Tarantino Unchained

"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.