The Best Film of 2012...

Django Unchained.

I’ll get to Sir Quentin’s latest masterpiece in a moment, but first I want to run down just how spectacular 2012 was for a film fan. It started off like most years do – a lot of shit was released throughout the early months and we got one of the funniest movies in a long while in March (21 Jump Street). More typical claptrap ensued until Cabin in the Woods in April. It was great, but one funny deconstruction of the horror genre wasn’t enough to push everything up. Then May hit. Holy shit, did May hit. We got The Avengers, which was one of the best popcorn flicks ever made. After that, the hits just kept on comin’. The Dictator. Prometheus. Moonrise Kingdom. Magic Mike (this was a really funny, entertaining character piece that I’m sure most men avoided because they are uncomfortable with their own small penises). The Amazing Spider-Man. The Dark Knight Rises. End of Watch. Argo. Flight. Skyfall. Lincoln. Killing Them Softly. The Hobbit. This is 40.

Really, 2012 was a great year for movies. I’m not talking about the Oscar bullshit that is inevitably going to piss me off (I already have succumbed to the fact that Les Miserables is going to win), but rather the stuff that’s just really, really good for me. I don’t really care about you when it comes to movies. I care about myself, and 2012 was a damn good year for me.

But one movie stood ahead of the rest, and that movie is Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. As far as sheer cinematic greatness goes, only two other movies can really enter into the conversation for me – Argo and Killing Them Softly. I loved both of those movies, especially Killing Them Softly, a criminally under-seen movie that brilliantly used crime as a symbol for the economic collapse of 2008 thanks to capitalism run amok. It’s my kind of movie. Dickbags on the far right would hate it if they had taken the time to see it and had the brain capacity to understand metaphor, so you just know it’s really great.

In any other year, either Argo or Killing Them Softly would have taken the cake, but they had the misfortune of being released the same year as Django Unchained. Tough shit for them, because Django Unchained is, pun gleefully intended, off the fucking chain.

I love Tarantino. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers, tied with Martin Scorsese. He never makes a bad movie. Even his “bad” movies are better than most everyone else’s good ones. My anticipation for Django was incredibly high, and I figured that the movie would be amazing because it’s Tarantino, but I suspected he was due for a slight stumble after the masterful Inglourious Basterds in 2009. That film, which truly gets better with every view, was an unadulterated love letter to the power of cinema, and he was able to utilize amazing symbolism while giving audiences a cathartic release in watching Nazis get killed. I didn’t think he would be able to sustain that creative output into another masterpiece so quickly, but he did.

Django Unchained uses a similar trick as Basterds – it promises us ultra-violence being handed out liberally to the truly evil at the hands of the oppressed. While Basterds featured American Jewish soldiers scalping and killing Nazis in the waning days of World War II, Django utilizes a slave in the south two years before the Civil War killing the people responsible for one of the biggest travesties ever committed in America. You can offer up all the bullshit in the world to me about how slavery was a product of its time and that it was a business, and people didn’t know any better and all that malarkey, but you’d be talking to a brick wall. There is no, and never was, an excuse for treating people as machinery or property, and the fact that our country allowed it to continue after the rest of the civilized war ended it years earlier still makes me sick. That much of what people believed about black people in the 1800’s persists today makes it even worse.

Tarantino uses a pretty awesome concept – a former slave killing slave owners and racist bigots -  to explore a lot of heady topics, and it works wonderfully. A lot of people accuse Tarantino of playing fast and loose with his dialogue (particularly the N-word here) and his gratuitous depiction of violence, but the power of his mastery of both the verbal and visual is what makes Django so profoundly impacting. The N-word is uttered – by blacks and whites throughout – 109 times in a 165-minute film. That’s something like once every eighty seconds. It’s the most times the word has ever been uttered in one film. That’s intentional, as each time the word is spoken, it cuts like a knife into you. It’s never said as a term of endearment, nor is it even given a reaction by many of the characters in the movie. It’s a word to them, a descriptor, and hearing it spoken so cavalierly so many times hits the audience hard in the face.

There are occasions when the word is used to insult someone. This is where I feel the film becomes incredibly powerful, as the one’s using the word as an insult (as opposed to “just” a word to describe and control a black person) are predominantly black characters. Samuel L. Jackson plays Stephen in the film, the head house slave at Candyland, a deplorable plantation owned by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Stephen thinks himself above every other black character in the film; it’s never shown that he thinks himself equal to whites, but it is at least hinted at. He cannot accept seeing Django riding a horse, or sleeping in a white man’s home. He uses the word to insult Django, and his intent is clear every time he says it; the word is used as a controlling device when Stephen uses it – to remind Django of his place in the social order.

This is, in the film anyway, the primary reason the word is uttered. That word, from its origin until today, has always been used to “remind” people where they belong. It is a nasty word, a disgusting one, arguably the most hateful in the English lexicon, and it is amplified when it is used by a black person. Stephen might be the worst character in the film, since he has no fraternal connection to his race, so when he uses the word, it’s even more hateful. He knows what it’s like to be called that word over and over again, and he utilizes it for the same purpose as white folks, only his intent when using it is more devious because of his experience with the word.

There is a very powerful scene late in the film when the word is “taken back” by Django. It’s almost like Tarantino is illustrating how the word has been altered by black culture and used as a term of endearment (or at least used liberally nowadays, with no ill-will intended by its use when uttered in certain social circumstances). Django snatches the word from the evildoers and those that use the word as an insult, as a way to control black people, and owns it. He doesn’t hide from the word; he embraces it. This is the true victory for Django in the film – he takes away the most powerful tool that the powerful have, and he inverts it to empower himself.

Language has always been Tarantino’s big thing. People love it or hate it. Secondary to that, though, is his depiction of violence. This, again, is a pretty standard love-hate relationship. He doesn’t shy away from arterial spray, or vicious depictions of gratuitous bloodshed. When he made Kill Bill, I was shocked at how bloody it was. When I saw Inglourious Basterds for the first time, I was taken aback. While he was more subtle in his early years as a filmmaker, he’s taken the gloves off in later years and has seemingly embraced a more cartoonish violence. People, when shot, bleed more than they ever should. Blood sprays out in ways that are not possible given what we know of gravity. It’s more than stylized; hell, it’s more that hyper-stylized.

But he does something interesting in Django Unchained. Yes, that trademark hyper-violence is still there, but it is subtly inverted. When white people are killed, the blood flies like there’s no tomorrow. The action set pieces are as over-the-top as we’ve come to expect. It looks beautiful in a disgusting way. But when a slave is whipped? Shot? Torn apart by dogs? Horribly beaten? That chaotic, cartoonish beauty is nowhere to be seen. Tarantino presents the violence against blacks as serious, powerful, scary, hateful, and disturbing. We don’t laugh when this happens; we’re too busy being absolutely disgusted.

This is where I think some of the controversy surrounding the film falls apart under its own weight. This is not a film that stylizes slavery, or shows us the “funny side” of it. No, the depictions of slavery are blatantly disgusting, and nothing is stylized. But when the white people responsible for these actions are killed? Whoa, baby, it’s insane.

Tarantino continues his revenge fantasies in Django by first setting the table for what these people have done, and then offering us – the audience – that same catharsis he gave us as when he allowed Hitler to be machine gunned to death in Basterds. He isn’t comfortable (and he shouldn’t be) with presenting horrific acts against slaves in his trademark way, so he portrays it as it was – as atrocious. Yet when the time for recompense arrives, he gleefully, deviously, gives us what we want – bloody, bloody, bloody retribution. And it looks amazing, to boot.

Django Unchained is a spiritual successor to Tarantino’s earlier Inglourious Basterds. I’ve long maintained that Basterds was an open love-letter to the power of cinema, as cinema allows purveyors like Tarantino to exorcise certain demons of their own without the limitations of reality. In Basterds, Tarantino isn’t beholden to the reality that Hitler took his own life in a bunker in the waning days of the war. Instead, he can do what he wants, and is given the freedom to explore alternative paths that include Hitler being murdered by Jewish-American soldiers while the whole of the Third Reich is burned to death inside of a movie theater (that scene is arguably Tarantino’s most heavy handed use of symbolism to date – it is actually cinema that is killing these people).

The same can be said of Django. Cinema offers Tarantino the chance to play with reality again, only this time the environment is different. Slavery takes center stage, and Tarantino, again, uses the gift of cinematic freedom to punish those he deems worthy of punishment at the hands of the oppressed. It is just as much fun as Inglourious Basterds (there’s a scene in which Django shoots up about a dozen racist white men with Tupac rapping over top of it; suffice to say, it is a pleasing cinematic experience) but it’s also a harder film for most Americans to ratify because it’s not Nazis this time. Nazis present a villain that everyone (even Germans) can genuinely hate and not feel guilty about it, but there’s something different at work in Django Unchained, perhaps because it’s dealing with an American horror, and Americans don’t always do too well with the notion that we have made mistakes and have committed atrocities. Me? I love it. I don't have any issues with bad Americans getting killed on screen.

When Django pulls his gun out and shoots a bunch of white men, it’s great. It really is. But a lot of people will see it and think that it’s somehow wrong, because a white man wrote and directed the film, and he doesn’t have that right as a white man. Beyond that, we’re talking about an issue that is still alarmingly present in 2012 (going on 2013), and that issue is racism. It’s alive and well, and there are feelings at stake here that I cannot portend to grasp fully, although I do recognize they’re there.

It is hard to fathom that a white man like Quentin Tarantino could make a movie like this, but I don’t believe Quentin Tarantino sees himself as a white man. I believe he thinks of himself as a human being, in league with every other human being who has ever lived, and wants to rectify the past the only way he knows how. Maybe he struggles from “white guilt,” but I don’t think he does. I think he is simply one of the few people of the world who is intelligent and crazy enough to attempt to convey a message in which he speaks to his own post-racist ideal. He doesn’t perceive himself as a white man making a film about black slavery; he sees himself as a human being making a film about human slavery, and how language (especially that dreaded N-word) and violence were used to control an entire group of humans.

This is, of course, a very scary and controversial exercise to undertake. The controversy speaks for itself. Spike Lee has vowed to never watch the film, thinking it racist. White people who may or may not be openly prejudiced will never see it. Certain black people will not watch it because they, too, feel it is racist, or that a white man doesn’t have the clout – or the right – to depict something like this. I can’t argue against any of that, because I’m a white man myself, and I cannot and will not attempt to understand what it’s like to grow up as a black person, knowing that my ancestors were treated this harshly, and still living with the effects of such hatred and pain today.

If a black person is to view this film and think it is a racist piece of filth, I cannot argue with him or her, because I cannot put myself in that viewing position. I watch the film as only I can, and the same goes for every other person. It is impossible for me to see it any other way. And the way I see it is that a man (whose race is unimportant) made a film about slavery that is just as much about racism and slavery as it is about business run amok, language and perception, and cathartic retribution. Others will see it as no more than gratuitous violence, and that’s certainly there, but if one is willing to peels back the layers, much more is being said.

I didn’t even touch on the business aspect, but believe me, it’s there. I like to think that true auteurs of cinema (and fiction) tend to have their creative juices exploding when they have a genuine muse, and it seems that Tarantino has a lot to say about this capitalistic business of ours. Sure, it’s changed in the one hundred and fifty years since slavery, but it still boils down to one very sad truth: how much money there is to be made, and how much of your soul you’re willing to sacrifice to make it.

We see slavery today and think it is a truly disgusting enterprise (at least, rational people do), yet at the same time, the majority of folks don’t stop to ponder what is going on in business as we speak. People are routinely “let go” from their positions, which are shipped overseas to another country and those jobs are completed for a fourth of the money. People are refused certain healthcare services because it’s not fiscally responsible to do make sure those people are given what they need. The list goes on, and most people don’t bat an eye. The parallels exist, and what was once said about slavery is now said about healthcare and downsizing and outsourcing: “It’s just business.” It’s easier to view things through that impersonal lens than it is to see what’s really going on: human life is being traded for a buck. It still happens, and while Tarantino is loudly (and quietly) focusing in on those other topics I’ve addressed, he is subtly shining a light on this as well.

And that’s why Django Unchained is the best film of the year. Hell, it might be one of the best movies ever made. It’s certainly one of the best I’ve seen in a while. I didn’t even mention the performances, but they’re all great, none more so than Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen. DiCaprio will most assuredly be nominated for the despicable Calvin Candie, but Jackson is the true star of the film. If I had my druthers, the film would see no less than four acting nominations at the Oscars (Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, DiCaprio, and Jackson all deserve recognition).

The film is a bona fide masterpiece. It might have a few pacing issues, but if that is the trade off for something so incredibly powerful and challenging, then it’s something I’m willing to accept. Tarantino has succeeded in creating a spaghetti western with subversive elements generally reserved for post-modern fiction. He has created something truly special, and it is no surprise that it’s so controversial. Genius usually is.

At the very least, I hope that the controversy leads to conversation, and that conversation leads to exploring more of what Tarantino is doing with this film. He wants us to feel every N-word uttered, to recognize the gross actions that were perpetrated, and to respond to them. He’s using controversy to create conversation, and I hope the ensuing conversation challenges people. Seeing the film once is a disservice. I’ve seen it twice already, and feel that there is a fair amount that I’ve not yet discovered.

It is a powerful, stirring, and most of all, thought-provoking film. Do not hesitate to see it, and do not hesitate to explore it once you’re done. Don’t take it at face value, dig a little bit deeper, and respond to it. You won’t be sorry.