It was about time, Django

Django Unchained (2012)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino 

Django Unchained left me speechless. There is too much here to pretend that this is just another Tarantino trick. This is a transcendent movie in many ways, way more than Inglorious Basterds,  a movie that felt a little like a clever idea taken too far to get a few laughs. Though Django is said to be based on a comic book and the language and the details may not be — actually are not — historically accurate, its exaggerated, bigger-than-life characters feel as real as they can be, and the plot moves relentlessly, though irregularly, in the construction of the black hero myth that Hollywood vehemently has denied audiences so far. The plot line is almost impossible: a German dentist named Schultz (Christophe Waltz) turned into bounty hunter in the pre-Civil War days rescues a black slave (Jamie Fox), provides him with his liberty papers and turns him into a professional partner before helping him to locate and rescue his wife from slavery. This pursuit takes these characters to the American South, where we meet an array of powerful white plantation owners, one of them interpreted by Don Johnson, who provides the best and funniest performance in his career. The other one is of course Leonardo DiCaprio, who is completely transformed by the role, a sophisticated and mild-mannered all-business gentleman with a bad temper, who enjoys being inhumanly cruel with his “niggers” whenever he deems necessary. Samuel L. Jackson is almost unrecognizable until he starts to speak –or curse, but he creates an unforgettable character as the servile black man who enjoys the power from the white man, and who reassures his own grasp to this power with his cruelty to other black people like him. The movie is incredibly entertaining and fun but it has harsh scenes that might not be easy for some, especially those who have not been educated in the pleasures of Western mythology by Sergio Leone’s sweaty hysterics and heroic music –or by Sam Peckimpah’s gut-wrenching violence. In addition, you may find moments where the editing seems to have been made in a hurry, carelessly. Incredibly, these are followed by instances of amazing clarity, where the images seem divinely inspired, absolutely satisfying for the movie lover. More than a film, this is an over-the-top, subversive celebration of cinema and freedom that is probably as important and radical as The Birth of a Nation (1915) became almost a hundred years ago.