Django Unchained Is Not A Good Movie

I'm in the computer age but I use a typewriter see,
I'm not behind the times it's just more authentic to me,
It's got metal and levers and clanks and zings,
the orchestra of sounds conjures-up all sorts of things,
I write what I think and I think what I say,
you like pretend but it doesn't happen any other way.

We are lucky when we're clever, 
when we stand and deliver,
our genius comes in slips and spurts,
and when we have to work too hard oh god how it hurts,
it hurts!

We marvel in dreams of authentic conversation,
that swell up our glasses with insight condensation,
but we are not as bright as we think we are,
just above the bar,
just slightly above the bar.


Let me preface everything I am about to say by stating that I am a Quentin Tarantino fan. In fact, I have directly quoted him in at least one if not more of my previous blog posts.  I hate the thought of people eventually finding this blog post, not reading it thoroughly, and then slamming me for not recognizing the genius of Mr. Tarantino.  So, to be clear Tarantino is a solid movie maker who is very interesting and often highly creative. I love many of his dialogues and I believe that several scenes of his design are of the best ever made in cinema.  In spite of all of my fanboy love my critical and active brain was not able to give Django Unchained a passing grade as a movie much less elevate it to the height of a best picture nominee.   

I could spend all day arguing the relative craptitude of all of the other best picture nominees or the craptitude of the institution of the Oscars themselves. However, I am expecting anyone reading this to be caught up with my rage for society enough to know that the status quo of what people tell you is good, is actually crap. So where could I possibly go with this argument then? If I like Quentin Tarantino and I don't respect the Oscars as a credible source for excellence in film making what is my point?  Well, I am part of society, a society that when all lumped together is stupid and apathetic. The problem with the stupid/apathetic and/or gainfully employed/productive members of society is that they do not have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff in all aspects of their lives.  While "these people" are out living real productive lives their brains are indirectly being crushed by the soulless art that is shoved into their eye holes.

It is my job as a thankless gadfly to make these atrocious oversights clearly visible so that the generic highly unmotivated masses might change their minds ever so slightly and in doing so change the course of our collective human progression ever so slightly. So let's get to it already!

Rule number one: Everyone is capable of making crap.  Creativity is neither linear nor accumulative. As a child I thought I would get to a certain age where ideas about life would come flooding in. I believed that somewhere past the age of 25 everyone graduated into a wise old man/woman and everything in life would start to make sense. Projecting outward from this idea I thought that all success in life fell in line like one might go through the grades at school. All you had to do was keep working hard and everything you did would get better and better, but, this is not the case for art.

As I alluded to at the top of the post "our genius comes in slips and spurts." What this means is that although people may be mulling over the big questions in life trying to develop keen insights on who we are and where we are going in this ocean of chaos we don't come up with this thoughts in a timely or predictable fashion. Sometimes the first album a band makes is their only good one while another band creates borderline cacophony up until their third or fourth effort.  Sometimes we tinker with and try to fix a formula that is not broken and sometimes we have to work through every terrible possibility before something useful bubbles up to the surface.

One of the problems with fanboys/girls of a band/comedian/street performer/other various talent is that our desire to praise the thing that has changed our lives blinds our ability to critically analyze the work of our heroes. This religious-like devotion convinces us of delusions like every song that a band has ever made is their best song and anyone who challenges that idea should be put to death.  A character flaw within many of us (self included) is the hope that there are perfect beings out there, gods among men who are capable of divine creation without flaw. Unfortunately it turns out that idea is bullshit. This narcissistic devotion is an attempt to assert intellectual dominance over the rest of humanity, because we need to feel superior, we need to feel like we saw something that all the others didn't see. We want to believe we have a sacred connection to something outside ourselves.

Tarantino started out by making movies that captured the style/essence of the films of his youth yet they were injected with new age cool and further emphasized with his interesting and punchy dialogue.  Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction created an entirely different genre of film one that has been referenced and mimicked hundreds of times over in past years.  The problem with art is that you cannot be a one trick pony or else you get labelled a hack.  It didn't take the world that long after The Sixth Sense to figure out that M Night Shyamalan is M Night Shamashit.  So it is understandable that Quentin as an intriguing film maker sought to diversify his cinematic expression unfortunately this is where all of the problems began.

At some point post Jackie Brown Tarantino stopped making movies that were infused with influences of the movies of his past and he started trying to make genre films.  The problem with genre films is that by design they only really appeal to people who are in on the joke or late to the party posers faking cool. Further, impersonating a style of film rather than referencing it removes almost all of the artistic integrity behind the work.  The difference is better illustrated through the idea of a band writing and recording a song and then 30 years later another band records a cover of that same song. Even if the end result is better (a very rare feat) all of the final works insight and creativity is attributed to someone else. 

Django unchained is a bad movie because it is an impersonation of a decidedly bad genre of film that leaves us with an ambiguous moral message. Blaxploitation films short of camp (read: point with disgust and laugh value) have no place in the world of cinema. By any other measure we would see Django as a poorly conceived, written and acted movie void of interesting or useful dialogue coupled with an instagram old timey photo layer effect. Seen through the sycophantic Tarantino prism however it's a gutsy, gritty modern day marvel of a film that dares to be different while shaking the foundation of our nougaty existential center. 

Inglourious Basterds gave us Hitler and his henchmen and presented them in as foul a light as possible. The audience (us) needed to hate Ze Germans so that when they were pummeled with baseball bats or cut in half with large caliber bullets we felt no sympathy for them getting their just desserts. Americans could harmonize with the idea of exacting bloody revenge on an unprompted enemy who sought only to maim and murder their loved ones. In this instance the conclusion was satisfying because the evil was distinct and at the end a sense of order was restored. 

Django Unchained attempts to apply the above formula with less desirable results. While building to it's crescendo the movie provides proficient fodder to engender a fiery hatred for the bad guy slave owners. We the audience are supposed to be okay with dogs mauling humans, overt racist taunts, mandingo fighting and whipping because in our minds we know that the evil doers will get their comeuppance. However, when the pay off finally does arrive and a bevy of racist white men lay in a pool of blood at Django's feet we don't get the same feeling of relief.

The reason for this I surmise is that even though the film is a fun, poppy, blaxsploitatious look at racism it inadvertently plays like a form of visual reparations. Americans both black and white are supposed to cheer for the black hero Django and through our cheering reveal that we have defeated racism? Yet in the end the hero was not rewarded with respect from white people or given equal footing. 

Unlike Inglorious Basterds Americans are unable to detach and objectively view the enemy because the enemy is still in many ways present within us.  It is like the difference between a stranger abusing you or your grandfather abusing you. In one respect you can compartmentalize, work through the feelings and move on. In the other instance you are encumbered by feelings of family, love and confusion. No matter how much you try to compartmentalize, the abusive relative is still very much a part of you thus there is no solace in seeing them punished for abusing you.

 The indirect effect of the movie then is that it increases tension and hostility between whites and blacks under the pretense of a feel good ending.  Like a seven year old boy who's dad let's him grab hold of the steering wheel, he feels like he's driving but ultimately his dad still has full control over the vehicle.  

Old Movies Are Terrible

Right off the top allow me to concede several things. Most of the movies that are made these days are horrible. They are horrible I suspect for a number of reasons.  The first reason is that it is much easier now to produce and export films. Because of this almost anyone has the ability to write and make a movie. As we all know from hitting the "next blog" button, giving everyone the opportunity to do something rarely if ever guarantees success. If there is one problem in the world it is that people are overconfident in their own abilities. We often make the mistake that just because we are capable of technically doing something creatively or artistically we believe that we are good at it.  Unfortunately many people have deluded, dishonest parents who praise any inkling of promise or ambition. The result of this is a world of self important assholes who think they are gods gift to art.


The second problem with today's movies is that film has become an industry completely dominated by profit.  We have this misconception that people are getting stupider and while the internet/youtube generation is not doing anything to deter this line of thinking, it is not necessarily the truth. The population of the world has increased exponentially and the ability to communicate our own stupidity has increased along with it. We aren't necessarily stupider, we just have the means to communicate that stupidity more effectively. Because we want to make money we are forced to create media that caters to the lowest common denominator. Movies that cater to the LCD don't have time to be subtle and vague. Everything on the screen has to read scary, funny, gross, cute, angry, etc.

But lets get to the meat and potatoes of the argument already. Throughout high school I wrote many essays that supported old timey movies. In fact, everything I have said here so far I've stated to the contrary in previous essays. Some of my older scathing essays lamented on what the word "celebrity" used to mean. I professed that yesteryears big name talents at the very least had a modicum of theatrical talent.  It would naturally follow then that people who have recited Shakespeare would probably fare better on the silver screen than someone who's first foray into film was a homemade sex tape. Yet, I may have overstepped my bounds. You see, just because a classically trained actor is involved in a film does not mean A) the film is good or B) What once was considered good acting has stood the test of time.


Old timey people (old people) will tell you that movies and music have gone to shit. While it is true that all music peaked in the nineties you will come to find that oldies will reminisce that the music and cinema of their youth was superior. Here's the secret: Everything is better in your formative years, thus you remember things that occurred during that time more fondly. If Ace Ventura Pet Detective came out today I would most likely think it was an awful movie. However, as a 13 year old the movie was comic gold so much so that I used to watch it 2 or 3 times in a row in one sitting. 

I used to have the misconception that the older a movie was the better it was. By virtue of a movie being filmed in black and white I decided sight unseen that the film was superior to anything that could have been made these days. The oldest of films were the trailblazers, the originators, the stuff that legends were built on.   Also, movie studios didn't crank out thousands of movies per year. What this means is that every film was carefully selected and backed to the fullest extent. All of the actors/actresses were hand picked through a laborious process to ensure that the best product was put forth.  As you can see, it would be easy to believe that the best movies were made in the past, that is of course until you watch one.


I don't want to single one or two old movies out. All of them are victim to the same tragic flaws that make them unbearable to watch. Is it fair to say that the guy who invented the guitar probably couldn't shred with the best metalheads out there? Is it fair to say that the guy who invented the bicycle couldn't keep up with Lance Armstrong with or without performance enhancing drugs? Even the guys who invented Mortal Kombat can't beat half of the players out there in a one on one death match. It would logically follow then that just because you are the pioneer of something does not mean that you are best example of your craft. I would argue that given a couple weeks any group of young film students could cobble together a black and white masterpiece that would rival one crafted in the days of yore.

Rules of Old Timey Cinema


Rule#1: The distinction between men and women must be clearly defined. Women are only good for two things being helpless and fainting. Should a women have an ounce of self confidence or intelligence then she is either a seductress or she has a dark secret yet to be revealed.

Rule #2: Ridiculous posture coupled with overacting. Whether it is a booming godlike voice punishing your ears with an overly enthusiastic tone or a close up of a shocked or perplexed face held too long every old movie is rife with embarrassing instances. 

Rule #3: Bad audio. This is multifaceted section and by far my favorite. In old timey movies the audio/video is rarely synced up correctly so you feel at times like you are watching a Godzilla movie. The music is always overly dramatic to the point where I find myself laughing at the most important or sentimental of scenes.  Finally, did they only have one gun sound effect for 30 years of film? You know the one, that kind of echoey muted "bang" followed by a  "clang FLING!" as the bullet ricochets somewhere off in the distance.  


Rule #4: No black people.

Rule #5: 26 minutes of credits at the beginning of the movie.


Rule#6: The third guy you meet is the killer.


I'm not saying that old movies are poorly crafted, predictable and highly overrated, oh wait a minute  that's exactly what I'm saying. Certainly we have to pay homage to old movies for getting the ball rolling. Just like every time the rock and roll hall of fame inducts a new member they first play some warmed over turd by Bill Haley and the Comets to remind us of where it all started. But let's be honest for a moment. Even though the film studios of today are crapping out remakes and disposable movies does not mean that we are not capable of making better films. If it was our desire to create well written, well acted, well shot movies we surely and certainly could. Vainly holding onto movies of the past and claiming that 50 of top 100 movies ever made were made before 1950 is ridiculous. I have yet to see Citizen Kane but I'm sure it blows.