Film Review: DJANGO UNCHAINED

Thwarted in my search for a movie out in the world, last night I stayed home and watched Django Unchained, successfully purchased from Redbox. The opening credits seemed so sappy, with postcard images of mountains and clouds obviously colorized to death, and a soaring soundtrack befitting one of those bad John Wayne westerns from yesteryear, that I almost turned it off. Also, the story is about slavery, my least favorite subject after the Holocaust. (Yes, I know, bad things happened in the past, but can't we just move on?) But hey, what else was I doing, so I forged ahead.

My box of Whoppers at the ready, I steeled myself for Hollywood's trivialization of a serious subject, so I was delighted to see that not only is Oprah not in it, but Christoph Waltz is. The brilliant actor who played the evil SS officer in Inglorious Basterds owns the screen for much of the film, once again scaring the bejeezus out of us--although here he is kinder, gentler, and the only non-racist around. This movie turned out to be along the same lines of Basterds, only for blacks. The sweet revenge of all those Jewish Nazi killers is greatly surpassed by Django, played by Jamie Foxx. Pretty soon there are piles of dead white guys everywhere, each one deserving it of course, not only for calling everyone a nigger, but for torturing, whipping, disfiguring, demoralizing and humiliating any and every person of color.

When I saw The Help a few years back I thought they were slaves, but director Quentin Tarantino made those cleaning ladies look more like a branch of the Southhampton Junior League. These slaves are shackled, hung upside down, buried naked inside sweat boxes, eaten alive by dogs, branded with red-hot irons, forced to fight one another to the death--and those are the lucky ones. But disturbing as parts of the movie are, what with the fake but very convincing blood spurting, gushing, poring, sputtering, jettisoning, oozing and seeping from a variety of orifices from hundreds of people and their horses, it also contains some memorable comic scenes. One in particular involves the dumb-as-rocks Ku Klux Klansmen out for a midnight raid who can't see out of the eye holes in their hoods. They stop and have a debate over it, finally deciding to go hoodless this time but vowing to do a better job the next time they "go out to kill a bunch of niggers." It was Mel Brooks-funny, making all the terrifying scenes of torture where you have to cover your eyes and plug your ears worth it.

Incredible performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson added to the intensity. In fact, it was so intense that I had to stop the movie halfway so I could sleep without nightmares and will watch the conclusion this evening. I slept fine, but noticed that today I hate all white people.

To be continued...