Brief thoughts on Django Unchained
Warning: Spoilers
abound throughout
Quentin Tarantino is always up to more than mere aping. Yes,
he’s a filmmaker that speaks to the film geek inside all of us (how many of us
check off the references in our head while we watch his films?), but his best
films have always been about more than the thing he’s referencing. Jackie Brown (more than a love letter
to the Blaxpoitation film), Kill Bill (has depths that reach beyond simple homage to his favorite of subgenres, the
kung-fu movie), and Inglourious Basterds (as
perfect a film Tarantino has made, only Jackie
Brown comes close, is so much more than being just some homage to B-level WWII movies) are his best examples of this; they're also his best films because they are so much more than what they seem to be on the surface. I always appreciate that about Tarantino. Even though Django Unchained isn't anywhere close to being in the same category of his three best films, I found myself liking a lot of what
Tarantino was up to with his homage to Blaxpoitation and Spaghetti westerns. I want
to see Django Unchained a second time before I approach the film with a more conventional
review. So for now, in fear that if I don’t get something written down now I never
will, here are a few, jumbled (and probably repetitive) observations about Tarantino's latest: