Quentin Tarantino is the sort of director who’s been around long enough and put out enough impactful work that it starts to feel necessary to think about where each new movie he makes stands in his overall oeuvre. So you can understand where I’m coming from, I’ll briefly address what my own feelings on each of his movies have been. Reservoir Dogs hasn’t aged well over the years, but at the time it came out it was a ballsy, attention-grabbing film that really announced to the world that Tarantino was a director to watch. Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, those are the masterpieces and the best molding of style and substance that he’s produced to this point. After that the guy’s work got a little bit too masturbatory for me, and started to feel like an empty excuse to indulge in his childhood fetishes (I’m talking movies here, not women’s feet). Kill Bill and Death Proof are movies that exist to showcase style alone and are not my favorites. With Inglorious Basterds he made a bit of a comeback. Here there was some drama and storytelling to go along with the genre flourishes. While I’m not crazy about how the film comes together as a whole, it contains at least two scenes that are incredible cinematic achievements.
So where does that put his new release, Django Unchained? This is a film that sees him continuing the good work he got back to in Basterds, and taking it to another level. It features a melding of kitschy filmmaking techniques with a human story that affects you on an emotional level, and it’s definitely the best overall film he’s made since Jackie Brown. Django is an homage to the Spaghetti Western—with a flavorful dose of Blacksploitation thrown in—that tells the sort of stranger-comes-to-town-and-protects-an-innocent story that you’d expect from the Westerns of guys like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci, combined with the sort of black-hero-sticks-it-to-the-white-devil story that was often featured in Blacksploitation fare like Super Fly and Black Caesar. Jamie Foxx stars as Django, a slave who is freed and trained to be a bounty hunter by an eccentric though exceptional German immigrant named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). What starts as a relationship of convenience blossoms into something more, and eventually Schultz finds himself traveling from Texas to Mississippi to help Django locate and free his wife, who turns out to be in the clutches of a sadistic slave owner by the name of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Unfortunately for our heroes, Candie isn’t the sort of man who gives up something he owns easily, and he and his scheming head of house, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), prove to be a duo experienced enough in evil that they’re not likely to be outsmarted. Which means Schultz and Django’s attempt to do just that ends up playing out with violent and bloody results.
This being a Tarantino movie, it makes sense to start talking about it by addressing its Tarantinoness. Funky soundtracks and quirky bits of dialogue give his films their unique flavor and have become trademarks over time, and Django makes liberal use of them. The music here is pretty fun. It’s not blissful, revelatory work like the stuff RZA did for the Kill Bill soundtrack, but it mixes an affinity for the Ennio Morricone scores of the 60s and 70s with a smattering of rap and soul to create a sonic experience that feels very appropriate for a Blacksploitation Spaghetti Western called Django Unchained. Nothing here reaches the transcendent heights of Morricone’s iconic themes for films like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West, but Tarantino does include a few Morricone tracks on the soundtrack—and even one from Jim Croce. And, even better than that, the period setting of the film makes it impossible for him to have any of the characters lecture us on how hip all of the music is.
While Tarantino is an able enough verbal gymnast to make sure that his characters are always speaking in unique, quirky quips, that can be either a good thing or a bad thing. When he’s at his worst (Death Proof) he makes all of his characters talk in his own voice and say things that push his own agendas, but when he’s at his best he’s able to give each of his characters unique motivations and vocal ticks that would make their dialogue instantly recognizable even if you just read it off the page with no character name assigned to it. Django Unchained is Tarantino at his best, as far as character work goes. Django, Schultz, and all of the dastardly people they do business with instantly solidify their places as some of the most memorable characters the filmmaker has created. And, as long as we’re talking about Tarantinoness, the spring-mounted tooth atop Schultz’s wagon is just delightful, and instantly makes it replace the crude “Pussy Wagon” from Kill Bill as the signature Tarantino movie vehicle.
I’ve made the claim that this movie is an effective melding of style and substance, so let’s get a little bit into the substance. What’s here that resonates? In addition to the friendship that develops between Django and Schultz being believable, and the journey to rescue Django’s wife being one with personal stakes that’s easy to become invested in, Django also handles the reality of life as a slave in a shockingly resonant way. Though Inglorious Basterds was in some ways a holocaust film, and Waltz’s character there was one of the worst Nazis ever to appear in cinema, that movie never really got to the heart of the horrors of the holocaust. Not so with Django and American slavery. In between all of the typical Tarantino showiness are scenes that absolutely suck the air out of the room with their sobering depictions of the viciousness and inhumanity of slavery. A scene where DiCaprio’s character is staging a “Mandingo” fight is particularly effective when it comes to filling your stomach with bile. Also, a scene where Django has trouble killing a man while he’s in front of his child is surprisingly sobering and manages to add some weight to the film’s violence, which could have been so glorified and exploitive that it felt irresponsible otherwise.
Ultimately though, the reason Django really sings is the cast that Tarantino has put together. Arguments about who gives the best performance could go on forever, so let’s just talk a little about what makes each of these actors great. Jamie Foxx has probably the most thankless role, playing a straight hero type while everyone else gets to go nuts as crazy side characters, but he manages to make you feel all of the emotional conflict he’s projecting in the dramatic scenes, and his swagger makes you cheer during all of the over the top action scenes. He was a good choice to lead this film. Christoph Waltz is charming and magnetic, and he’s putting in work here that almost rivals the unparalleled stuff he did in Inglorious Basterds. So far it’s been Tarantino who’s been able to best use his considerable talents. Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor who keeps getting better the older he gets, and in his role here he’s the most natural and believable that he’s ever been. He’s having fun, and he’s going big with the villainy, but he never gets hammy. He sells everything he’s doing. Samuel L. Jackson gives probably the best performance of his very lengthy career. Stephen is a slimy, detestable character; a sort of human Gollum. At the drop of a hat he goes from haughty, to scheming, to subservient, and Jackson pulls every transition off. He makes his supplicating grin and his hateful scowl terrifying in equal measure. And, in addition to these four featured actors, you’ve also got Kerry Washington being a lovely and vital presence as Django’s wife and Don Johnson being hilarious as a sleazy plantation owner in performances that feel like they deserved more focus than they got. This is probably the best cast Tarantino has ever directed.
The only real gripe to have with the film is that it’s too long. Tarantino is an artist defined by his indulgences, and while they can often lead to memorable moments that feel like cinematic gems you could only get from his work, the place where his indulging is successful least often is in the length of his run times. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that Django Unchained runs a little long and that a couple scenes could be trimmed. This movie is far too long, with excesses that needed to be curbed at the screenwriting level. By the time you’re in the long march to Calvin Candie’s home of operations, Candie Land, it starts to feel like you’re watching one of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. No revenge tale has ever or will ever need to run for two hours and forty minutes to be properly told. Fatigue sets in, eventually to the point where every new use of slow motion starts to make you cringe. Django Unchained is so damn long that part of me wanted to bump it down to a middling rating because of it, but ultimately it’s just too damn good for me to have the heart to do that.
