Django Unchained
I don’t know what to say about this film. Recently Loris came online and his first question was about the film. Maybe it was a bad idea to tell everyone I was going to watch “Django Unchained”, but if there is anything that unifies my friends, it is a common interest for Tarantino. A lot of us grew up with his films and if there was one film we considered cult, it was “Pulp Fiction”. If you are in the mid-twenties today, either you like movies in general (and then you like Tarantino) or you don’t have a particular interest in movies and Tarantino is the only director you know. That is how big of an impact he has.
With that in mind, “Inglorious Basterds” also happens to be on my favorite 30 films list, a feat which not even Wes Anderson managed (despite my incredible love for “The Darjeeling Limited” and “Moonrise Kingdom”). Tarantino is certainly not one of my favorite directors (his films are just too pointless?) but he manages to deeply impress me, either with uninhibited laughter in the case of “Death Proof” (oh yes, that was a PIFF experience only paralleled by “Sunrise”) or with a strong grip on my heart, leaving me almost shivering with excitement in the case of “Inglorious Basterds”. Unfortunately for “Django Unchained”, the only film you can really compare it to happens to be “Inglorious Basterds” and in comparison to that, it completely pales. While Hans Landa represents the creeping terror of Nazi Germans, Calvin Candie is a mere shadow of how cruel white people probably were back in the day – he is more talk than action in fact. Even so, he is probably the most interesting character precisely because of the way he talks. Until the point where he let Django and Broomhilda go, Monsieur Candie was the perfect evil guy who smooth talks himself through life, taking pleasure instead of hiding the way he objectifies human beings. If anyone thinks that there is no depth in Tarantino’s characters, Calvin Candie (as well as characters like Hans Landa) are examples to the contrary. At least to some degree, they are awfully realistic and multi-dimensional. This is how fearsome people really talk.
Apart from Calvin Candie, everybody else is either boring (Django and wife) or so utterly good-hearted that not even funny lines could make up for this empty feeling the character leaves behind (King Schultz – what kind of name is that anyways?). Don’t worry, I loved the character of King Schultz and Christoph Waltz is the perfect guy for the role, but did he really have to be a smart, resourceful, funny and – on top of all of that – good-hearted man from a culture with superior morals? Even though he was responsible for 90% of the fun in the film, it did leave me with a somewhat bad taste, especially when the most nationalistic German legend is being simplified to a “hero saves his woman” tale.
I also told Loris that for most of the film, “Django Unchained” is to Tarantino what “True Grit” is for the Coen brothers – they are the directors’ most recent works, they have a more simplistic story than most of their other works, and most of all, “good” and “bad” characters are unusually well-defined in both films in comparison to what they normally do. Overall, “True Grit” is a little more true to its feel-good character, and it is probably for that reason that I prefer it. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that “Django Unchained” is a much bigger spectacle, worthy of a Tarantino film and a definite must-see. At least this is the case if you are the kind of person who enjoys some politically incorrect fun.