Django Unchained

There's something unsettling about Quentin Tarantino's project of providing wish fulfillment revenge fantasies, first to the Jewish people in Inglourious Basterds, then to the American slaves, in Django Unchained. Watching one of Tarantino's films almost always gives me the impression that this director is full of himself, because his movies are so audacious. But it's hard to be too concerned with these thoughts, because Tarantino's movies are generally so much fun to watch. (Jackie Brown remains my favorite.)

The plot of Django Unchained is this: a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz, played by Christopher Waltz (who was so deliciously evil in Inglourious Basterds that you can't help but wonder if he's going to turn bad in this one too) enlists the help of a slave named Django (silent 'D'), played by Jamie Foxx, to find three white men who are wanted for murder. Dr. Schultz works for the government, and is legally permitted to kill any of his targets as long as he produces their bodies. Django worked on a plantation under these men, who once beat his wife ferociously after she and Django tried to escape. Eventually Dr. Schultz and Django form a partnership, after Schultz gives Django his freedom, and they decide to rescue Django's wife, now working a plantation in Mississippi.

This plantation in Mississippi is run by Calvin Candie, and it's called Candieland. The name itself suggests the genteel, gruesome horrors of slavery. When we finally get to Candieland, where we know the film will play itself out in full faux-Shakespearean fashion (Tarantino is maybe the comic book Shakespeare of our time), it's the most terrifying visual in the movie: the cotton jutting out of the fields like white dollops of foam; the slaves working in the punishing Mississippi sun; and Leonardo DiCaprio, never more villainous and enjoyable in his entire career, as Calvin, the Southern gentleman with a murderous temper, who gets his kicks watching black men fight each other to the death.

Django Unchained is the most suggestively violent of the Tarantino movies. The director holds back here more than usual, presumably to demonstrate a little good taste. He's already walking on egg shells by making a movie that tries to retroactively punish white racism, and if you can allow yourself to enjoy its maniacal plot, you're likely to have a good time. The camera, more often than not, looks away from the violent acts, or at least, the most violent parts of them. The suggestion is powerful enough. There's the expected bloodbath, near the end. That's the cookie, the reward for the initiated, who perhaps sit through Tarantino's talky, long-winded plots just for those ten minutes of gory violence. But as much as I was filled with anticipation and suspense for that scene to come, the rest of the movie is what's more enjoyable (although the long-windedness takes a toll: they could have shortened it a bit, I think.)

The performances in Django Unchained are the film's strongest assets: Jamie Foxx turns into some kind of 1850's blaxplitation superhero. His performance is smooth and assured, and his indignation both righteous and horrific. Waltz is a charming participant, perhaps incredulously caught up in the story, but like any good bad movie, necessarily out of place. He's a wonderfully engaging actor, and all the scenes where he talks his way out of being shot by various farmowners and sheriffs and villains, are deliriously funny and amusing. DiCaprio is wickedly good, playing a part that's truly distinguishable from so many of the banal-important roles he's played before. He's colorful, capturing that weird mixture of Southern gentleman-Gothic torturer.

The South, like every other place figured into a Quentin Tarantino film, becomes the director's playground, where he employs any and every ingredient that interests him. Thus we get a movie set in pre-Civil War America full of 20th century Westerny songs as background music (and a few rap songs, too). The anachronism works well for this kind of pop-history-carnival ride. It's not a perfect film, and it's not the director's best film, but it's a fun movie, and I'm always grateful when movies aren't afraid of showing us a good time.

With Kerry Washington (as Broomhilda--Tarantino must have been waiting 20 years to use that name), Samuel L. Jackson (perhaps the most hated character in the movie, as the self-loathing head-slave, and Mr. Candie's right-hand-yes-man), Walton Goggins, Don Johnson, Laura Cayouette, Dennis Christopher, James Russo, James Remar, Tom Wopat, Cooper Huckabee, M.C. Gainey, Bruce Dern, Ned Bellamy, Jonah Hill (who has a cameo in one of the funniest scenes: a pre-KKK nighttime attack that isn't very well-thought-out by the participants), Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, Michael Parks, and Quentin Tarantino. Written by the director. 165 min. ★★★½

Breaking Away

Breaking Away is a sleeper hit from 1979 about four high school graduates in Bloomington, Indiana, who have no clue what they want to do with their lives, and feel out-of-place in their own hometown in the presence of the preppie coeds at Bloomington's Indiana University campus.

Breaking Away is one of smartest, funniest, most endearing crowd-pleasers I've ever seen. It portrays life in a small town honestly, not looking down but rather looking in. The relationships in the movie are deeply layered, so much so that every time I watch this movie I discover new qualities, new facets. The main character, Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher), is an avid cyclist who idolizes a group of Italian racers, to the point that he's become a sort of trans-ethnic-- an Italian trapped in an American's body. He speaks with a cheesy Italian accent and wears Italian aftershave, and has transformed the walls of his bedroom into a virtual shrine to Italy.

Dave's father (Paul Dooley) is baffled by his son's bizarre behavior, but won't do anything about it other than complain. Dave's mom (Barbara Barrie) doesn't mind--she gets a kick out of his active imagination because it runs against the routine of small-town blue-collar culture. She sees in Dave a sense of passion for living that she once had, a fire that died down but remains inside her if ever so faintly.

Even though the parents have aspects of caricature--the complaining, ultra-conservative father and the deferential, quiet, mother--the actors manage to turn these caricatures into human beings with depth to them. The caricatures become enhanced, fleshed out, made loveable, made credible, made acceptable and forgivable, and at the same time they end up surprising us in many ways.

Likewise, the development of the four guys--Dave (Christopher), Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley)--is a richly delightful experience to watch. Quaid is a former high school quarterback who sees a dim and unfulfilling life ahead of him, Stern is the gangly eccentric, whose weird personality alienates him but also endears him to the group: At the end of the movie, after the climactic Little 500 race (which actually exists to this day in Bloomington), Cyril is the only one without someone at his side. He seems to walk through the movie slightly alone. Moocher is experiencing new romance and trying to act like an adult, even though he's short and still looks like a kid.

Breaking Away was written by Indiana University graduate Steve Tesich, who received an Academy Award for his screenplay. It was directed by Peter Yates. Also starring Robyn Douglass, Hart Bochner, Amy Wright, and in a cameo appearance, P.J. Soles. ★★★★