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 Who
doesn’t love an origin story? The becoming of a mere mortal into
something extraordinary, something other, better, stronger, faster,
etc., is one of the most alluring propositions of any superhero tale,
either in comic book form or on film. Often those hyper-evolutionary
myths find their basis in dark, dirty roots, whether the dread of
radiation and science gone way too far, or in the case of Django
Unchained, the need for a hero to crawl out of the muck and filth of the
United States’ horrible slave-trading past.
It’s a
wooden wagon with a giant tooth on top. The molar bobbing back and
forth is a presentiment of the whimsical nature of the gentleman driving
beneath it. A German dentist named Dr. King Schultz rolls up in the
middle of a cold Southern night, interrupting a pair of white slave
traders leading a shackled gang of freshly purchased black men to their
new plantations. One of the men in chains has some very important
information our dentist needs to make an extraction of sorts.
Unfortunately, the doctor’s genteel manners and forthright conduct rub
the slavers the wrong way and it’s soon revealed that the alleged
dentist is pretty handy with a firearm. Leaving the remaining men to
deal with their now-unarmed would-be masters as they see fit, Schultz
takes the fellow called Django on a path that no slave two years before
the Civil War could ever dream of. Schultz is less a dentist and more a
bounty hunter whose Teutonic background and deep sense of fairness make
slavery an unpleasant puzzle to him. Making a deal with the newly-freed
ex-slave to keep him on as a sort of sidekick until Django can point out
the men Schultz needs to collect, the killer hears Django’s tale of love
for the fair Broomhilda. Django tells of their being torn apart; sold
to different farms after a failed attempt to run away from their
original plantation. Django’s quest to be reunited with his wife touches
Schultz, who agrees to assist the slave and trains him in the art of
gunslinging, at which the younger man is “a natural”. As a paid
employee, Django experiences freedoms no other black man in the South is
allowed; the right to carry a gun, to ride a horse, and for better or
worse, to choose his own clothes. They make an unlikely and unliked
team as the pair spare no lead seeking their bounty targets on the way
to rescue Broomhilda from her captivity at the Candyland plantation,
owned by the young, arrogant Calvin Candie. The men’s ruse to
infiltrate Candyland is put at risk by Stephen, a house slave who likes
his place in the white hierarchy just fine, and the sight of Django
daring to be anything more than a subjugated servant who knows his place
infuriates him. Can Django and Schultz pull off their plan to save
Broomhilda with all the hate and anger of the antebellum South against
them?
What a
tricky proposition Django Unchained is. How can the story of a common
slave-turned-exceedingly-efficient gunslinger be done with any
sensitivity or taste; avoiding insult to the grievous horrors of the
slave experience? The easy answer is give it to Quentin Tarantino.
Tarantino has created a story that takes the comic book premise of
Django’s origin story and uses the character’s experience to expose the
vileness of that period in American history and the depth of man’s
cruelty to man. The fact that he’s wrapped it up in a clever, rousing
script and padded it with some of the best performances of the year
doesn’t hurt either. Django is a cowboy, plain and simple; it’s where
this cowboy comes from that makes the difference. The audience sees
Django’s world and the places he could’ve ended up; including as one of
Calvin Candie’s “Mandingo fighters,” where he’d literally have to
wrestle until he was dead or unable, after which he’d be fed - alive -
to the Candie hounds. Giving us more reason for the slave to become the
man he does besides the very real need to escape his bonds or some
revenge premise (Which would have basically made this
Inglourious
Basterds in the Deep South), Django has a purpose everyone can
relate to; the love and protection of his wife. That Django and
Broomhilda were married at all was an anomaly in that time, as slave
masters didn’t want their property to form bonds together and have more
reason to run away. That they are pulled apart so cruelly seems only
too reasonable. Early on, after hearing Django’s story, King Schultz
tells him the German legend of Siegfried, who conquered a mountain full
of mystical enemies to rescue his love, Brunhilde, for whom Django’s
bride was loosely named. Indeed, Django’s obstacles seem nearly as
insurmountable and his determination to reunite with his lady madly
heroic. Instead of the swords and spears of ancient heroes, we have
rifles and six-shooters. We get why King Schultz is so taken with
Django; who doesn’t love a lover? And the vastly intelligent, if
forcibly untried slave is clearly a box of surprises that not only
intrigues Schultz with his potential, but appeals to the German man’s
clear sense of impish perversity as someone who doesn’t share his
adopted country’s proclivity toward treating other men like chattel. In
his way, Schultz is as alien to the world around him as is the sight of
Django on a horse to the white men around them. Django’s growth is
fascinating, as well, as one could worry this might be a story where the
black hero’s power comes courtesy of the white benefactor, and, yes,
that happens early on because logically, there wouldn’t have been any
other way for Django to have access to guns, horses, education, cool
sunglasses, etc. By the film’s climax, the audience sees that the
student has surpassed his teacher and Django uses not only his
redoubtable gunslinging skills, but his quick mind to call upon his
experience with slave owners to promote his and Schultz’s various
schemes. It’s easy to read that the relationship between Django and
Schultz becomes one of true friendship and mutual respect.
The
most linear and straightforward of all of Tarantino’s works, one
shouldn’t think that director has gone soft; there’s plenty of
Tarantino-esque moments to keep the fans thrilled, including gallons of
gushing blood from Django and Schultz’s many shoot-outs. I’d wondered if
in the name of austerity or somberness toward the subject matter, more
was going to be affected than the loss of the usual elliptical timeline
one expects from a Tarantino film? Happily the absurd, oddball touches
are intact; including the riotously hilarious sequence where a gang of
DiY Ku Klux Klan members decide to stalk the bounty hunter and his
decidedly unservile partner. The discussion of the discomfort of the
burlaps bags they use as hoods is one of the most memorable moments of
any Tarantino film.
Egads,
the performances. As the hero of the tale, Jamie Foxx runs beautifully
from shattered, disheartened slave, to bewildered apprentice, to
self-confident, determined hero. He sits a horse (His own,
apparently, called Cheetah) very nicely and shoots down bad guys
convincingly. The almost-obligatory Tarantino pop culture homage moment
appears in a quick scene between Foxx’s Django and 1966 Django star,
Franco Nero in a saloon and is very sweet. Christoph Waltz once again
shows himself to be a member emeritus of the Tarantino ensemble with his
Dr. King Schultz, whose knowledge of orthodonty is somewhat less than
his way around a shotgun. As he did in
Inglourious
Basterds, Waltz
plays another character with serious quirks as Schultz’s eccentricities
are similar, if not entirely more benevolent than Hans Landa’s. The joy
of Waltz’s performance is that through the sheen of cool built into the
character with his off-beat manner and dialog, Waltz lets you see into
the heart of him and never makes the audience question Schultz’s
actions, or why he takes to Django. It’s a work of many layers and
executed brilliantly. I would say it was the standout of the piece, but
for the abundance of equally amazing renderings. Django Unchained is
the best thing I’ve ever seen Leonardo DiCaprio in - period. I’ve
enjoyed him in other things, but his performance as the egomaniacal
slave owner is - pardon the pun - a real departure. Candie, who is
written like Rhett Butler gone terribly, terribly wrong, is a role that
requires near-possession by his interpreter and an abundance of control
to bring him convincingly to life. He’s the over-the-top villain that
brings the comic book aspect to the entire struggle, but cannot be
played winking at the viewer. DiCaprio completely nails it by sinking
his teeth, nails and everything else into the part… literally. At one
point, while so caught up in a threatening, megalomaniac rant, we see
DiCaprio actually cut his hand during the scene and use his own dripping
blood to further convince the audience what a sick puppy Candie is.
Candie’s skeezy smarm, his viewpoint that all he surveys and everyone in
it is his to do with as he sees fit, is pure cyanide in the mint julep.
I might say DiCaprio’s Candie steals the picture, but in that regard,
he’s running a heavy race against his own house slave, Stephen.
Stephen’s actor was unrecognisable to me as he rushed out of the main
plantation house to cast a withering look on Django, the audacious
horse-riding, gun-carrying freed slave. Beneath the stooped posture and
snow-white fuzz around the temples of an elderly man, a pair of piercing
eyes stares and squints, and as he seethes into a long, slow burn, the
nostrils flare and suddenly it’s Samuel L. Jackson. It took a good five
seconds into the close-up before I could recognise the well-known actor
and not because the make-up was so great - it is, actually - but because
the physical transformation Jackson makes as the ancient house slave is
so total. At turns a nagging parrot and haranguing busybody making the
lives of anyone under him hell; in his place at Candyland and as an
unexpected mentor to Calvin, Stephen is a character rarely seen in films
about slavery. The power behind the plantation throne that doesn’t want
things to change; who will lay his vengeance upon anyone who threatens
that carefully-placed order, even Calvin himself. When Schultz requests
the German-speaking female slave that lives at Candyland, Stephen throws
a fit that Broomhilda won’t face her punishment for an escape attempt,
being brought out of the wooden sweatbox she’d been scheduled to lie
nude in for eleven days. It’s Stephen that sets the dogs of war on the
interlopers when he gets a whiff that they might be making a fool of his
master. Propelled by self-interest and more than happy to act against
what serves him best in the long run, the Uncle Tom on steroids
character is easy to hate, but never one-dimensional. Literally
shuffling from the infirm, doddering servant to the steely-spined
sentinel of Candyland, I don’t know when Samuel L. Jackson has ever
played a character with such depth. Leave it to Quentin Tarantino to
have originally brought Jackson to the public’s attention in Pulp
Fiction and then reintroducing him these many years later to that same
audience, which will be astounded by him once again for the power of
this performance.
I
don’t know how, maybe it’s having a certain a humanity, maybe it’s
embracing the cultures of the many films and genres he’s watched and
maintaining an affinity for those worlds and experiences, but somehow
Tarantino pulls off Django Unchained beautifully. The eye-popping comic
book violence and even the countless uses of the N-word make perfect
sense. With Django Unchained, Tarantino, through his incredible,
outrageous Spaghetti Western Superman fantasy, tells the truth.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
December 24th, 2012
Added Bonus:
We had the chance to pipe in a question during the
Django Unchained
press conference in NYC. Here’s our little tête-à-tête with
Quentin Tarantino
and his cast, including
Christoph Waltz,
Samuel
Jackson
and Don
Johnson.
The
Lady Miz Diva: Thank you so much for this amazing film, it was a total
blast.
Quentin Tarantino: I like your Battle Royale shirt.
Samuel L. Jackson: Right?
LMD:
I knew someone would know this shirt.
QT:
{Laughs}
LMD:
Mr. Tarantino, I know that before production began on Kill Bill, there
were a lot of kung fu movie stills and posters you bought (from Jerry
Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store in NYC) and also World War II
articles from there for
Inglourious
Basterds. I wondered what having
that external stuff does; whether it’s stills, posters, things you
watch, that helps you formulate what we see as the final picture? And
for the cast, what, if any, external sources helped you develop or
deepen your characters?
QT:
Wow! That’s a great question.
Don
Johnson: Can we get to that one after lunch?
{Everyone
laughs}
QT:
Yeah, that’s a really great question. I think all these actors can
actually tell you the feeling they have, like the first time they walk
into my office and they see all the 60’s western posters up and the
Blaxploitation posters up and all this viscera that’s there that doesn’t
exist anymore in movie posters. Now everything just looks like a Vanity
Fair photo shoot. Every single goddamn movie looks like a Vanity Fair
photo shoot. The idea of drawn posters just doesn’t exist anymore and
those were the posters. Those were really cool. But that style of
viscera, whether it be the Spaghetti Western album covers, the
Blaxploitation album posters, the posters, all that stuff, I’m kinda of
trying to get at that. When my stuff pops off in the big way that it
does, or the imagery I’m trying to evoke - the costumes we employ in the
film that always have a bit of a comic book panache - I’m trying to kind
of get those kinds of illustrations in life in my flicks.
SLJ:
Comic book pan-ass.
Christoph Waltz: In a way, I think “outside source” is a
contradiction in terms. I can only speak for myself, but the source is
the script and the script has a source. I can point it out to you. {Points
to Tarantino}
QT:
But on that same line, frankly, we got the first issue of the Django
Unchained comic book that’s come out now. The thing that’s interesting
about the comic book is we keep the entire script in the comic book. So
some of the sequences and big chapters that we dropped and we didn’t
bother shooting them because we didn’t want a four hour movie are in the
comic book. I gotta say I’m as excited about the comic book as I am
about the movie. It’s boss! {Laughs}
DJ:
I could tell you that that period in time is one of my favourites in
history, in early developing America because it’s full of deceit and
it’s rich in human character and the lack thereof. From the Native
Americans, to slavery, and so on and so forth; I’ve read a lot about it.
Blood and Thunder (by Hampton Sides) is a great book I’ve read
before I started this film, and there’s a lot of outside material. For
me, I like to start with outside information and research and start
layering it into the ethics of the time, the social graces of the time.
Did they have indoor toilets? They didn’t. How were manners created?
So, I start from the outside and then I just slowly started to bring it
all inside and emotional stuff like that. And a lot of that comes, like
Christoph was saying, there’s the source {points to Tarantino},
and for the character work, for me, I like to know what it’s like on
that day in that time, with that energy running around. I do a lot of
that work way before I get there, so that when I’m there, it just comes
out, hopefully.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
December 16th, 2012
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