Backward Glance: "Django Unchained" (2012)

directed by Quentin Tarantino
starring Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz

WAY BACK IN 2011 A FRIEND sent me a pdf copy of script for the then-upcoming Quentin Tarantino flick Django Unchained. I took a couple of days to read it. It was sick. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. The script was kind of like Mandingo (trashy soap opera) meets both Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (WWII revenge yarn that I did not like at all) and his Kill Bill (modern-day femme revenge yarn, which I did). Tarantino called it a "Southern," in that it's a Western genre piece set in the South. The time period is slavery, so the n-word, which Quentin sprinkled liberally all over Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, is now the inch-high frosting on the entire thing, And here Tarantino graphically depicts the very worst treatment of slaves: psychological torture, mutilation, humiliation, sexual abuse, and other forms of degradation and violence. While this is meant to give a true picture of the horrors of slavery, it also borders on exploitation; since this is Tarantino, after all, he takes things to stomach-churning extremes.

The story centers on Django, a slave who was just sold away from his beloved wife and is being marched to a new plantation with a shackled coterie of other slaves until a German bounty hunter shows up, shoots his sibling overseers (a criminal lot with a price on their heads), and then mentors him to be his bounty hunting partner. With a Beatrix Kiddo-times-ten focus on vengeance, Django only wants to rescue his beloved and do some death-dealing to those who mistreated her, primarily infamous plantation owner Calvin Candie. The German King Schultz (who explains that as a European he has no stake in the slavery game) agrees to free Django and help him rescue his love in exchange for help nabbing some high-priced quarry.

The storyline also involves slavers who operate literal death matches between slaves, basically human dogfights where white gentlemen of leisure can gamble and entertain themselves with a bloody spectacle (critics have since said that few slave-owners would throw away money by allowing one of their slaves to be incapacitated or killed unnecessarily, but seeing as how the institution of slavery itself was mutilating and killing black folk on the daily, who knows). The script also lingers quite a bit on the existence of exclusive brothels where white men can use pretty black slave women, here called “ponies,” for their pleasures. And wouldn't ya know, this is one of the fates in store for Django's missus (many of the brothel scenes do not make it into the final film).

I could only guess at what actress would want to take on the role of Django’s beloved, since she appears nude for most of her scenes and is raped, beaten, abused, and worst of all made to speak German (horrors!) in the film! (just kidding). Somehow Kerry Washington springs to mind. (And indeed, that is who they cast.) And I can't picture who will be Django -- it's a role that requires a Sam Jackson, but he's too old. And I couldn't see Will Smith operating within the Tarantino milieu.

What amused me most about the script I saw is that it was riddled with misspellings – and why should that make me feel good? Bleh. Culture doesn't stop for little things like spelling. Anyway, the black female character is here named "Broomhilda," a name that Tarantino tells us is a legendary moniker connected to a Rhine-soaked folktale of yore, as in Wagner's Siegfried opera. Except, Quentin, “Broomhilda” is the cartoon witch whose name was a play on the real name, which is actually Brunnhilde or Brunhilda.

At least get your lore right, when you are basing a whole plot point around it! For indeed, the story of Django's quest to reunite with his Broomhilda is equivalent to Siegfried's quest to climb a mountain, slay the dragon and claim princess Brunhilde for his own.

In the months after reading the script, I watched as Tarantino cast Jamie Foxx as Django, Leonardo DiCaprio as the sadistic owner of Candyland plantation, Samuel Jackson as a typical house n---er, and Christoph Waltz as the bounty hunter.

I did see the film, Christmas weekend, 2012. It is an odd movie, both visually arresting in some places, and cold and flat in others. So many of Quentin's films are about paying tribute to other films and other genres that occasionally the here-and-now of the singular narrative gets obscured. By turns irreverent and chilling, Django at times feels like it should have stayed in the oven a bit longer. Appearances by spaghetti western icons Lee Van Cleef and Franco Nero (star of the 1966 Italian-made western Django), as well as '80s TV veterans Tom Wopat and Don Johnson, character actors Bruce Dern, Russ Tamblyn, and black film pioneer Don Stroud, not to mention a completely anachronistic Jonah Hill, smack of stunt casting. Seeing Tarantino himself as an Australian in the slave trade just totally takes you out of the movie.

Overall Django Unchained is stylish, in that Jamie looks the part, and you root for him to win: He goes from a whip-scarred, unkempt, downtrodden slave in rags to a gun-totin' badass who looks damned fine on a horse in his western duds as he carries out a mission in the name of love. Christoph Waltz, playing an alternate version of the courtly killer Nazi in Basterds, does a fine turn (he won his second Oscar). As Calvin Candie, the sadistic owner of the Candieland plantation, Leo DiCaprio is a bit of a surprise -- as a racist scion of a Southern family he hits all the marks with chilling ease, particularly the scene where he lovingly strokes the skull of a former slave and expounds on his twisted belief in the inferiority of the black race. Washington has little to do but look pretty and helpless, as she becomes the star of her very own Perils of Pauline.

But when Sam Jackson, as the most nefarious of all Uncle Toms, shows up, the film takes an even nastier and more depressing turn. The final shootout is an unrelentingly gory bloodbath that makes the shootout at the climax of the Tarantino-scripted True Romance look like a pajama party.

I have a fondness for many of Tarantino's films, but this isn't at the top of my list of faves. I didn't hate it by any means; Quentin took home a Best Original Screenplay for Django, and that seems fair. But the script lacks the snappy, memorable dialogue of many of his other classics. Django says relatively little during the first half of the story, compared to other Tarantino heroes, though he gets off some choice lines. (Waltz's King Schultz character gets most of the laughs for his turns of phrase.)

Many of the scenes may trigger your squeamish side. By the time it's over you will be glad of the outcome, but if you watch it again you may wish you could fast-forward a few times. In my opinion.

Django is a film unlike any other -- no western has yet starred a black protagonist since the days of Buck And The Preacher and Thomasene & Bushrod (the 1970s) or, perhaps, Will Smith in 1999's the Wild, Wild West. Certainly none were set during slavery, when a black man had any agency. Tarantino continues to draw criticism for how he treats African American stories and characters on film, but he is one of very few filmmakers whose worldview includes people of color.