Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting?
Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination -- even fictional and heightened -- of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. But, hell, I say “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe
America as some kind of utopian Candy Land. It was all good. The South was happy. I hate that film. Tarantino must as
well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong.
Conservatives hate this film because it dares show America -– of 150 years ago
-- as a moral cesspool no better than Nazi Germany. Leftists such as Spike Lee hate it because they didn't think of this film, cathartic in twisted ways, first. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln,
and go see “Lincoln.” These films would make a wild double bill.
Speaking of
Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a
ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned
bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz)
seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic
that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, a long overdue F.U. to Southern
Whites, and their modern GOP apologists who use patriotism as a
weapon of hate.
There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself
spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2
hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot
cowards they were and are, but the scene is overlong and kills an otherwise
tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.
Further, his main characters
are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches
the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit
man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing
hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or
backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his ass around as a
slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic.
In “Basterds,”
Tarantino staged a key scene around a dinner and ratcheted the tension so tight,
just as my heart was about to explode, his mayhem onscreen exploded. Here,
during the big dinner scene, the air lets out, the talk drags on for 20
minutes, then the carnage hits. Then more talk. Then more carnage. Then more
talk. Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay
in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page.
So many grand
ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s leadership
as the Cinema God. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn
good as a hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of
color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a
certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. But that death is cheap, quick,
and with no deep wit.
But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as
the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do
but react -- scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her
head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a bad ass woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and damn hardy, I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly
believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.
I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie. It screams genius, daring,
red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is
deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard),
and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a
villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -–
but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.
Tarantino spends so much time making
homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce
Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a
bent-back man who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty
hunter. I would have watched another our of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe. Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure.
After taking on fantasy
Jewish revenge on Hitler, and now putting an African-American in a saddle with
guns blasting racist Southerners, one has to wonder where QT will go next: A
grindhouse take on Jesus? Or back to gangster-types? Tarantino
still remains the most-surprising American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he
does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open. B
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