If you’ve seen Inglorious Basterds, you’ll have seen Quentin
Tarentino’s template for his anti-slavery saga, set in 1858–1859. Not
that the year matters much, since historical fidelity is not
Tarentino’s aim. Normally I’d be irked by
the use of dynamite (invented in the 1860s), or the possibly fictional
“mandingo fighting,” in which slaves are pitted against each other in
fights to the death. But anyone who saw Hitler murdered in Inglorious Basterds should
not express dismay
upon seeing Jamie Foxx, as the freed slave Django, wearing
modern-looking sunglasses here. No, the kind of authenticity Tarentino
strives for is not to American history, but to movie history. Paying
homage to both 1960s spaghetti westerns and 1970s blaxploitation
films, he has the advantages of bigger budgets, top-notch actors, and,
mostly, better scripts. He has even appropriated the “Django” theme song for from a similarly titled Italian western whose star, Franco Nero, has a cameo, music being one of the things that is period inappropriate. The liberal use of a certain racial epithet seems pretty accurate, though.
As with a gunfighter in a spaghetti western or
blaxploitation film, Tarentino is all about the
underdog hero, and specifically about turning the powerless victims of
oppression into their own powerful saviors. Django begins as a cowering
slave purchased by a white bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), Schultz, due
to his ability to recognize Schulz’s quarry.
An enlightened German immigrant, Schultz makes Django his partner and
agrees to help him find the wife (Kerry Washington) from whom he has
been separated. By the end of the film, Django has transcended race,
history, and the law to become the most powerful man
on the screen. This may not be entirely realistic, but as modern fable
it is certainly entertaining.
Tarentino also believes in the exact thing that makes me
uncomfortable about his films, which is cathartic violence. In theory, I
don’t entirely agree with Tarentino’s view that movie violence, which
he calls “fun,” has no commonality with real violence.
I say nothing as to whether one actually causes the other; however, in
highlighting the inhumanity of the villain so as to justify the violence
of the hero, a filmmaker puts us, the audience, in the position of
being perpetrators. To the extent that we suspend
our disbelief, as film asks us to, this feeling is real. Still, in
making this objection, in this case I feel a little like someone
protesting the violence in a Roadrunner cartoon. In point of fact, I
have seen much more explicit violence. In consideration
of filmgoers’ sensibilities, not his own, Tarentino implies rather than
directly shows the two most sadistic acts. Notably, in each case slaves
are the victims. In this and other ways, he manages the trick of making
most of the violence seem cartoonish, and
much of the film comedic, while making clear that the degradations and
cruelty visited upon slaves were no joke. To the extent that filmgoers
are disturbed by the movie, it will likely be because he makes the black
victims into real people. Quantitatively,
Django and Schulz perpetrate most of the violence themselves, and it is
often more explicit, but it’s less likely to bother anyone.
Tarentino calls his film an “adventure,” and doubtless it’s the
incorporation of action and violence that creates their appeal beyond
the art house, but it’s his vividly drawn characters, superior dialogue
and ability to create tension in even the calmest
scenes that makes them memorable for film buffs. As the plot requires Django and Schultz to pretend to be something other than the bounty hunters they are, the early sequences play out like a series of set pieces. Foxx is perfectly fine
as Django, Leonardo DiCaprio is a compellingly villainous plantation master, and Samuel L. Jackson is frequently funny as the butler to DiCaprio’s characrter, a slave who truly loves his master. But Waltz gets most of the best lines, as he did as the
villain of Inglorious Basterds. “Speak English, goddamit,” says one of the slavers, shortly before being shot by Schultz. The way that Waltz drags out words like “acolytes,” seeming to emphasize each syllable, seems to heighten the tension in every line.
Inevitably, though, linguistic subtlety gives way to
catharisis. I would argue that the two heroes lose sight of their goal
(rescuing Django’s wife), and that Schultz acts out of character,
for the sake of generating the sort of spectacular ending that is
clearly required. This takes another half hour, and it’s not
uninteresting, or unfunny, but makes the movie feels slightly padded
and, even within the bounds of Tarentino’s unreality, strained.
Nonetheless, I look forward to his next movie, in which, no doubt, some
Chinese women and a group of former Korean “comfort women” team up to
castrate thousands of Japanese men during the Rape of Nanking. Oh, the fun to be had righting the world’s historical wrongs.
viewed 1/20/12 1:50 pm at Rave Ritz Center 16 NJ
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