On the Inconsistencies of Tarantino with Django Unchained

A consistently polemic figure, Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Django Unchained highlights the divisive director’s inconsistencies as a filmmaker. At points brilliant, at others dull, Django Unchained displays, once again, the breadth of Tarantino’s cinematic awareness in its style and substance.

Django Unchained follows the story of freed slave Django on his quest to free his wife from plantation owner, Calvin Candie. The inconsistencies within the film lie not only in Tarantino’s style and audience awareness, but also in the content.

At close to three hours long, the double climax of the film feels like a slap in the face, especially as the latter climax lacks any of the wit of the first two hours. It is a strange move to make as the film looses two of its most interesting characters and becomes entirely violence with no intent. Such inconsistencies in how an audience will interpret his work are why many Tarantino film since Jackie Brown (1997) suffer from repeat viewings. 

Audiences know from Inglorious Basterds (2009) that Tarantino plays it loose with history and this is no criticism as he had no responsibility to be accurate, but this is not the issue in his handling of America’s slave trade. Tarantino offers us, with Django Unchained, a virulent criticism of white America and on screen we are presented with images of slaves being forced to fight to the death, being ripped apart by dogs and kept naked in a steel box in the midday heat; all powerful, deliberate and contentious images. Yet this is not a film about the slave trade, it is a film that uses the slave trade to its advantage. The loquacious speeches, stylish aesthetic, anachronistic music and cartoon violence serve as constant distractions to the simple slave turned freeman narrative. It is difficult to make a serious point when heads explode in gushes of red and characters are blown, exaggeratedly away by gunshots. This is as much as film about slavery as it is a film dedicated to a single genre.

As with all Tarantino films it has moments of sheer brilliance that used to be unidentifiable simply due to their ubiquitousness in his first three features. The Ku Klux Klan arguing over the eyeholes in their hoods is hilarious and the first hour where Django and his German partner search for the Brittle Brothers is gripping. Yet as a whole piece of work, just like Tarantino’s output since the late 90s, Django Unchained doesn’t work.