Watched: Django Unchained
Observations:
- I don’t think this film is racist, though I say that with a degree of reservation. Someone who commented on this movie pointed out that when they watched, racially-charged language got a laugh from the audience, but I don’t think that’s inherent to the film. There are definitely clear, directed laugh-out-loud moments, but the racism (and, being a picture that takes place at the height of slavery, the film portrays a shitload of racism) is played about as straight and uncomfortable as Tarantino can muster. Calvin Candie, Leonardo DiCaprio’s repulsive plantation owner, is outrageous but still chilling, and it’s telling that the clearest source of expressed distaste and discomfort comes from a white character. This film is visceral, and while it isn’t even close to a historical record it does an impressive job in showcasing the horrors of slavery. It isn’t shy in the slightest, and never once glamourises the concept of owning another human being.
- Having said all of that, I think a lot of this film rides on whether or not you take Tarantino seriously as a filmmaker, and a lot of people don’t. Violence for Tarantino is a leitmotif rather than a comment, and that can be quite a hard thing to get past - for some people, the powerful, charged conversations between Jamie Foxx (who is impossibly cool in this) and Samuel L. Jackson (who is so horrifyingly decrepit and evil that he deserves more recognition for playing so against type) will be overshadowed by the fact that the walls are covered in blood. That’s a shame, but I don’t necessarily blame them.
- The music was brilliant. Of course it was. It’s Tarantino.
- Staying on the topic of Tarantino himself, was he trying to be British or Australian? I couldn’t work it out - on the one hand, he was brave for trying, but on the other it was a less inspired cameo than in Pulp Fiction by a long shot.
- He also has the best exit in the whole film.
- Christoph Waltz was good, but sometimes a weak link. He does emotion better than in Inglourious Basterds, but his character didn’t quite feel fresh enough - the excessively polite language coupled with extreme violence was a bit Hans Landa, and I’m not sure why he got an Oscar nod.
- Kerry Washington is the criminally underused heart of this film. On the one hand, that’s not necessarily bad - Quentin Tarantino Does Not Write Women Well, and the fact that he nails the six or so lines that she has might well be more a case of luck than skill - but she did so much with so little.
- It’s a shame Zoe Bell ended up being reduced to a masked character with five seconds of screentime and no lines. That could have been interesting.
- What an ending.