It is a passion that has spilled over into many of his own works: think of the infamous ear-slicing scene in “Reservoir Dogs,” inspired by a similar mutilation in Sergio Corbucci’s “Django”; how about Uma Thurman’s vengeful bride-with-no-name in “Kill Bill,” modelled after Clint Eastwood’s nameless drifter from Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy; and then there’s that knuckle-gnawing opening to “Inglourious Basterds,” which owes a gold bullion or two to that of Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.” And after 21 years of playfully referencing the genre and its many defining motifs, Tarantino finally gets round to making his very own spaghetti western, or, as Tarantino himself has put it, a “southern,” in the wildly entertaining “Django Unchained,” connected to Corbucci’s 1966 work and its many sequels in name and brio only.
But while Tarantino’s eighth feature — or seventh, if you count volumes one and two of “Kill Bill” as one whole — boasts the sweeping desert landscapes, gunslinging badasses and blood-soaked savagery that quickly became archetypes of the genre, “Django Unchained” is a spaghetti western unlike any you’ve seen before. For one, it takes place in the Deep South rather than the Wild West, traversing the plains of Texas and Mississippi. Secondly, the dialogue, as is expected from Tarantino, is front and centre rather than kept on the sidelines. But most crucially of all, what sets “Django Unchained" apart from the typical spaghetti western is that the titular antihero is not a mysterious stranger battling local bandits, but a black slave unchained and set free with a longing in his heart and vengeance on his dinner plate.
Jamie Foxx (“Ray”) is Django, a slave whom we meet in 1858 as he marches for many miles across the dry and sweltering deserts of Texas in a chain gang, his tired feet shackled and bruised, following a wagon that will take him to be auctioned off. That is, until another wagon trundles out from the dark of the woods with a giant plastic tooth on a spring bobbling back and forth on its roof like a bobble-head. The wagon belongs to Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, “The Green Hornet”), a German dentist-cum-bounty-hunter who requires Django’s assistance in identifying and tracking down his latest targets, Django’s previous owners, the elusive Brittle Brothers.
The two set off on horseback, and a loyal mentor-student relationship is born as Django is taken under the wing of Schultz and trained in the ways of the bounty hunter — after the Brittle Brothers are dealt with, Schultz comments that Django may just be the “fastest gun in the West.” Waltz, whose SS officer Hans Landa in “Inglourious Basterds” was a truly terrifying creation, is eccentrically charming here as the devilishly cunning, disarmingly cheerful Dr. Schultz, who’ll gun down a crooked sheriff in front of the whole town and calmly explain why to the marshall. Foxx, meanwhile, flaunts a cool charisma and a badass swagger once Django starts to grow in confidence and begins his journey to becoming the ultimate gunslinger.
The film is driven largely by Django’s desire to reunite with his beloved wife, the beautiful slave Broomhilda (Kerry Washington, “For Colored Girls”), who was cruelly taken from him and sold to an unknown plantation. The name Broomhilda, as Schultz explains, is taken from an old German fairy tale in which a disobedient princess is placed at the top of a mountain surrounded by hellfire and guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. The one who walks across the hellfire, slays the dragon and rescues the princess is a hero named Siegfried. Django, according to Schultz, is a “real life Siegfried,” and, true to the tale, the two embark on a perilous quest to rescue Broomhilda from that fearsome beast.
The mountain surrounded by hellfire, it transpires, is a Mississippi plantation called Candyland, and the dragon is its owner, the odious Calvin Candie (a brown-toothed Leonardo DiCaprio in a rare, and brilliantly loathsome villainous role), who may not breathe fire but who is rarely seen without smoke blowing out from both his nostrils. It is in Candie’s grand estate that Tarantino stages a sequence comparable in mounting intensity to the 20-minute cellar-bar scene in “Inglourious Basterds,” as Django, Schultz, Candie and Candie’s guests casually talk around the dinner table and as Tarantino slowly but surely ratchets up the suspense with a blend of riveting dialogue and sharp, suspicious glares. All seems to be going splendidly for our heroes, but then... uh oh. Your fingernails will dig into your armrest when Candie brings out his toolbox.
Django and Schultz gain entry to Candyland by masquerading as potential purchasers of one of Candie’s Mandingo fighters — muscle-bound slaves who engage in fights to the death for the sick amusement of their sadistic masters (inspired more by the notorious 1975 film “Mandingo” than historical fact). Their plan: casually request that Broomhilda be a part of the transaction along with the fighter of their choice, and ride off into the sunset with her in tow. But, as one would expect, things don’t quite go according to plan at Candyland, thanks to one watchful individual who sniffs out their deception.
That individual would be Stephen, Candyland’s Uncle Tom-esque house slave, as played by Samuel L. Jackson, who subverts his tough guy image with a startling performance as a snowy-haired, crippled old fart staunchly loyal to his beloved master. He’s a betrayer of his own race, happily aiding in the torment of his fellow slaves and utterly appalled at the unexpected sight of a “nigger on a horse" and the idea of a “nigger” staying in “the big house.” His presence, along with that of the noble white man Schultz, is crucial in proving that “Django Unchained” is not an anti-white film, as some have absurdly claimed; rather, it is an anti-racism and anti-oppression film made by a filmmaker angry at the horrors of America’s past and those who inflicted it.
And what a violent past it evidently was: in “Django Unchained,” blood doesn’t just spurt out from fresh bullet wounds; it explodes out like water from a fireman’s hose and splatters across all objects in close vicinity (the sight of a slave trader’s bean juice cascading over a cotton field achieves a lurid sort of beauty). But, while much of the violence is comically, almost cartoonishly outrageous and as Tarantino giddily indulges in jet-black comedy (as in one wickedly funny moment when a KKK clan take issue with the functionality of their handmade masks), he never loses sight of the barbarism that was faced by slaves on a daily basis: runaways are devoured alive by attack dogs, misbehavers are tied up and lashed with whips, and Mandingo fighters are forced at gunpoint to pummel one another to the brink of death, all presented with unflinching brutality and later avenged with unashamed glee.
With this, “Django Unchained" solidifies itself as a companion piece to “Inglourious Basterds," in which Jewish-American killers and a Jewish mademoiselle inflict bloody vengeance against their Nazi oppressors, eventually resulting in Hitler being defeated with a machine gun to the face. Like that fascinating WWII flick, this is pure revenge fantasy, foaming at the mouth with fury and ruthless in its payback. But “Django Unchained” is even better than “Basterds:” it’s much more focused, unfolding in a linear manner rather than through parallel narratives, and in Jamie Foxx’s Django, Tarantino has his most developed character yet. Plus, it’s great seeing the spaghetti western — sorry, southern — back on the big screen and in such a mesmerising package, helmed by an American movie-maker at the top of his game and, like the eponymous ex-slave, unchained.
10/10
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