It's the rare recent movie that easily feels like it couldn't have been made even a year after its debut, especially when 12 Years a Slave handled the topic of slavery so seriously and soberly, and then an influx of similarly-themed material seemed to overwhelm audiences.
This factor, coupled with legitimate questions about authorship and Tarantino's copious use of the n-word has led many people whose opinions I respect to widely condemn this film.
But my experience with the movie has always been a purely emotional one -- I am well aware of its flaws, especially when it comes to the female characters (with few exceptions, not one of Tarantino's strong suits generally) -- but for me, this film was a euphoric, giddy, transgressive joy.
It was a film that captured the essence of what Tarantino had been striving for in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, the Kill Bill films, and even Inglourious Basterds, which was always viewed as the more prestigious film, even though it was no less politically incorrect than this one.
Tarantino has always been a filmmaker consumed with his childhood passions and none appears to be greater than his affection for the blaxploitation genre, which is inherently problematic, but also undeniably sexy, badass, and all about audience gratification and more often than not about a satisfying thirst for righteous revenge.
I fell in love with Django Unchained during a striking scene where the Django character (played by Jamie Foxx) snatches a whip from a vicious plantation overseer and proceeds to beat him mercilessly and kill him in cold blood. The racially diverse audience I saw it with was rapturously cheering and in this miracle of a moment it dawned on me how radical Tarantino's film was, whether he meant it to be or not.
For the first time in any movie I'd ever seen, we were being encouraged to watch a black man whoop a white man's ass. What's more, the 'magical negro' role was being played by a white German man -- Oscar winner Christoph Waltz. Here was Tarantino taking the once radical racial satire of Blazing Saddles in a totally new direction, culminating with the uproarious performance by Samuel L. Jackson as the deceptively sophisticated 'Uncle Tom' character Stephen, which steals the final act of the film.
While use of the n-word had felt forced and distracting in previous Tarantino films, here it made perfect sense -- the film does take place in 1858 -- and it would be patently absurd to project modern liberal thinking onto to a profoundly prejudiced landscape. Even Waltz's character, nominally the only decent white person in the film, can't help but condescend to Django.
And in the role of a proud man who has nevertheless lived his whole life as a slave, Foxx's character almost has to be docile at first, if only because it would naturally take time for him to gain confidence in his freedom.
Some of these character details no doubt infuriate a lot of viewers -- and are unforgivable to some. But for me they serve the broader story, which invites and even encourages uncomfortable but necessary conversations, which is what any premise dealing with race should require. It can't be pretty or easy and this film never is.
Take for instance the Leonardo DiCaprio villain. In one of his best performances, DiCaprio is both a monstrous, repugnant racist and also quite funny, even charming at times. By having DiCaprio make the arguments that bigots did and do make in defense of slavery and black inferiority of course runs the risk of such beliefs gaining unwanted traction. But he and his cohorts' gruesome fate speaks volumes of how the film and filmmaker wants him and his views to be regarded.
It's not a coincidence that what constituted the alt right back in 2012 was horrified by this movie (as albeit were a lot of lefty black intellectuals too). This film wasn't a stickler for historical accuracy or an expose on the horrors of slavery (although the film doesn't try to sugarcoat the experience either), so on a certain level it wouldn't please a lot of people.
But this film is a great exploitation movie several years late, one that didn't have to make the same compromises that earlier slavery-themed trashy movies like Mandingo had to make.
The best blaxploitation films -- Black Caesar, Foxy Brown and Coffy come to mind -- all were problematic with a capital P, but they provided a certain visceral satisfaction in seeing white oppressors get their just desserts, which simply didn't and doesn't happen often enough, in reality or fantasy.
By choosing to set this particular western revenge fantasy in the slavery context doesn't excuse the culpability of its audience and in several scenes the shifts from comedic tension to pure horror are intentionally quite jarring and brutal. Think of the infamous wrestling scene that comes just over a third of the way through. It's grotesque and kinetic at the same time, which for me makes it more unforgettable than some of the most respectable fare that has attempted to tackle the subject of slavery.
In my humble opinion there there are only a few wrong way to portray slavery, like making it appear to be a condition that the slaves didn't mind (like Gone With the Wind did) or one that wasn't that bad (like Gone With the Wind did). We've certainly had very different approaches to telling the story of the Holocaust, and since this is our uniquely American holocaust, I don't think Tarantino was wrong or insensitive to take such a popcorn approach with this material.
Some of the other quibbles -- that Foxx's Django is too passive, that the movie is overlong, and doesn't do enough to illuminate the central romance with the Kerry Washington character (sex and love are definitely not Tarantino's comfort zone) -- are not invalid, but there is so much to chew on in this epic piece of high wire filmmaking (like its revolutionary reinterpretation of the western hero archetype)that I tend to forgive these shortcomings.
For instance, just when the movie seems like it might start flagging, Jackson's character shows up and presents a wholly new subversive element to the film. The movie is not just taking a simplistic white liberal anti-racism position, it's also taking an anti-complacency and self-hating position, which is just as important, especially today.
In some ways, setting a film in 1858 gave Tarantino a freedom to plumb his own eccentricities, fascinations and feelings when it came to race (and some would argue, to excuse them) that a contemporary film couldn't -- so much so that he continued playing in this same world for The Hateful Eight.
His next film, centered on the Manson murders, is also set in the past. And even his 'modern' films like Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown have a decidedly retro, vintage feel. Tarantino clearly sees the past as instructive and while filmmakers of color may be better suited to tell these stories going forward, I appreciate that he too is grappling with this history, in his own way, and throwing a bit of a bomb into the marketplace of ideas to spark some lively debate.
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