Django Unchained

UK Release Date. 18 January 2013
Certification. 18
Running Time. 2 hours 45 mins
Director. Quentin Tarantino
Cast. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Walton Goggins, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, Franco Nero, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington.
Rating. 74%

Review.

Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film, Django Unchained is the director’s personal homage to the Spaghetti Western, particularly the brutal and violent films of Sergio Corbucci, Giulio Petroni and Sergio Leone. However, in amongst the vengeance and violence, Tarantino still finds time to introduce elements of blaxploitation films and epic, sweeping, western romances, the likes of Gone With The Wind, Shane and The Big Country. This tactic of blending genres and blurring time periods is one Tarantino has employed in previous films most notably in Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds. 

Django Unchained centres around a black slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) who is liberated by the German bounty hunter (posing as a travelling dentist), Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) because he can identify the three Brittle Brothers. The pair then set out to rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington) from a notorious plantation owner, Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). 

The first half of Django Unchained is an enjoyable buddy film of sorts, as Schultz and Django travel through the winter collecting a series of bounties, in ever more elaborate fashion. Both Waltz and Foxx are brilliant. Foxx gives Django a steely dignity, and a (hitherto) untapped righteous reservoir of anger. Waltz revels in the role, portraying Schultz as an apparently enlightened and loquacious character with intellectual superiority over those degenerate individuals he routinely interacts with. Waltz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Schultz, and like Foxx, emits energy, charisma and charm.

In the film’s second half, the duo arrive at Candieland, and meet both the loathsome plantation owner Calvin J. Candie and his house slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). DiCaprio finds all sorts of disturbing avenues to explore as the hedonistic, preening Candie - a man who believes himself to be refined but is, in fact, boorish and uncouth. But in a way, it is Jackson who gives the bravest performance in the film. His Stephen is both dutifully loyal to his boss and consumed with self-loathing for himself, and his race. His blatant jealousy over Django’s freedom manifests as immediate suspicion and seething resentment.

The narrative may be a little longer than is necessary, and a little too self-indulgent - a criticism levelled at several of Tarantino’s films - but Django Unchained has attitude in spades and wonderful character.

Django Unchained is extraordinarily violent. The audience have come to expect a highly stylised, post-modern extravaganza whenever Tarantino directs, and undoubtedly that’s what we get with Django Unchained. Whilst there is a lot to like about Django Unchained, the film’s coda is overlong and unnecessarily bloody, and the cartoonish climactic shoot-out remains unsatisfactory.

But, never has a Quentin Tarantino film felt as epic as Django Unchained. Tarantino and director of photography, Robert Richardson work at the height of their cinematic powers. Equally, the soundtrack is on point. Influenced by the Spaghetti Western scores of the 1960s, Tarantino and sound music supervisor, Mary Ramos pepper the soundtrack with classic and modern combinations. For example, there is a wonderful fusion of James Brown’s The payback and 2Pac’s Untouchable entitled Unchained.

Django Unchained is arguably more entertaining than a film about slavery should be. For all of the film’s indulgences of revelling in the most heinous plantation slavery, it also revels in depicting vengeance against the perpetrators of such despicable racist acts. Indeed, it is almost a cathartic experience watching Foxx whoop ass, and with Django Unchained Tarantino has created a bona fide black icon in the freed slave Django.

But remember, “the D is silent.”