Film review - Django Unchained

After the disappointment of Inglorious Basterds, I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Tarantino’s latest offering, so I suppose I can no longer call myself The World’s Biggest Tarantino Fan™. I needn’t have worried, though, as Django Unchained avoids (almost) all of the ridiculous, poorly-judged moments of Basterds and is a thoroughly entertaining epic with a poetic script. It also manages to depict slavery in a more interesting and (I can’t quite say accurate, so I’ll say…) appropriate way than one might expect.

The setting is the Deep South in the 1850s. Verbose German bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buys a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) because he can recognise the faces of three wanted men. Django quickly shows natural flair for the bounty hunting business, so the two partner up to kill the South’s worst offenders and to rescue Django’s beloved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

Quentin’s script is detailed, funny and shows his brilliant use of language. He is most famous for his chats about American popular culture, and in Inglorious Basterds these became chats about German cinema of the 1930s. As this is his first film set before the moving image, he has had to forego all that, making Django Unchained feel a little less referential and arch than his other films.

Instead we have the wonderful Christoph Waltz rat-a-tat-tatting through line after line of flowery prose. His character really is the best thing about this film – a charming, cunning murderer with morals. Why he is nominated again for best supporting actor rather than full actor, I do not know. Foxx’s Django is a tower of quiet strength, and he is impressive in the role, but Waltz is on screen just as much and has a lot more to say.

Perhaps the most surprising performance comes from Samuel L. Jackson, who is almost unrecognisable as an elderly house slave. He’s the one who should have been nominated for best supporting actor. The part is quite small but crucial, and asks uncomfortable questions. And he plays it exquisitely.

Slavery is an issue that is hardly explored in cinema. Apart from a few worthy films that focus on it, it is generally glossed over in tales of the Old South, or just given a gentle nod to make sure we know the filmmakers are aware of it. Here it is integral to the plot, but it isn’t the plot alone. And it is shown to be brutal in the extreme – Tarantino isn’t taking the subject lightly, as Spike Lee presumed without seeing the film. Although he is often accused of making violence seem fun, the violence inflicted on the slaves is that other type of Tarantino violence – shocking, real and deeply unsettling.

Unfortunately, the film does go downhill a bit at the end. After a wonderful build-up of tension we get a lot of silly shootouts. These go on for too long and aren’t as beautiful, or cool as any of the sequences in Kill Bill, and instead are a bit jokey. Of course the redemptive aspect to the violence is nice, but if it was done in a more majestic way, it would have been the ending the film deserved.

Which brings me to the one truly stupid bit of the movie. A scene which took me completely out of the story and made me truly despair of my favourite director. It is the scene close to the end in which he plays an Australian ranch hand.

An Australian.

In 1850s Mississippi.

I’m not going to take cheap shots at Tarantino’s acting ability (I actually like him in From Dusk Till Dawn and Pulp Fiction), but it isn’t even a good Australian accent.

Some switch must have flipped in Quentin’s head in 2008, and he can no longer tell when an idea is good or hideously embarrassing. This is why he is playing an Australian here, and why the whole scene with Mike Myers in Inglorious Basterds exists. If he had been walking this tightrope in 1994, one step to the left and he’d have had Jules and Vincent whacking each other over the head like the Three Stooges before bringing Brett breakfast.

So, if you ignore that bit, Django Unchained is a very enjoyable cinema experience. It does not reach the majestic highs of a few scenes in Inglorious Basterds, but it doesn’t sink to that film’s lows either. There are no truly great Tarantino moments, but this is mature filmmaking with only a smattering of self-indulgent childishness.