To quote Andile Mngxitama, “Tarantino is an artist who paints in blood,” and that blood is followed by a whole lot of laughter in Tarantino’s epic Western Django Unchained.
If you’ve been following the Twitter buzz and the American media headlines you will see the movie has been hogging headlines for all the wrong reasons. The frequent use of the word “nigger” and the creation of a hyper-real Western set around slavery has got some liberals and African Americans pissed but I say “darn it” when a movie is a hit it’s a hit. Django is the perfect companion to Inglourious Basterds and may I add , I found this one more engaging, funny and better (but that’s me).
Tarantino, since his early days of True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction has always had a panache for dialogue, violence, character and story. In Django Tarantino showcases his strengths, not shying away from the gruesomeness of slavery but also being able to add a lot of humour to his violence.
This is something that might not sit so well with the powers that be in the US currently with all the shooting and gun laws debacle. Yet QT understands when to use the violence for shock, horror and for laughs. He does not trivialize the brutality of slavery but the movie is not hamped down by it too - this is not Amistad or The Colour Purple, this is the Inglourious Basterds universe where everything's subjected to the story and not some great ideological point.
QT, like Aaron Sorkin (the writer of the Social Network among other films), has a neck for writing brilliant dialogue scenes and having characters deliver those lines as if they were born to do it.
Django has more punch lines than ProKid on a good day, witty comebacks and references that will make most geeks wet themselves with envy. Laugh out loud scenes that would make the producers of the Hangover want to appropriate some scenes.
One classic scene where QT shows his finesse with dialogue, whilst making it accessible to everyone and leaving everyone in stictches, has to do with the Ku Klux Klan. I aint going to spoil it. The movie is littered with moments of madness and laughter.
QT has given cinema some great iconic characters, to mention a few John Trovolta and Samuel Jackson's suit clad enforcers in Pulp Fiction, the colour gang of Reservoir Dogs, the Bride of Killing Bill and in Django he does not disappoint.
Jamie Foxx is super cool as the smooth talking everyman who discovers he has a neck for gun play. Christopher Waltz, the former Jew hunter, is the verbose killer Dr.King, Samuel Jackson is the menacing uncle Rawkus house nigger and Leo Di Caprio enjoys himself as the spoilt plantation owner. Seeing these guys interacting in scenes, their delivery and performances are a joy to watch.
The movie is epic and has a tendency of “the good, the bad and the ugly" when it comes to running time, which may not to be everyone cup of tea. Yet everything fits together well narrative wise. The film is pure entertainment and if there was any justice in the world QT would have gotten a Best Director Oscar nomination for his sterling work. Django Unchained is pure, unadulterated FUN splashed in red. One of the best movies I’ve seen thus far in 2013 and the year is only beginning.