
ohhhhhHHHAAHHHH oh wait...
In short, if you're willing to sit through nearly three hours of stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but is fun to look at, go see it. Though I'm assuming if you had an intention of seeing this, you would not have read this, considering it says *Warning: Full Spoilers Ahead* at the top. So...
To make it up, here's a cute baby.
That weird thing on top is a tooth....
...wait...
2.2/5
Shhh! Don't wake the Lynx!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Unchained
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/django_unchained_2012/
