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.