DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)

Quentin Tarantino’s a rambunctious soul, ain’t he? King Quentin's brand of social humanist cinema might have a few too many gratuitous buckets of blood to satisfy puritans of the genre, but it has its (vengeful) heart in the right place. With the highs he achieved with his Nazi-scalping, milk-drinking, postmodernist potshot-taking at the Third Reich INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, it was obvious that DJANGO UNCHAINED would arrive, surrounded by tremendous hype and would have face up to high expectations. To a large extent, it does not disappoint.
 

The story is a freewheeling Spaghetti Southern, telling the story of a black slave Django (the D is silent) (Jamie Foxx) who is recruited (in typical bloody Tarantino style) by a dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (a magnificent Christoph “May I have a glass of your delicious milk?” Waltz) to find and kill the three Brittle brothers, wanted by the state for a murder. The Brittle brothers and Django (the D is silent) have a history, which involves Django’s attempt to run away with his wife Bromhilda von Shaft (don’t ask) from their previous master. Now Django has a chance at bloody vengeance, that too, backed by the law. As he says, “Killing white folks and they pay you for it… what’s not to like?” The story takes a turn around the halfway mark to finding Bromhilda, or Hildy as Django calls her, and going all the way to the estate of a demented Francophile slave-owner named Calvin Candie (Leo DiCaprio, having the time of his life) under the pretense of buying Mandingo slavefighters. The trajectory of the story, like in all QT films, is complex and is best not explained here. It’s not my fault that you’re scratching your head at this point.

The film is a veritable storehouse of flawless individual moments and scenes which can be rewatched time and again. From the Ku Klux Klan segment about misshapen masks to the dinner table scene where Calvin Candie goes just a teeny weeny bit crazy when he realises he’s being made a fool of to the hyper-realistic flashback scene where Django and Hildy’s escape attempt is chronicled to the throbbing beats of Anthony Hamilton’s FREEDOM. The scene where Schultz is aiming at Ellis Brittle from a long distance on the directions of Django is a terrific example of the feel of this film.

Schultz: - You sure that’s him?

Django: - Yeah.

Schultz: - Positive?

Django: - I don’t know.

Schultz: - You don’t know if you’re positive?

Django: - I don’t know what “positive” mean.

Schultz: - Means you’re sure.

Django: - Yes.

Schultz : - Yes what?

Django :  - Yes, I’m sure that’s Ellis Brittle. (Schultz shoots Ellis) I’m positive he dead.

Tarantino shows all of his flair at creating labyrinthine dialogue that seem to ultimately snake and twist their way into ferocious bloodbaths. The film is closer to the sudden-zooming, fast-cutting, restless camera visual flourish of the KILL BILL movies than the laidback conversational setpieces of PULP FICTION, and is all the more dynamic for it. Say what you will about QT and his fetishes for everything from food to foot and his stubborn refusal to sober up and his relentless fascination for the most cliché-ridden forms of cult cinema, the man will draw your eyeballs to his film and he will not let go.

The film benefits from two sublime performances, from Christoph Waltz and Leo DiCaprio. Waltz’s character, in particular, is crucial to the film’s structure. He is the one character we are supposed to sympathise and empathise with, even more so than the acerbic angry young man Django. King Schultz is our entry-point, the amoral liberal-minded bounty hunter, somewhere between the amoral psychotic Calvin Candie and the amoral killing machine Django. DiCaprio is given a different directive—go crazy and give the audience something to gawp at. After a long string of hard-hitting realistic thematically mature characters in films ranging from BLOOD DIAMOND to INCEPTION, as well as being Martin Scorsese’s resident muse in THE DEPARTED, THE AVIATOR and SHUTTER ISLAND, here he takes a welcome break and just has a killer time, taking us on a thrill-ride of pipe-chomping brutality.

The problem with DJANGO UNCHAINED starts somewhere near the end of the film. Tarantino seemed to be having too much of a good time on the sets of the film and didn’t know when to stop. If the film had ended with Django and Hildy walking off into the sunset right after the post-purchase bloodbath, it would have been a far better film. Instead, QT adds in a cameo for himself and inserts a needless continuance of gratuitous violence, breaking the rhythm of the film. Many of the scenes at Candieland could also have been chopped off quite a bit. Sharper editing scissors would have made this film much better than it is. Beyond the problems with the length of the film, the film suffers from lack of development of the romance between Django and Hildy. QT has never been very good at romance and romantic subplots are always at the periphery of his films. Therefore it’s a problem in DJANGO UNCHAINED that the love story is so important to the development of the film’s story. Quentin probably realised this, which is why he gives us the Schultz-Django bromance to compensate.

An unrestrained, sexy second chapter of History Rewritten by Quentin Tarantino that will delight all of his fans and leave the rest stunned by what they’ve just seen. 8/10.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012)

Romcom is such a done-to-death genre. A director would have to be crazy to do it. He’d have to be crazier still to make a romcom about a crazy guy. And he’d  have to be batshit crazy to make a romcom where if you look closely, just about every character is a nutjob. David. O Russell is just that kind of crazy. Oh and yeah, he’s also a fucking genius. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is the best comedy I saw in 2012 and one of the best romcoms I have seen in quite some time, a fluid effortless entertainer, a glorious throwback to the days when good romantic movies ended with dance competitions and confessions of love everlasting. Y’know, before the indie hipsters took it over, the self-conscious arty bastards.

Bradley Cooper stars as Pat Solitano, Jr., a teacher with bipolar disorder who’s spent the eight months prior to the film’s beginning in a mental asylum, for nearly beating his wife’s lover to death in a fit of rage. Explosions of rage are not an anomaly in their family. His father, Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro in sublime form), is banned from attending any Philadelphia Eagles rugby games because of too many brawls at matches. Now, Pat Sr has lost his job and makes a living from sports betting, which involves him sitting for hours on end in front of the television, transfixed by his many superstitions and obsessions. Pat Jr’s mother Dolores (played by Australian actress Jacki Weaver) has come to terms with the fact that the men in her family are not entirely mentally stable. She tries to watch out for them, does her best to protect them from themselves. Doesn’t always work.

After getting out of the asylum, Pat is obsessed with getting back with his wife Nikki. He starts reading books that Nikki teaches in her high school, he starts a workout regimen, he starts going to therapy sessions with his court-ordered shrink Cliff Patel (Anupam Kher in a restrained tasteful performance). During the course of this self-improvement odyssey, he meets a mysterious, attractive woman Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), his best friend’s sister-in-law. Tiffany has problems of her own. After her policeman husband Tommy died, she had sex with eleven people in her office and subsequently got fired. Tiffany and Pat share an electric chemistry the likes of which I have rarely seen. They have a scene in a diner where they discuss a sexual fantasy involving an older woman, which had my jaw on the floor. A romcom makes or breaks on the strength of its lead pair, and on that criterion, SLP ranks alongside the classics of the genre like ANNIE HALL and WHEN HARRY MET SALLY….

David O. Russell’s approach to all the crazy in the movie’s screenplay is to be crazy himself. Many of the scenes in the Solitano house are filled with people all talking simultaneously and Russell uses a very uncoventional shooting style to accommodate them all. He speeds up some frames, the edits come fast and hard, basically just letting the camera go where it will. There’s a shot in the film near the end when Pat and Tiffany kiss and the camera zooms back, rather than zooming in as if often done during climactic moments of romantic catharsis. I have seen shots like this before, even in another Bradley Cooper film LIMITLESS (2011), but I never have any idea how it’s achieved. The effect, needless to say, is breathtaking.

The acting in the film is top-notch. Bradley Cooper improves with every film he does, laying in this film a firm claim to be Hollywood’s biggest young star. Pat’s approach to the sharp uncomfortable edges of life is to pretend that they are insignificant and that life always turns out for the best. He is so enamoured of the idea of silver linings that he cannot accept that sometimes they just don’t exist. Cooper’s performance is one of quiet desperation, emotional vulnerability and a volatility that often comes to the fore when he hears Stevie Wonder’s My Cherie Amour. As for Jennifer Lawrence, I need to get something off my chest. Oooooh mama. She plays Tiffany as a seductive goth who, despite being nearly as fucked up as Pat, is more comfortable with who she is. At just twenty-two, she looks much older and shows incredible promise. I was amazed by her gutsy turn in WINTER’S BONE and she continues her fluent form here too. Robert DeNiro stuns as an obsessive-compulsive father who struggles to realise that his son is more like him than he’d like. This is one of his best performances in a long time and shows all of the range and ability of this legend of the silver screen. Jacki Weaver too is effective as Dolores Solitano, the glue that holds the family together.

 SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is the feel-good movie of 2012, a sweet, funny, insightful journey into the mysteries of love and the craziness that follows. Must-watch for any fans of the romcom genre. 8.5/10.