Three years ago when my friends and I went to see Tarantino's Nazi-killing revisionist revenge fantasy, Inglourious Basterds, we emerged from the theater quivering with excitement. We had just watched a bunch of Nazis, including the big man himself, get murdered by a troupe of Jewish men. We had been primed to hate Nazis, especially Hitler, who has become more of a symbol of ultimate, unrepentant evil than an actual man. So to watch a film where he gets machine-gunned in the face? A visceral, primal pleasure.
Coming out of Django Unchained was a little...different. Tarantino's latest revenge fantasy comedy (and homage to spaghetti westerns) is about a slave, Django (played by Jamie Foxx), who is freed by a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, playing a far more humane character than his role in Basterds). In exchange for Django's help finding, killing, and hauling in a trio of criminals--the Brittle Brothers--for a hefty bounty, Schultz will help Django track down and rescue his wife, Broomhilda, who was sold separately from Django years before. Schultz teaches Django to use a gun and it turns out that Django is a natural at it. He's good at killing white folks too. Especially if they're in the process of whipping a slave.
The real fun begins when Schultz and Django track down Broomhilda. She was sold to a notorious plantation owner--Calvin Candie (played with delicious evil by Leonardo DiCaprio)--a rich dandy who forces his slaves to fight each other to the death in a sport called "Mandingo fighting". Schultz and Django pose as a customer interested in purchasing a slave for Mandigo fights and an expert on the sport, respectively. By offering to pay an outrageous sum to buy one of Candie's slaves, they gain entry into CandieLand, his plantation. Of course, it's not long before all hell breaks lose, Tarantino-style.
While Django Unchained was as excellent, funny, violent, and dark as Tarantino's previous films, it was uncomfortable in a way his other movies aren't. It's easy to laugh at Hitler being murdered, but when it's your own history up for scruntinization, you can't help but feel a sense of shame. And this is good. It's appropriate to feel shame about American slavery, even if you or your ancestors didn't own slaves. It's part of our collective history and memory as Americans and it's a burden we have to bear. At least, this is what I believe.
I read a review of the film that used a phrase like "America's weeping sore" to describe slavery. Slavery is a weird thing because it's far enough in the past that people living today don't directly relate to it, yet the haunting memories live on and get filtered down through history. Many people alive today do, in fact, remember a time when black people and white people did not intermingle at all. Where schools were segregated, the N-word flowed freely from people's mouths, etc. And everyone alive today is aware of the tension--the tightrope walk--of electing our first black president. The snide comments and jokes that followed. Images of the White House with watermelons planted in the front yard that were emailed between congress people who weren't fans of Obama.
Although things are far better than they were 50--and certainly 150--years ago; racism, white privilege, and all that ugliness are alive and well today. No one wants to be called a racist, but many folks cling to their "rights" to say and believe terrible, racist things. Django pulls no punches. Far more disturbing than the fountains of stage blood during the shooting scenes are the scenes of black slaves in those hideous, spiked collars, being led on leashes like animals. The scene where Django begs on his knees for his wife to not get whipped--and she's whipped anyway. The degradation and humiliation is disgusting--a sin.
Bizarrely, a couple days before I saw Django, I was waiting in a movie theater to see Anna Karenina (review to be posted soon!), and an eccentric-looking elderly lady sat down next to me to ask me to help read a train ticket she had in her hand. I realize that this will sound like a fake story, but this nutty old broad engaged me in a conversation about how Abraham Lincoln is surely "in hell" and was "a crook". Further, she said that once slavery ended, a bunch of slaves who, she said, "people like us would consider subhuman" went around raping and pillaging until "the KKK put a stop to it". I'm not kidding you people--these are her words! I tried to argue with her where I could, but mainly I was amused and bewildered--though not surprised--that this living relic in a tattered fur coat was saying things to me that surely some people think, but know better than to speak aloud.
I think the worst part was her comment about the "subhuman" slaves. Of course, she's partially right. These men, women, and children were born as human and free as any white person. Granted the same rights by God as any white person. But we--our ancestors--put chains on them and made them "subhuman". At least in our minds. It's easier to whip and rape subhumans than equal beings, isn't it?
America is a great country and I love it so much. But I understand and accept that if you call yourself an American, you have to take the good along with the bad. We live in an amazing country where we have many freedoms people in other countries do not have. But as payment for that freedom, we must acknowledge that it was not always this way, and it still isn't perfect. We are the country of the Constitution, but we're also the country of Rosa Parks, of Japanese internment camps, of Jim Crow laws. We must take it as whole in order to make it better.
4.5 out of 5 stars
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