Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino

Seen in the theater for the first time in January 2013.

I thought I would never again utter the words "that might be his best movie" about a new Tarantino movie, but that's exactly what I found myself saying after finishing "Django Unchained." I think the key thing about this movie is the love story. It's something that's really lacking in Tarantino's other movies. This is the fitst time that Tarantino has filmed genuinely moving scenes. The closest he has come before was in "Jackie Brown" (and to some extent "Reservoir Dogs"), but the stakes are so much higher here.

And this is an important point in comparison to "Inglorious Basterds," where the stakes somehow don't feel as high or as real, where Tarantino basically made a stupid cartoon. I nicknamed Tarantino "the master of cartoon violence" after that film and I meant it as a complement. It's quite a thing to be, but it was little more than transferring what's great about "Kill Bill Vol. 1" to WWII and making what felt like a dumb cartoon, where many of Tarantino's signature elements and obsessions grated highly.

Django on the other hand deals with its material in a genuine way. It's hard not to call much of it a cartoon as well, but it nonetheless deals with the subject in a such a serious way that the cartoonish elements work within and in complement to a larger more serious framework. Tarantino gets many little details right as well, and the racial component was surprisingly nuanced in my opinion. Most obviously in the form of Samuel L. Jackson's character, but also even in Django himself, who's willing to sacrifice other slaves in the pursuit of his own goals. A detail Tarantino gets wrong however is when Candie's sister brings Hildy to Schulz's room. This is something a southern lady would have pretended not to know about. But even here, I wonder if Tarantino's version isn't better. Sometimes art must lie to tell bigger truths.

Strangely I was not dazzled by the violence here as I have been by other Tarantino films. Of course the film is incredibly violent, but it doesn't stand out as a dazzling tour de force of violent extravaganza the way the first Kill Bill did upon seeing it in the theater. I feel like, as in Tarantino's first three movies, the story and the film stand up on its own without the incredibly stylish violence.

And yet at the end of the day I am still not 100% convinced it's his best film. It's something I'll have to ruminate on more and frankly, I'll probably have to re-screen it and see how it holds up. It's a long movie, after all, and while I'm still dizzy from the thrills, I can't help but wonder how much bloat is in here. But I'm inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. This is Tarantino for the first time in a long time wrestling with serious impulses and perhaps biting off more than he can chew. But I think I favor it. If "Kill Bill Vol. 1" is a stunning display of his mastery of cartoon violence and "Inglorious Basterds" is his cartoon treatment of the holocaust, then "Django Unchained" is a perhaps imperfect mix of Tarantino's cartoonishness and seiousness. His first three movies mixed the cartoonishness and seriousness more expertly, but the stakes were also much lower. Grade A.