Django Unchained: A Spaghetti Southern by Tarantino

In 1858, bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Waltz) frees a slave named Django (Fox) to help him track down three outlaw brothers. They become partners and subsequently attempt to rescue Django’s wife (Washington) from the clutches of a plantation owner (DiCaprio).

Among Candy’s henchmen is a female gunslinger who hides her face under a bandana. This is none other than Zoe Bell from “Death Proof.”

Every new Quentin Tarantino film is an event in itself. Like the hero of his latest film, Tarantino is a Director Unchained (although, to be honest, he never seemed to be in shackles before). His main goal has always been to revel in his boundless love for cinema and share it with audiences; at the same time, Tarantino has never condescended to his audience, assuming that they, his viewers, know just as much as the director himself. Therefore, for better (“Four Rooms,” “Death Proof”) or worse (“Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown,” “Kill Bill,” “Inglourious Basterds”), his films, no matter how grand, are always free from the hectic nervousness of studios and trendy fads, be it digital, special effects, 3D, or even IMAX. For a man credited with breaking every rule in the book, Quentin Tarantino is an unyielding traditionalist.

Tarantino Tackles the Western Genre

The fact that he has taken on the most traditional of all American film genres – the Western – makes “Django Unchained” a doubly significant event. The importance of the Western, with its rich mythological potential for American self-awareness, cannot be overstated. “Inglourious Basterds” was a bit of hooliganism, a blatant rewriting of World War II history in the spirit of how cinema portrayed it during Tarantino’s formative years. However, in “Django Unchained,” the director digs deeper, reaching even more fertile thematic ground. In the late 60s, young members of the counterculture eagerly immersed themselves in the spaghetti westerns of European maestro Sergio Leone and his followers, not least of whom was another Sergio – Corbucci, the director of the original “Django”; now, Quentin Tarantino’s own version was anticipated with understandable eagerness.

Django’s horse, Tony, is actually named Cheetah, and he belongs to Jamie Foxx himself. According to Tarantino, the main character of the film rides his own steed for the first time since Roy Rogers.

More Than Just a Western

Strictly speaking, “Django Unchained” is not a Western at all. Tarantino himself stated that the film should actually be classified as a “Southern” – as opposed to a “Western.” The action takes place several years before the American Civil War, while the events in most Westerns take place between the end of this devastating conflict and the beginning of the twentieth century. That was also when cinema itself was born, which cannot be considered a coincidence. The setting is also far removed from the mountainous frontier of American legends: for a good half of the film, the plot unfolds on a plantation in Mississippi, where a pseudo-aristocratic, sinister elegance reigns, rather than the muddy dirt and dust of cattlemen’s or lumberjacks’ camps in the Wild West. Sheriffs with tin stars are present, but they are dealt with ridiculously quickly. The complete absence of Native Americans and border bandits is striking.

Well, a Southern it is then. Or rather, a “Spaghetti Southern,” because despite the fact that Tarantino bypassed the historical homeland of Westerns, he fully embraced the style of both Sergios and their modern followers: from the operatic grandeur of the musical score (one of the themes for “Django Unchained” was written by Ennio Morricone) to the viscous fountains of scarlet blood that flow during every shootout.

Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington play a married couple for the second time in their film career. Their debut in this role was in the film “Ray.”

A Fairy Tale Quest

Interestingly, “Django Unchained” is in many ways more of a fairy tale than a myth. For the first time, Tarantino uses a linear plot (although there are some flashbacks in the film), showing the story of a single hero. There are no shifts in perspective, chronological interruptions, or divisions into parts. In essence, we are dealing with an outright quest, a “rescue the princess” story, which looks especially powerful in the context of the fading feudal system of the Old World and the aristocratic South.

All of this is directly written into the script. After freeing the taciturn slave Django (Jamie Foxx) from his chains, the German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (the long-haired and dapper Christoph Waltz) learns with amazement that his new partner is not only married – his wife (Kerry Washington) is also named Broomhilda von Shaft! Sitting by the fire, Schultz tells Django about his wife’s namesake, Brunhilde from German legends, about how she was kidnapped by a dragon and taken to the top of a mountain, where she is surrounded by hellish flames. Now, King explains, the hero Siegfried must embark on a dangerous journey to free the beauty. And Django, according to Schultz, is “a real Siegfried in the flesh.” Thus, Django must go through hellfire, and the dragon he has to fight will not be long in coming.

The Australian miner who appears in Tarantino’s cameo alongside the director is John Jarratt, who played the terrifying serial killer in “Wolf Creek” (2005).

The Villains

Speaking of dragons: one of the most refined pleasures one can get from “Django Unchained” is Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie, the owner of a vast plantation called Candyland. Although Candie, of course, does not spew flames, he has no equal in boasting. Considering DiCaprio for the role, Tarantino changed the original image of the planter, portraying him as a “petulant boy-emperor.” The actor is so perfect in this role that he evokes a sense of hatred: a spiteful bully with blackened teeth, greedy, vain, and susceptible to flattery. His unctuous politeness is nothing more than foam, hiding dark, poisoned waters. With each appearance of Candie on the screen, a threat of violence emanates from him, and Tarantino brings this to a climax in the dinner scene, which is quite comparable to the scene in the German bar from “Inglourious Basterds.”

A worthy partner for the unholy DiCaprio is Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, the senior house slave on the plantation: the gray-haired, trembling lackey is almost struck by a stroke at the sight of Django riding a horse, and the very thought that a “nigger” might be allowed to live “in the big house” fills him with the deepest disgust. Waltz is also magnificent, this time on the light side: he plays the role of a hero for Tarantino no less masterfully than the role of the villain Hans Landa in “Inglourious Basterds,” and his Dr. King is just as brilliantly verbose.

Weaknesses

Sadly, the film has its weak link. Ironically, it turned out to be Jamie Foxx. Undoubtedly, the actor looks very impressive physically and fully corresponds to the image of Django, but he still does not look like a stern hero-shooter. More precisely – he does not sound like one: Fox’s melodious, quiet voice does not match Django’s abrupt, laconic remarks. “You die pretty, boy,” such pearls of wit should be spat out like sand from the mouth, but in Fox’s performance they sound gentle, like falling feathers.

There were also other problems. Tarantino’s passion for black comedy and hyperrealistic, sometimes cartoonish scenes of violence contradicts his bold decision to show the horrors of slavery without embellishment: floggings, the nightmares of the “hot box,” and the brutal mandingo fistfight (in a chillingly gruesome scene). All this, of course, is part of Django’s story, which is very important, but does not quite fit with Tarantino’s signature approach to “spaghettification.”

And, to be completely honest, “Django Unchained” is damn long. More precisely, its storyline is damn short for a film that lasts almost three hours. In essence, a long film is not so bad, and one of Tarantino’s strengths is that he is not afraid of endlessly long scenes, and his dialogues unfold with luxurious slowness. However, in this particular case, this tendency works against the director. “Django…” could easily have been made much more dynamic, without any damage to the quality of the film.

The director could well have followed the example of his Italian inspirations, increasing the number of chases and action in general. In short, as Tuco said in Sergio Leone’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “when you need to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”