Dear Quentin Tarantino: I've long admired your work since I first saw Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction when I was 16 years old. Since the release of Inglourious Basterds nearly four years ago, you've convinced me that it's entirely possible to forge historical fiction out of pulpy, B-movie tropes and make them chillingly relevant, whilst being overwhelmingly entertaining. The closest comparison I can make to this technique are postmodern adaptations of Shakespeare I've seen developed for theatre, but even that is a loose comparison. Here, the execution with Django Unchained, while controversial, is absolutely flawless.
1858, the American South. German dentist King Shultz purchases Django, a slave, from a travelling slave-owner. Dr. Shultz shoots the slave-owner, dead and frees his captives. He reveals to Django he is actually a bounty hunter and trains Django to be his apprentice. After a year of lucrative exploits, Django reveals to Shultz he has a wife, Broomhilda. Enchanted by their personal history (due to a coincidental connection with her name to German lore), Shultz agrees to help Django find Broomhilda, who happens to be owned by a wealthy plantation owner named Calvin Candie. Candie also happens to be sadistic, shrewd, and morally corrupt; a fact the duo must deal with in order to leave with Broomhilda, and their lives.
Django is essentially a spaghetti western set amidst a pre-American Civil War, Deep South backdrop. Like my earlier comparison with Shakespeare, here, the setting is Tarantino's canvas, and the genre serves as his colors. The heroes of spaghetti westerns were typically regarded as social outcasts or marked men who had nothing to lose in order to reach their goals. Django is a freed slave, but gains individual strength upon his freedom and legendary status (because in 1858, an African-American, in dapper attire on a horse is going to draw attention). The stories usually dealt with reclaiming lost love or gold, here we get both, and with the similar quality of blood-soaked, graphic violence that made counterculture American westerns like The Wild Bunch so notorious. It's a daring artistic proposition, that entertainingly pays off.
Aside from the violence, the only thing that will potentially repel viewers from Django is the blatant displays of racism portrayed in the film. Yet, the racism in Django, while a subconscious political statement, is really a dramatic device used by Tarantino to remind viewers of how society viewed each other during this time period (one sequence involving a pre-KKK movement comes off as comically brilliant). Interestingly, I remember hearing very little about the anti-German sentiment and antisemitism that was portrayed in Inglourious Basterds. It is my personal opinion, as horrible as they are, that historical depictions of racism must avoid censorship, as a reminder of how far away we've matured as a society, and as a lesson why we should never tolerate them again.
Bold, ingenious, audacious. Django Unchained is currently my favorite film of 2012.
10/10
Peace,
- Jon
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