Film Review: Django Unchained

5/10

Quentin Tarantino's historical revisionism continues with Django Unchained, which offers his view on the end of the slave trade if it had to deal with Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx. How does Django impact on his later films? Is Jules Winnfield a distant relative of the grovelling man-servant Stephen? If so, does this mean that all of Jackson's characters in the Tarantino canon as related in some way? Trying to tease out the relationship between each character is ultimately more than actually watching Django, which overstays its welcome and lapses into a turgid second half.

 

For most of the film, Waltz is the star, playing sophisticated European bounty hunter Dr King Shultz who frees Django so that the former-slave can help him track down a trio of brothers who are wanted by the state for murder. Their partnership works out, and they continue to work together so that they can free Django's wife Broomhilda, who was bought by psychopathic plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). DiCaprio has won deserved acclaim for his role, and he gifts the film's second half it's only good scene, as he saws open the skull of a former slave to 'prove' the inadequacy of black people as a race.

 

Tarantino has always been indulgent, but never as bad as DU. A scene with a proto-KKK gang falls flat with Tarantino attempts to mock them. Before they attack Waltz and Foxx, the lynch mob stop to adjust their masks - they'd been cut earlier that afternoon, and evidently not very well, as they complain that they can't see out of the eye-holes  The scene is admittedly humourous at first - the suggestion that the Klan picked their infamous outfits not based on any tradition or superstition, but on a 'what do we have available' pragmatism - but the joke is dragged on and on, killing the humour and ruining the rest of the scene. It certainly can't have been made, Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes-style, to pad out the running time, which stretches to almost three hours, and features a last half hour (essentially Act 3.5) which is completely pointless, seemingly only existing to resolve the plot which could have been wrapped up earlier, and to give Quentin his inevitable cameo - as a slaver who, like every other character in this film, uses the n-word in a manner in which the casualness only adds to the discomfort. 

 

Which moves us on the main point - is Django a racist film? The film is scattered indiscriminately with racial epithets, (most estimates count them at a rate of one per minute). Often the word is used descriptively, in the same way that someone would use the term 'African-American', which has led some to suggest that, in this context, it is not offensive. A similar situation comes about in Hemingway's Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, where he uses the word numerous times to describe a black boxer who he is praising. He is not calling the name a 'n-----' to offend him, simply as a way to identify him. This argument falls flat, however - that word is loaded with a history and context which cannot be removed, and so, regardless of the intention of the usage, it is markedly offensive. It may perhaps be even more offensive used like this, as it contributes to a normalisation of the word which ignores the racist context in which it was created and used.  

 

The film is most problematic in regards to race, however, in the relationship which Shultz has with Django - although he frees him, and largely treats him as an equal (although pays him less from their bounties they collect), Waltz still technically his owner, and Django still has to operate within the master-slave social relationship. Therefore, Django is merely enabled by the white character to undertake his quest of saving Broomhilda. This task itself is also one of a personal vendetta, and not aimed at attacking the slavery system as a whole - the slavers are merely to ones who stand between the couple. Twice in the film Django is involved in freeing a group of slaves - once when he is first bought by Waltz, and again in the second-to-last scene. Both times he simply unlocks their shackles or their cage and leaves immediately, leaving them stranded in a hostile wilderness. The film is not, as it has been referred to as, an anti-slavery film, as much as it is a revenge film set in the time of slavery.