Film Diary 2013: Django Unchained

Django Unchained is the eighth film from writer and director Quentin Tarantino, it's a vibrant Western set in the South two years before the civil war changed America for the better.  It is, quite uncommonly for Tarantino, a pretty straightforward tale, its intentions made thematically clear in a scene in which one character tells a German folk tale to our titular hero.

Jamie Foxx plays Django, a slave who was seperated from his wife (Kerry Washington) and has a singular and burning desire to save her.  He is fortunate in that his previous masters were the Brittle Brothers and a bounty hunter by the name of Dr. King Schutlz (Christoph Waltz) wants to claim the reward on their heads, however he needs someone who knows what they look like.

Django helps the erudite Schultz on his mission and the two make a deal, Django will work as a bounty hunter until the end of winter and then Schultz will help him find the man who bought his wife.

This is a film of two halves, with the first half focusing on the friendship between Schultz and Django.  Christoph Waltz is a joy, perhaps surprisingly providing the emotional fire of the movie in his open abhorence of the culture of racism he has to operate within, his ability to see-saw between efficient violence and persuasive reasoning allows Tarantino to play with his two greatest weapons; strong dialogue and visceral cinema.

Smartly Tarantino uses the violence in the film with intelligence, it is always appropriately played, whether it is shocking and painful to emphasize the suffering of good people or giddy and cathartic, revelling in the demise of wickedness.  It is never unnecessary violence for the sake of it, it always has a clear intention, and as Schultz mentions in his German folk tale, a hero must pass through hellfire, and showers of blood here have a baptismal transformative quality.

Just as the use of language is - if not completely historically accurate - appropriate, the use of violence goes to great lengths to depict a time and attitudes that people now would best wish hadn't happened.  Once we reach the film's second half and enter the world of infamous plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) does an ever increasingly ugly culture become startling visualised.

We meet Candie as he watches a Mandingo fight, and it is a hideous and brutal scene, deeply unsettling to watch, tawdry in its unflinching depiction of affluence and barbarism, and both DiCaprio and Tarantino revel in making Candie a despicable ignorant cess pool of the very worst aspects of humanity.  However, DiCaprio's performance wavers, and you never get beyond the sense of an actor performing a role rather than inhabiting it, rendering him something of a pantomime of villany.

It is Samuel L. Jackson who emerges as the film's strongest depiction of wretchedness, as Stephen, Candie's head servant, he is a truly vile figure, a twisted puppet master, both doting and unrepentently selfish.  It is a career best performance from Jackson who twists every pre-conceived notion you might have of him as an actor into creating an utterly disturbing and sinister creation.

Foxx, as the film's hero, keeps his performance subtle, and it works wonders, leaving the surface charm to Waltz (a winning grin and good heart gives way to one of the film's most powerful dramatic twists), Foxx uses a duality of intent - especially once he enters Candie Land - to stunning effect, his calm during the Mandingo fight scene and his strength of character when Schultz begins to fray is quietly masterful, perhaps, so restrained that it might even go unnoticed.  But, ultimately, you root for him the whole way through and you feel the same sense of justice and vengeance as he does when he faces the loathsome dregs of 19th century American society.

Unfortunately though the film hits a few stumbles, including a truly distancing and distracting cameo by the director that is enough to pluck you out of the film at a crucial point.  Whilst, overall, it is a far stronger work than Inglourious Basterds, it unfortunately lacks any singular moments as nerve-shredding as that film's opening interrogation or the incredibly tense basement bar scene.

A provocative, thought-provoking, strangely humourous and, for the most part, consistently thrilling film from one of contemporary cinemas most masterful pop-culture junkies.

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