Movie / Django Unchained

It’s taken me a whole week of tossing and turning on Django Unchained. I saw it last Sunday, but to truly unravel my thoughts on it has taken the better part of the week. Which is funny, really, because, at its core, Django adheres to the most simplistic of Tarantino rules: funny, vicious, unique and yet overly-long, with far too much fluff to ever truly be considered a classic.

The problem is that Django could very well be the director’s best work yet, but it’s just buried under so much self-indulgent rabble that it’s easy to lose track of that notion throughout the film’s mammoth run time.

This is a case study of American slavery through the eyes of two characters – the titular Django (Jamie Foxx) and his bounty hunting partner Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). The two meet in the film’s opening scene in which Django is released from captivity and granted the name Freeman. The two join forces on a series of bounties as Django adjusts to the life of a free man, before tackling a tricky ‘heist’ of sorts against a brutally evil plantation owner by the name of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DeCaprio).

Where the film works best is its showcase of sorts of the horrors of slavery. In this sense, it’s the director’s heaviest film yet, weighed down by often gruelling sketches in which no compromise is made to translate the experience to the viewer. Execution, mutilation, suffocations – Django has it all.

Another highlight is Waltz, who puts in a performance that rivals his turn in Inglorious Basterds with ease. So likeable is Foxx’s partner in crime, you almost end up wishing the film had been centred around him and his often-hilarious misadventures. Samuel L. Jackson also gives an astonishingly disturbing performance as an old, cynical slave under Candie’s rule. The way the man scowls and crookedly leans over his master is quite a sight, making for one of the more hateful characters in cinematic history.

It’s the length that lets Django, or rather, the clear ‘turning point’ where it’s gone on too long. Namely, it’s the final half hour that’s a struggle to sit through. The last act fails to cover any new ground and simply drags Django to a grinding halt.

Also present are the tedious Tarantino-isms of pointless conversations and explorations of the most mundane events. Scenes that should be shaved into 30 seconds last five minutes, while it can be quite easy to lose attention during some of the extended sequences. It’s this lack of control, a display over the overly-indulgent, that holds Django back like so many of its director’s other films.

Django isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s perhaps the most shocking and entertaining film Tarantino has made yet.