The Brockporter film of the week - Django Unchained

By Monica Beck

Counterpoint: Django Unchained

Many reviewers and abstainers (such as Spike Lee), consider Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Django Unchained, as just another example of the glorification of violence and blood lust in modern cinema.  It is possible to look at the film in another way however.  Few, if any, filmmakers have depicted slavery so realistically, willing to stare into the face of brutality.  Its treatment of the institution of slavery gives it a strong revisionist tone.

In this American spaghetti Western, Tarantino pays homage to director Sam Peckinpah who specialized in making the same type of revisionist, graphic westerns, while the music and landscapes smack of Sergio Leone—wide open spaces and anti-heroes seeking justice.  Tarantino creates some comedic moments in response to the painful subject matter.

The story takes place in the 1860’s, just prior to the Civil War, as slavery rages on.  Tarantino does not spare the viewer; slavery is depicted in his very own way— over-the-top, blood, and guts fashion.  He refuses to sugar coat it in any way.  His anti-hero and main character, Django, a newly freed slave (Jamie Foxx) teams up with a bounty hunter ‘Doctor King Schultz’ played by Christoph Waltz.  Tarantino draws parallels to slavery, human bodies as commodities, as Schulz states “I deal in flesh like the slaveholder”.  In his case however, the bodies are worth more dead than alive.  Django is a natural marksman and relishes his newly found avocation.  After making loads of money killing white villains, he and Schultz take on the next-to-impossible task of rescuing Django’s wife from slavery.  She is a captive on a plantation in the Deep South where brutality is the daily norm.

Some say Tarantino’s film glorifies violence, I say it just magnifies the dehumanization and brutality inherent to the uniquely American system of chattel slavery.  His scenes depicting ‘over the top’ violence, act like a spotlight which shines on a forgotten era whose horrors have been ignored for far too long. This is a courageous film—Bravo Tarantino!  

Editor's note: The Brockporter Film Of The Week is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Fridays.