colorlessgreenideas

I don't usually write up reviews of films, partly because I can't go back to check on bits after I'm done. Nor do I usually give much thought at all to films by Quentin Tarantino. But I watched Django last night with a friend, and found I have things to say about it.

Django Unchained from what I've heard, has the same basic premise as Tarantino's film Inglorious Bastards, which I never watched. It is, at any rate, revisionist history which has a member of an abused group going after the abusers, and killing them in pure Tarantino fashion. There is blood, and LOTS of it. Somehow, when I saw the premise for Inglorious Bastards, I was unimpressed, and a little bothered. But with Django, I kind of liked it. Maybe it's because the idea of killing Nazis is old hat, but the US, and the South especially, turn a blind eye to slave owners most of the time. While most Americans know, to some extent, that yeah, slavery was "bad," we don't think of the masters as evil. Are they on the same level as Nazis? No, but the biggest difference is that Nazis wanted all Jews, etc GONE. Southern whites never wanted blacks GONE, because there would go their labor force. But they sure thought up some hellish things to put them through. And the whole ideology of racial inferiority was the damn same. That, and you still find Americans willing to defend the institution of slavery, openly and in public. Americans who try to soften the pain that was caused by slavery, by saying that "Well, a lot of owners were nice." Yes, they were, but that doesn't change the institution. Blacks, slave or free, were always at the mercy of whites. It was a white person's choice how nice to be, and a black person just had to take it. A few nice white folks doesn't make that okay.

On to the film, though. The characters were compelling and believable, in so much as Tarantino characters usually are. Django as a master gun slinger worked, and it was fun to see him blow holes in hateful people. Leonardo DiCaprio impressed me as the sadistic master, and it was easy to see both sides of him: the cruel slave owner who has runaways torn apart by dogs, and the cultured man of the time. I was underwhelmed by Django's wife, Brunnhilda. The actress did fine. The problem was that she was really just a pretty face who needed rescuing all the time. Partly, it fit the story's parallel with the Wagnerian epic or Brunnhilda and Siegfried, which Dr. Schultz tells Django during the film. Partly, I think that we as a culture can do better than that, and flesh out our female characters a little bit more.

The gore didn't get me much, but there were definitely parts I needed to turn away from - the aforementioned dogs tearing a man apart, and a man who's eyes are gauged out. But yeah, seriously a lot of blood in this film.