I Watch Films: Django Unchained

 

Django Unchained

Django is a slave in 1858 Texas, being taken away from his wife Broomhilda von Shaft. Dr King Shultz, German former dentist and now bounty hunter tries to buy him from the slave traders; when they refuse and threaten him he kills one, and shoots the horse of the other trapping him. Taking Django with him he advises the other slaves to take advantage of the situation; they beat the slave trader to death.

Shultz needs Django to identify the Brittle brothers, former overseers at the plantation Django is from, also outlaws, for which he offers him his freedom (legally) and $75. On their way they go to a town in which Shultz brings Django into a saloon that doesn’t accept black customers, which provokes the sheriff, who has a bounty out on him; after this Shultz surrenders to the marshal (possibly the other way round).

They track down the Brittle brothers and kill them. The plantation owner is unhappy, leads a posse after them, who are blow up when Shultz and Django ambush them. Shultz makes a deal with Django – they’ll work together over the winter and in the spring they’ll try and find Broomhilde.

This leads them to Calvin J Candie, a plantation owner who specialises in Mandingo fights – slave wrestling (the only one we see is to the death). Shultz pretends to want to get in on Mandingo fighting, and Django is his guide, posing as a black former overseer. Things inevitably go wrong and the already violent film becomes even more so.

Slavery, of course, is inherently cruel and violent, and in that way the film’s violence, cruelty and depictions of racism is a mirror held up to the past, one that makes it’s best point when we see it reference other Westerns which did not address these points*. It is also a film of monstrous arrogance. The slave holders and overseers of course, but also Shultz who believes himself not only better, but smarter, and when his oh-so clever plan goes wrong and he is forced to live up to a bargain he did not intend to decides instead to wreck everything. For that matter the plan goes wrong not because of the white slaver holders who Shultz is able to fool, but because the slave butler Stephen warns Candie. And for such a simple, violent, kinetic film, the subtleties of the slave system are also presented, Stephen was head house slave for the Candies for years and his work and suggestions have kept them and the business afloat.

Watch This: Violent Western with something to say about race in America
Don’t Watch This: What it has to say about race in America is that violence begets violence and that’s very cool

* If a Western is interested in racial elements classically they are those of white settlers compared to various Native American nations