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Showing posts with label Samuel L Jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samuel L Jackson. Show all posts
Friday, December 2, 2016
Friday, December 2, 2016
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Chi Raq is a mess. A loud, energised, angry, colourful, adventurous and usually pretty goddamn cool mess. It's one of those movies that makes you wonder how they got the budget to pull this off, but are thankful that someone stumped up the cash. After all, a contemporary Chicago gangland reimagining of Aristophanes' 411BC play Lysistrata, reworked as a fourth-wall bustin', satirical sex comedy, quasi-musical with dialogue in loose rhyming verse is a high concept to scale.
But Spike Lee is definitely the man for the job, Chi Raq positively trembles with the amount of enthusiasm, sincerity and unalloyed self belief that he pours into just about every frame.
Chi-Raq opens to Nick Cannon's Pray 4 My City, printing the lyrics in block capitals on the the screen. We learn that more Americans have been shot to death in Chicago than were in Afghanistan and Iraq, Cannon's song, delivered with coolly straightforward anger, explains what it's like living in urban wartime: "This is an emergency / Police sirens, everyday / People dyin', everyday / Mamas cryin', everyday".
Lee quickly sketches up in the Trojans v Spartans gang war: the opposing sides locked into a retaliatory spiral of death. Someone gets shot at a concert, causing a house to get burnt down, causing machine gun fire to crackle through the city streets, causing.. well you get the picture. It'd be a tragedy if it were just young men gunning each other down, but the situation comes to a head when a young girl is senselessly killed by a stray bullet.
Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), the girlfriend of gang leader Chi Raq (Nick Cannon) decides to take action. Inspired by the true story of Liberian peace activist (and Nobel Prize Winner) Leymah Gbowee, she corrals Chicago's women and commits them to a sex strike, chanting "no peace, no pussy!" or, as the men put it, "these hoes have shut down the penis power grid!".
That kicks off the film's descent into hot-blooded lunacy, which begins with the women taking control of the National Guard building (via a Porky's style kinky ruse), propelling their strike to a global feminist movement that concludes with a pay-per-view 'first to cum' showdown between the equally horny Lysistrata and Chi-Raq ("This is better than the Superbowl!").
You can say one thing about Lee - he's rarely dull. This is film-making with a bad case of ADD, Chi-Raq sometimes feeling like ten overlapping music videos are running concurrently. Still, the badass gangsta scenes are firmly lodged in caricature; the rival gangs looking like they've strolled out of The Warriors, and, though Lee peppers the film with shots of Chicago graffiti, the film lacks the powerful sense of time and place that (among other things) makes Do The Right Thing an all-time classic.
But Chi-Raq steamrollers its way through most of this stuff with a pure hearted, righteous indignation about the state of the world. Lee wants us all to know in the most direct terms, the precise, abhorrent nature of the way African-American urban communities are fucked over by the police, the government, gun manufacturers, druglords, gangsters, materialistic culture, substandard housing, lack of healthcare and lack of jobs. Lee sprinkles these didactic speeches throughout the film - be it through the snazzily suited narrator figure of Dolmedes (Samuel L Jackson munching his way through the scenery), Angela Basset's bruised yet noble Miss Helen or the feminist revolutionary awakening of Lysistrata herself.
Though Chi-Raq is sprawling, overlong at two hours and with a lot of quasi jokes that fall flat (many feeling like they're improvised on set), it's like few other films you'll see in cinemas. Lee wears his heart on his sleeve - using Chi-Raq as an imaginative and impassioned plea for sanity, justice and humanity.
★★★★
Chi-Raq is in UK cinemas now.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
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The Hateful Eight is a stubborn, difficult and unwieldy beast. It's three hours long. It mostly takes place in a single room. It's composed of wilfully long conversations between unlikeable men. Scenes are studded with uncomfortably casual violence against women. The word "nigger" peppers most scenes. Even the 70mm celluloid itself sounds like a pain in the arse - weighing in at a hefty 250lb and a couple of kilometers long.
But, make no bones about it, this movie is fucking grrrrrrreat.
The setup is so straightforward that it could be ripped from any cheapo thriller. Bounty hunter John "the Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) is bringing in murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Her trip to the gallows is delayed by a blizzard, stranding the characters in an isolated roadhouse, Minnie's Haberdashery.
The single room building traps a genuinely hateful crew of scum, liars and and sadists in close proximity. Each comes stacked with ulterior motives, dark secrets and murderous intent - and each is armed to the teeth. By the time the credits roll the wooden planks of Minnie's will run red with blood, brain matter, liquefied internal organs and puke.
This is easily Tarantino's most nihilistic work to date; a forensic investigation into American history and folklore that concludes with a diagnosis of incurable systematic rot. With its skeletal narrative and broad archetypes, the film begs us to view it as parable. with Minnie's Haberdashery a miniature United States of America. Now, this isn't a remotely subtle metaphor - Tarantino goes so far as to have his characters divide the room I Love Lucy-style between Union North and Confederate South: "The fireplace will be Georgia and the bar is Philadelphia."
Within this snowglobe are men that who've stepped straight out of the American subconscious. Swaddled in thick animal skins and glaring out from under impressive facial hair, they jockey each other for dominance as they playact a warped ideal of justice.
The omnipresent threat of violence acts as a catalyst for the most volatile fractures in the American psyche: endemic racism, capital punishment, fear and hatred of women, historical divisions and gun control. Tarantino rubs salt into these wounds, laying out his portrait of an society with its foundations sunk deep in blood.
That Tarantino would eventually go full political isn't such a big surprise. Both Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained explored the idea of liberation through revolutionary violence, the films a fantasy of granting victimised minorities ultimate power over those that tormented them. His support of the Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent public feud with the police union (who ominously promise a nasty "surprise" for Tarantino) underlines his recent commitment to overt political statements.
Yet where Django and Basterds find catharsis through violence, The Hateful Eight finds only ugliness. Perhaps the noblest man in the room is Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a Union war hero turned bounty hunter. Tarantino's dialogue is a perfect match for Jackson's precise cadence, so every line from his mouth is a joy to hear. Yet, his big triumphant moment is a sadistically delivered, extremely graphic description of him raping a man, and much of his desire later in the film is to "kill that bitch".
It creates an awkward disconnect between expectations and reality. We want Major Warren to fill out the shoes of the hero, to be a shining light in this mire of bigotry and racism. Yet he quickly proves almost as despicable as everyone else; for example, he doesn't so much as push back against racism as divert it for his own ends.
By the final scenes we're witnessing a calculated and ritualistic murder. The female victim looks like some totemic death goddess: framed to give her demonic wings, entirely covered in blood, gnashing jagged teeth and festooned with the limbs of her enemies. The black freedom fighter and virulent racist cop are pressed together in an homoerotic lynching, their faces contorted in orgasmic bliss. It's one hell of a weird image: decades of racial hatred forgotten in the name of unity against women.
Just as we think we've plumbed the depths, we're presented with an unexpected ray of light. Major Warren has been carrying around a letter from Abraham Lincoln, used as a prop to disarm white Unionists he encounters. As they bleed out, the men reverently recite it, finding consolation in his sage words. Complicating this is that both men know the letter is fake. As we close out to a Roy Orbison track, Tarantino leaves us to ponder whether a comforting lie is preferable to the truth: just because you know something doesn't exist doesn't mean you can't find inspiration in it. In this, perhaps, we see what he's trying to accomplish with his films.
The Hateful Eight is a complex and mature piece of writing - a riposte to those who accuse Tarantino of being all style and no substance. It almost goes without saying that it's downright beautiful too, from the wide landscapes (beautiful in 70mm) to the careful editing, outstanding Ennio Morricone score and lovingly curated gore effects.
That Tarantino has carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants proves that this is not the worst of all possible worlds. A stunning achievement.
★★★★★
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
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Mid-way through Kingsman Colin Firth and Samuel L Jackson mutually bemoan the death of the "gentleman spy movie". In 2015 the three JBs, James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, staked out a common ground of po-faced lunkery, where hard-nosed, gritted-teeth realism rules the roost. Gone is the camp-cool of cigarette lighters/hand grenades, literal poison pens and stun gun umbrellas. Or at least they were gone until Kingsman, adapted from Mark Millar's comic of the same name.
This is film has all of the above, plus a eccentric baddie with a scheme for world domination (and a proper mountain lair), plus a sexy henchwoman with a weird gimmick, plus an unexpected trip into outer space. With all those arrows in its quiver how could Kingsman possibly screw up?
Well...
The titular Kingsmen are super-secret super-British spies. Driven by a fetishisation of Savile Row class, they're neatly coiffed, highly trained, practically superheroic special agents who go where others cannot. The organisation is the epitome of class and style; using their anachronistic behaviour as cover for their lethality. Our guide through this world is veteran Kingsman Galahad (Colin Firth), who's on the look-out for new agent material.
He finds what he's looking for in Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin (Taron Egerton). Eggsy is an angry young Londoner trapped on a council estate with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar. Dressed in sports gear, knockoff Burberry and deploying barrages of Sarf Lahndan slang at whoever gets in his path he's more Alex DeLarge than James Bond. But soon he's at Kingsman Training Camp, competing with a load of snot-nosed Etonians for the one vacancy
As Eggsy he learns the ropes, bristles against this plummy-voiced classmates and learns lethal new skills, Galahad investigates the sinister Valentine (a lisping Samuel L Jackson), head of a mysterious conspiracy that's sucking in the rich, famous and talented from around the world. Soon the two plot strands dovetail and our young hero has to step up and save the world from certain doom.
Much of Kingsman focuses on satirising/dismantling class and wealth privilege. Politicians, musicians, celebrities and tech geniuses are exposed as self-serving hypocrites who wouldn't hesitate to throw the rest of us to the dogs. Given that the film gets its aesthetic thrills from aristocratic iconography you can easily level the accusation that Vaughn is having his cake and eating it. How can you satirise the rich while idolising their trappings?
Fortunately the brash working class punk hero just about saves the tone. Eggsy instinctively pricks holes in pomposity, gives as good as gets when classist jibes are tossed his way and, most importantly, treats the whole 'Kingsman' persona as a role to play. Even when he's besuited and gadget-laden he's still that rough kid from the streets. So while the message is a bit wobbly at times it all just about hangs together; though there's a slight sour note in the implications that the world's problems can be laid at the feet of "new money".
That a modern action film sets out to grapple with British class conflict is laudable even if it does so slightly ineptly. Bigger problems lie in the film's unevenness: the first half of the film is cheap n' nasty, as if the production budget were curtailed midway through production. There are big steaming heaps of low-budget CGI all over the shop and some extremely tacky looking set-dressing. Weirdly this is all at its worst in the opening scenes and gradually improves throughout the film; the impression being that Vaughn allocated the lion's share of his budget to the finale and costuming and skimped elsewhere.
The easy high point is a church-based action sequence that's as disturbing as it is kinetic. This is essentially Colin Firth vs the Westboro Baptist Church; Vaughn taking a sadistic glee in sending a Firth's highly trained killer into a crowd of fat, racist homophobes and turning him loose. It's a symphony of slashed open necks, shattered spines, impalings and true-believer's brains being splattered over stained glass windows. And it's all set to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird. The sheer bloodlust raises an eyebrow, but it's hard to deny the Ichy and Scratchy gore-glee.
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| Thamuel L Jackthon |
Low points are the deeply dull training sequences - basically Men in Black minus the imagination. When you're watching sequences you seen done better a hundred times before the film becomes rote, the dialogue sliding into predictable stereotype. Similarly much of the climax involves the lead running down endless identical corridors shooting identical jumpsuited henchmen, it's repetitive, feeling like something to pad out the run time.
With its teenage hero, cartoonish tone and sense of adventure, the film fits neatly into the young adult market. Stock developments like a naive kid being sucked into a fantastical world and becoming the master of it are the meat in which these stories are made of (and textbook Campbell). In fact, trim the copious gore and swearing and you'd wind up with an effective kid's film. But with all the impalings, exploding heads and anal sex gags it instead lands firmly around adolescence - a movie tailor-made to appeal to 15 year old boys.
Kingsman is not a very good film. But hidden within the budget SFX dreariness are flickers of imagination and audacity. I can't deny the sheer fun of watching a neon jellyfish, head-popping extravaganza soundtracked by Pomp and Circumstance, or a sexy amputee breakdancing with literal blades, but there's just too much mediocrity weighing this down to make it truly worthwhile.
★★★
Kingsman: The Secret Service is released 29th January
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
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Somewhere deep within the metal heart of RoboCop lies the soul of a good movie. This is a deeply frustrating film, not because it does anything particularly awful, but because it displays huge potential only to repeatedly squander it in a sea of poorly shot action and poor production choices. Paul Verhoeven left some big shoes to fill and Padilha tries his best to step into them, updating and rethinking the themes of the original for 2014. At times he gets scarily close, equalling or maybe even briefly surpassing the original. But more frequently the film ends up as a shadow of its predecessor, struggling desperately to carve out its own set of iconography.
The skeleton of RoboCop's plot is lifted wholesale from the original; cop Alex Murphy is all but killed and resurrected in a robot body by an amoral corporation. He's put back on the streets as a demonstration of corporation might and technical skill and proceeds to efficiently clean up crime. But stopping muggings and stick-ups is only putting a plaster on a gaping wound, and soon Robocop works his way up the criminal ladder, discovering that his corporate creators are the real criminals.
So far, so familiar. But RoboCop 2014 is a remarkably different beast to Robocop 1987, less a remake and more a reimagining of what a robot cop means to a contemporary audience. Plucking visual and tonal references from everything from Apple, Fox News to Call of Duty, this is very much a film about 'now', with a surprisingly explicit condemnation of US imperial hegemony. We open in a Tehran under US occupation, drones now occupying land as well as air - an army of robot Gestapo agents demanding to see the citizen's papers and forcibly subjecting them to invasive airport security style body scans, seeing through clothes and onto the flesh below.
As the Iranians are humiliated and dehumanised, Samuel L Jackson's ooh-rah Republican news anchor whoops and hollers from within his holographic news studio, explaining to us how happy these people are now that they've been brought under the cosh of good old American power. But things go south, and before our eyes we see a child vapourised in a blizzard of bullets from an ED-209. It's a ballsy opening that shocks you into sitting up and paying attention - you find yourself thinking in disbelief "have they actually nailed a RoboCop remake?!".
Unfortunately this is a fleeting joy, and from this great opening sequence things go downhill pretty quickly. We're then thrown into the life of doomed undercover cop Alex Murphy, and things begin to drag. As we watch Murphy battling a personality-free arms dealer the energy that the film had completely drains away. The low point of the entire film is a really poorly shot gunfight that's honestly one of the dullest action sequences I've seen in a long time, packed full of shakycam and bad lighting. We all know Murphy is doomed, but the film meanders in these doldrums for way too long - it's almost a relief when Murphy is taken out - finally we get the robot cop we've paid to see.
Just as we've written off the film it perks up again, with the sequences of Murphy adjusting to his new life some damn effective body horror. This sharp uptick in quality shows us exactly what parts of this story Padilha is interested in. Perhaps the most striking image of the whole film follows: Murphy gazing in suicidal horror at what remains of him, a small, quivering heap of guts. Then, as soon as things get interesting we're thrown into another rather dull action sequence that seems to go on forever (though bizarrely soundtracked by the yodelling 70s rock of Hocus Pocus).
Soon the basic problem with the film becomes apparent; for every step it takes forwards it takes two back. RoboCop is a film pulling in two directions; on one hand it wants to be a serious exploration of moral personhood, examining the difference between machine and man and on the other there's a crowd-pleasing blam blam action film. In trying to cater to both audiences it ends up pleasing neither.
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| Abbie Cornish as Clara Murphy is saddled with a thankless, one-note role (and a crap hairdo) |
It's telling that whenever an action sequence begins you can't wait for it to be over; the spatial geography and even the number of combatants confusing. There's a bizarre decision to have the 'big' gunfight of the film take place in pitch darkness, the action choreography somehow managing to make a scene where Murphy essentially walks down a straight corridor shooting faceless, personality-less goons impossible to follow. Similarly, in the climactic scenes you can't even tell how many giant robots he's facing off against. You find yourself counting the minutes until the film gets back to seriously exploring the philosophical ramifications of robot cops - a perverse feeling considering this is purportedly an action film.
Joel Kinnamon's RoboCop isn't a patch on Peter Weller, but that's not really his fault. There's a narrative decision mid-way through the film that functions as a directive to Kinnamon to stop acting, resultingly for quite a large portion of the film Robocop is less a character and more of a plot device: a talking point for the supporting cast to discuss rather than someone we identify with. Fortunately RoboCop is blessed with an outstanding supporting cast; both Jackie Earl-Haley and Michael Keaton both welcome presences whenever they're on screen. The undisputed highlight is Gary Oldman as the doctor who resurrects Murphy and becomes a kind of techno-Dad to him. He's so good, and so central to the plot you could probably make a case that he's the true protagonist.
That all said, RoboCop is absolutely worth a watch, if only for the glimmers of actual brilliance that are within the film. For every uninspired bit of set dressing and occasionally cheap looking special effect there's a beautiful sequence of an amputee learning to play guitar with prosthetic hands. Though Padilha's Detroit is an boringly identikit urban environment, his Tehran and China are both striking and well-framed. While the central gangster baddie in the film is bland as bland can be, there's a decent amount of nuance to Keaton's evil Steve Jobs turn and Oldman's ethically conflicted scientist. For every boneheaded, antiseptic action scene there's an incisive bit of philosophy or razor sharp satire.
This is a flawed, disjointed and cumbersome watch. But much like its robot hero there's a core of humanity fighting for recognition deep within. Ultimately Padilha's RoboCop is a failure, but undoubtedly a noble one.
★★★
RoboCop is on general release from 7 February 2014.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
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‘Django Unchained’ is a fantastic film that should be seen by anyone with the remotest interest in cinema. It's a patchwork of cinematic references and musical cues swiped from other films, but though he may cast his net far and wide for inspiration, the true genius of Tarantino is the way he synthesises a hundred disparate elements into a seamless package. Every character in the film is a work of genius, every performance sharpened to a razor edge. ‘Django Unchained’ radiates confidence from every frame. If you haven’t seen it, go and see it.
This film has been out for a while, so I’m going to be free and easy with spoilers for the plot. If you haven’t seen the film, stop here, watch it and then come back.
Tarantino gets a lot of stick for obsessing over surface ‘cool’. Films like ‘Pulp Fiction’ and both ‘Kill Bills’ are criticised as being examples of style over substance. Sure, the dialogue may be sparkling, the direction utterly entertaining and every single piece of casting might be perfect, but, these monsters of cinema say, where is the heart? Why is style over substance such a bad thing anyway? Given the choice between a film with big dollops of visual and verbal panache and something drearily important boringly eking its way to a moralistic conclusion I’ll take the thrill ride nine of ten times. Cinema is an audiovisual medium, and as far as I’m concerned it’s perfectly valid to enjoy a film that's gunning for my reptile brain as much as one that wants to massage my frontal lobe.
But, I hear you say, why not have both style and substance? You’re right, but both here and in ‘Inglourious Basterds’ that’s exactly what Tarantino is doing. The climax of ‘Basterds’ has a cinema full of Nazis thoroughly enjoying seeing one of their own gunning down Allied troops, a twisted reflection of the thrill that we’re getting from seeing Brad Pitt carving swastikas into Nazi’s foreheads. ‘Django Unchained’ uses violence in a similarly intelligent way, arguing that the only honest way to view true horror and brutality of slavery is through a fountain of blood.
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| King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Django (Jaime Foxx) |
The film pointedly introduces itself as taking place “2 years before the Civil War”. Right now this makes the film a sibling to Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’. While ‘Lincoln’ is about the importance of co-operation and diplomacy in trying to put a broken country back together, the violence of ‘Django Unchained’ demonstrates to us exactly why it was necessary to break the country in the first place.
‘Django Unchained’ sets out its stall when we see Django hesitating over shooting a wanted man ploughing a field with his son. Schultz explains what he’s done to deserve getting shot, then tells Django to “quit your pussyfootin’ and shoot him.” This is the moment where Tarantino properly shows his cards. Slavery is so abhorrent, so intrinsically violent, corruptive and venal that approaching the issue in a tasteful and restrained way is disingenuous. So when Tarantino applies grindhouse cinematic techniques he’s not trivialising slavery, he’s using cinematic language to explain to a switched on, culturally literate audience exactly how barbaric it was. The idealism and dealmaking of ‘Lincoln’ will have to come later. Blood needs to be spilled as an overture to the Civil War to come. Bluntly and honestly, these slaving motherfuckers need to die.
The avenging angel meting out this violence is Django, who Tarantino takes pains to depict as a self made man. His development over the course of the film from hunched, monosyllabic slave to invincible gunman is perfect, we see a man consciously creating his own mythology, transforming himself from man to legend. This identity - the super-cool slave bent on revenge against those who’ve wronged him is constructed within the narrative by Django and his partner, King Schultz, and by Tarantino as writer/director of the film.
Tarantino is nothing if not self-aware, realising that a story about a white man liberating a black slave and ‘civilising’ him would raise some eyebrows. Fortunately, Schultz avoids these pitfalls by allowing Django free rein to construct his own identity. Within the film Django gets to choose his own outfits and to try on different roles as he and Schultz concoct plans to collect bounties. While Schultz impresses roles upon Django (the servant, the black slaver etc) these function as a space for our protagonist to concoct an identity of his own. But these are still restrictions or chains placed on Django by another, and for these reasons it’s necessary that the film kill off Schultz before the final act.
It’s only in the final act of the film that Django is truly unchained. Throughout the majority of the film, Schultz has constructed sets of fertile fictions within which he can decide who he is and what he wants. Before the last act, these fictions are swept away. Django is once more in chains, naked, sent back to square one. But things have changed, Django cunningly talks his way out of his bondage, displaying an wit we haven't seen him have a chance to display. As Django rides a white horse through the plantation fields, rifle raised in the air he realises his identity as an iconic force of nature, an avatar of the righteous fury of the black diaspora. He effortlessly toys with his tormentors, passing violent judgment upon them. It’s interesting to note that in this process, Django even kabooms the white man that’s been extratextually ordering him about, Tarantino himself.
As interesting as Django is, the character is necessarily slightly restricted by having him to so perfectly embody heroic vengeance. The other two characters of note are Calvin Candie, the owner of the horrific ‘Candieland’ plantation and King Schultz, Django’s mentor. Both men represent different aspects of civilisation, Schultz embodying an outsider’s European idealism and Candie representing a hypocritical ‘Southern hospitality'. For all their differences, both utilise the mechanics of slavery to get what they want out of life. Schultz may deplore cruelty, but is still sure to get a legal bill of sale when he ‘buys’ Django and later Broomhilda.
Much has been made of the seemingly random, reckless decision of Schultz to shoot Candie through the heart rather than shake his hand. It’s a surprise twist, the man who has epitomised patience and logic blows away the owner of a plantation in front of his entire staff. On reflection its not so random after all, for the first half of the film Schultz is to some degree insulated from the true horror of slavery. He’s unfailingly polite to slave owners, using his verbal dexterity to talk them round. It’s only when he dons the disguise of pretending to be interesting in ‘Mandingo’ fighting in Mississippi that his demeanour begins to change. Firstly we see him visibly disgusted at the fight to the death in Candie’s ‘Cleopatra Club’ and then almost brought to breaking point on witnessing a slave being torn apart by dogs at Candie’s command. So, when his ruse has been rumbled and the tables have been turned he ends up looking into a mirror, seeing a confident, fancily dressed man with European affectations offering his hand. Shaking it would seal his complicity with Candie’s barbarism. He’s reached the point where he’s disgusted by his own twisted reflection and “can’t resist” blowing him away.
It's also interesting that Schultz is a sly inversion of the ‘magical negro’ archetype. If you haven’t come across the term before, it refers to a cliche in American fiction to have a wise, generally old black character whose sage advice and innate spirituality are used to help the white protagonist in their struggle. Schultz turns this upside down, acting as the ‘magical’ German to Django. Brilliantly, even there’s a scene where, sitting around a campfire, Schultz tells Django ‘a story of his people’; the story of Siegfried’s rescue of Brunhilde.
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| Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) |
Calvin Candie is a great villain, his sliminess and stupidity putting paid to the repellent myth of Southern hospitality. Generosity and kindness across the scarred backs of slaves is a thin veneer of civilisation on top of sheer barbarism. It’s important to understand that Candie isn’t naïve, in the “three dimples” speech he wonders why the slaves don’t just rise up and kill his family, prooof that he knows the immorality of slavery. All of this adds up to a subtle but powerful argument against Southern slave-owners having any moral justification for their actions; even the defence of ignorance is exposed as lacking.
Fascinatingly, Tarantino even has time to force us to identify with him. There is a lot of violence in Tarantino's films, but few scenes as viscerally unpleasant as the Mandingo fight we watch Candie enjoy. We instinctively condemn Candie's gladiatorial bloodlust, but the camera positions us behind the sofa with him, identifying us with the audience watching the fight rather than with the fighters themselves, rarely showing their faces. This goes a long way to defusing the argument that he's exploiting slavery for entertainment value. Throughout 'Django Unchained' we are sitting in comfy cinema chairs watching black slaves tear each other apart for our entertainment as we munch popcorn and sip soft drinks. We can learn from what Tarantino is showing us, but this scene urges us to recognise the problems with being entertained by it.
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| Stephen (Samuel L Jackson) and Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) |
Possibly the most complex character to unpick is Stephen, Candie’s “house nigger”. He’s a tightly wound ball of self-loathing and rage, a man who’s worked to get to the highest position of authority he can within a corrupt system. While Stephen is vile in his obsequiousness and cunning, we know deep down that he’s consciously taken on this role to survive and prosper as best he can in a system designed to grind him underfoot. Both he and Django have gained freedom and privileges, yet Stephen exists within the system of oppression and Django outside. It's difficult to put yourself within Stephen’s shoes, but on a certain level his anger and disgust when he sees Django sitting at his master’s table is understandable. If a black man is allowed to behave as if he is white, it's a clear threat to the power that Stephen has clawed for himself.
Ultimately, even though we may feel sympathy for Stephen it’s fleeting. When we see Django tormenting him in the film’s finale he's utterly justified. An interesting thread in Tarantino’s recent work is the moral judgment he makes on those that aid and abet oppression and evil as opposed to those that front it. While Candie gets off relatively lightly with a single shot to the heart, Stephen gets shot in both kneecaps and left watching a dynamite fuse slowly burn down. A similar scenario happens with the Brittle brothers in the first half of the film, the man who does the whipping of slaves is summarily executed, while the man who ties up the slaves and salaciously watches gets viciously whipped by Django before being shot repeatedly. Tarantino reserves a large portion of his disgust for people that aid evil while trying to avoid taking any responsibility for it. I can see echoes of this in the final scenes of ‘Inglourious Basterds’, with the solidly bourgeois men and women in the cinema getting mown down with as much righteousness as a platoon of uniformed SS officers.
Perhaps the funniest example is Django’s carefree execution of Lara Candie, the widowed sister of Calvin. Although she never commits any overt evil during the film, it’s people like her who are willing to smile politely and ignore inhumanity without raising objections that allow systems like slavery to perpetuate themselves. When Django shoots her, she’s hilariously yanked off stage at an almost 90 degree angle, her death comical and at the same time utterly justified no matter how ‘nice’ she may be.
By the time Django turns to us, smiling as the wreckage of the Candie plantation burns behind him we feel a powerful catharsis. Tarantino and Django have carved their way through slavery with gusto, creating a new mythology in their wakes. The grindhouse and blaxploitation films that Tarantino pillages are part of the bedrock of our shared cultural experience, the style that he's criticised for is the substance his critics are seeking. By using these familiar techniques and archetypes Tarantino has created a pop mythology of retribution, he's taken modern culture, fashioned a missile out of it and fired it into the past. Everything from the whip-pans to the 2pac song on the soundtrack makes the past pop with life and relevance, highlighting the evil of 1858 through the prism of 2013.
That's why Tarantino is one of the few film-makers that successfully marries style and substance. He's a creature of cinema, unashamedly standing on the shoulders of greats, forging new meaning out of the universal cultural experience. That's why as far as I'm concerned 'Django Unchained' is a Great Film.
*****/*****
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