This
post is a continuation of my review of Lincoln
and Django Unchained, which you can read
by scrolling down. This review may make more sense if you read Part 1 first.
Then again it may not, since as I am constantly reminded, I have very little
control over the human brain’s ability to reason.
Anyway,
where was I?
If
Lincoln is the story of the white man who was finally able to pull the trigger
on outlawing slavery, Django Unchained
is the story of the white man who taught a really angry black slave how to pull
the trigger well enough to murder everyone in sight.
Side
Note Did you hear that Slavery was actually only officially outlawed in all 50
states a few days ago?
Way to go Mississippi. Breaking the World Record for Longest Time Spent
in Bureaucratic Tape Hell.
Django is the
story of a pair of bounty hunters, which apparently can exist outside the world
of Boba Fett. Granted this is a Tarantino Film, so nothing in it is real at
all, so maybe not. The snowman shooting team of “good guys” who brutally kill
almost everyone in the film are: a freed slave named Django (the D is silent)
and Christoph Waltz, a faux dentist/German who isn’t evil (huge twist).
This movie
also stars Leonardo DiCaprio as gross teeth dude, Kerry Washington as the most
beautiful woman alive, and Samuel L. Jackson as the guy from Snakes on a Plane
who has time-travelled to antebellum Mississippi by using his Jedi mind powers.
I have had it
with these Mother F***ing N*****s on this Mother F***ing Plantation!
Disclaimer
about my review of this film: I don’t generally love Quentin Tarantino. I liked
Pulp Fiction, and I appreciate it as
a film, but I’d still rather watch this:
Than this:
With that
being said, I really didn’t like or “get” Django. It’s easier to start with
what I didn’t like, since that is subjective, so we will go there first.
1.
I
didn’t like that it was 3 bazillion hours long. It could have seriously ended
after the first massive shootout at Candyland, but no, they had to keep Django
alive so they could kill him. But then they could have killed him, but they had
to keep him alive so they could sell him to mine workers. But then Django has
to kill them so he can go back to the plantation and kill everyone else, for
another 45 minutes.
2.
I
didn’t like that it was contrived, and really skim on plot. For example: why
didn’t they just buy Broomhilda and go? I understand that Schultz had a point
of honor about shaking hands with Leo (again, I don’t get this), but they could
have just bought her from the beginning and left! Their entire hair-brained
idea hinges on the fact that Django has to pretend like he doesn’t care about
slaves being brutally victimized, and Broomhilda pretending like she doesn’t
know Django. Both of which, are clearly impossible for the love-birds to pull
off, and unfortunately, it’s idiotic of them to assume they could do that.
Besides
this major plot hole, the rest of the film is a plot-less, revenge driven
schlock fest that is only propelled by a mix of Tarantino’s White Guilt and
penchant thirst to cover everything possible in red paint and corn syrup. It’s
not that I don’t want to see Jamie Foxx enact revenge on bad people for
slavery, I just only need to see it for maybe an hour. The remaining time could
and should have been better spent on some of the witty dialogue Waltz uses on
the people who are the victims of his bounties. Now that’s entertainment.
3.
I
didn’t like that it was excessively violent. Yes, I understand that this is a
Tarantino movie, so if there wasn’t violence we would just be watching a 25
minutes G-rated comic book about a dentist who teaches rich Plantation owner’s
about the importance of brushing and helps a young couple get back together. But
the gratuitous violence that is Tarantino is at even a new level for him in
this film. In the first final shoot-out, blood covers the white walls of Candyland
as if it were wallpaper. It’s gross.
Clearly
Quentin Tarantino has lost touch with what is good filmmaking and what is just
his own wet dream.
However, there
were a few things that I did enjoy about the film.
For one:
Christoph Waltz is really great in this. His performance is the reason that the
Best Supporting Actor race is in such a dead heat right now. And he really does
a great job portraying someone who detests slavery as an institution and feels
for slaves in a time when no one else did.
Given that this is only the second movie I have seen him in, that I
actually like him in the film, and that the first movie was Inglourious Basterds, I’d say he did a
pretty solid job.
And that is
coming from someone who is convinced that Ralph Fiennes is evil after having
seen him in Schindler’s List. I
screamed for Jennifer Lopez’s safety throughout the entirety of Maid in Manhattan.
Run J. Lo Run!
And I also
really enjoyed the scene where Jamie Foxx wore blue velvet.
Imma Take Yo
Grandpa’s Style!
But really,
the problem with this film, is that it’s just totally driven by revenge and white
guilt. And it’s the same problem with Lincoln.
Both of these films are thriving on the fact that white people feel bad about
slavery and that any film made about it is automatically “good” and “important.”
I certainly don’t
want to argue that slavery isn’t important, or that white people shouldn’t feel
bad about it. It was important, and white people should feel bad about it. But
Django and Lincoln really only fly with audiences because of this fact, and
they don’t stand up as films in their own right, at least they didn’t with me.
I can’t just accept that both of them are
“important” and thusly must be good. Lincoln
is wicked boring, and Django Unchained
is very poorly plotted out, and doesn’t really make that much sense. I can’t
just give them a pass for being important.
Really, we
should feel bad that racism is still alive in America and that we don’t do
enough to combat it. THAT is a movie
that would be important.
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