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| "Alas, we must act as our own bartender." |
In the tense moments of Django Unchained, there is a clock
that is incessantly ticking in the background. Though it's not the only sight
or sound in the scene, it's a rather interesting feature of it.
It has the kind of inevitability and rhythm that becomes
apparent and registers more clearly when there's anxiety within but desperate calm
on the outside. Not unlike in Chapter 1 of Inglourious Basterds . Or that
moment in Kill Bill when the Bride ends O-Ren Ishii and the only thing that
moves or sounds for a while is a bucket that plops periodically into a well.
The dialogue may well be in medieval Gothic but the conspicuous tick-tock does
its job of keeping the tension heightened very damn nicely. It's the detail
Tarantino has used to keep his finger firmly lodged on even the reluctant
viewer's pulse.
Simply put, Tarantino embodies the reason we end up
dissociating from every person and problem we know while watching a film. The
reason Tarantino merits a place among the biggest and the best is that he has crossed
equivalent milestones and elicited an equal reverence, without engaging in anything on an
intellectual level. That being lovable is a prominent portion of his film's
anatomy (I don't mean this in a Karan Johar sense). That with Tarantino, there
came a whole new manner of telling stories with people's quirks of mind, speech
and deliberation.
Django Unchained relies on homages to sphagetti westerns,
well brutalized white-black sentiments, street-smartness and one-upmanship, the
business end of Texas, stylized violence, a soundtrack meant for pastiche and a
heavy sense of Tarantino for its monumental success. And a pinch of German, it
seems, was inevitable after Christoph Waltz's previous sensation. The plot has
it that in 1858, a ruthless dentist-turned-bounty-hunter allies with a slave to
aid him in his business, while promising to free his wife, Broomhilda, from a
plantation owner and unite them both at the end of their agreed period. Right
there is a nod to a German legend. Affairs get unsavoury when they plot to
extricate her from her owner's plantation.
In this film and his previous, there has been a grand uplift
in scale. With this have come the consequent delights - pernickety attention to
detail and outline at once, opportunities for stunning, painting-like
cinematography, and room to pack more-than-usual characters in. He has hinted
that these two films may be part of a trilogy, in a loose sense. The common
themes are apparent.
Much of the film's claim to brilliance comes from its
outstanding supporting cast. Di Caprio plays Calvin Candie, the weirdly
debonair plantation owner who is obsessed with Mandinko fights. Samuel Jackson,
an old horse, on and off screen, alternates between Calvin's stooge and consigliere.
Accents and lines fly all over the place; the actors themselves do not surface
in the characters. With the exception of Christoph Waltz, who is aptly himself.
Incomplete without his legendary upper-lip.
P.S : One can't help notice the names of some of Tarantino's
characters. In keeping with either their peculiarities or his own. Django
Freeman. Monsieur Calvin Candie. Bridget von Hammersmark. Beatrix Kiddo. Jimmie
Dimmick. Esmeralda Villalobos. Technicalities of a greater act of parody.
