domingo, 20 de enero de 2013

Scene City #20: "Django Unchained" (Tarantino, 2012)

Quentin Tarantino is as famous for his films as for his real-life antics, product of an extravagant personality and an endless verbiage on movies. With “Inglorious Basterds” ,and now “Django Unchained”, he has found a way to bridge his mischievous and blood-soaked revenge fantasies with the atrocities found along on the outskirts of history (Django is set two years before the Civil War). 
Tarantino has never been a filmmaker known for his subtlety and with his most recent endeavor he forces an audience to truly experience slavery as an evil system of exploitation and psychological torture –as a means to return to a monarchy of sorts, as owners traded with lives whilst living in a world filled with luxuries. It’s fascinating, and painful, to witness a class structure within slaves (some men forced to be fighters –to the death– and women to be whores) while some even hated their own kind, choosing to serve their masters with utter and unflinching devotion (those were nicknamed “Uncle Toms”).
A few weeks ago I saw Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”, which focuses on the creation of the 13th amendment. Spielberg’s movie centers on white politicians and officials on under-lit rooms and courthouses debating the issue, without showing its impact on the black community. In a way, Tarantino makes a better case of empathy by refusing to dial back on the horrors beyond the white man’s mindset. But further from issues of race and politics, Tarantino writes characters and not vacuous symbols of worship. “Django Unchained” contains wonderful performances that play like a riff on movie genres (the primary focus is the “Spaghetti” Western) and also on Tarantino’s own body of work –castings, dialogues and entire sequences echo other movies.
There are several intriguing relationships in the movie. The main one involves Dr. King Schultz (played by Christoph Waltz) and our renegade hero Django (Jamie Foxx). Dr. King used to be a dentist but lately focuses on a much more profitable business, bounty-hunting. He recruits Django because he can recognize the faces of the men he needs to kill while Django needs Schultz to help him rescue his wife Broomhilda. Waltz plays Schultz with cheeky gusto as if his job was merely an amusement and not a risky endeavor. He likes Django and develops a bond beyond the violence and hatred (its almost as if Col. Hans Landa grew a conscious and a heart). 
Another interesting relationship lies with Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio playing against type with villanious zeal) and Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), a plantation owner and his servant. There’s a bond of respect and even love as Stephen sees beyond the lies of Django and Schultz and advices Candie on their deceit. Jackson transforms a stereotype into a clever monster that seems to be two steps in front of everyone else. 
“Django Unchained” has the usual beats that make Tarantino’s movies almost addictive (including an awesome soundtrack) even if it runs a bit too long (his editor and long-time collaborator, Sally Menke, unfortunately died recently). Sometimes it feels overindulgent in its excesses but the reason people come back to his movies, time and again, is because his characters transcend their stories and almost become ready to inhabit our own blood-soaked fantasies.