Quentin Tarantino
Django Unchained

There are good reasons not to go see "Django Unchained", primarily because too many people are talking about it, and it's useless to deny that when the theater is full, the film stinks. Moreover, it’s a western, and it’s not worth it to draw up an ontology of the collective hysteria surrounding a film of a genre whose commercial success is steadily declining to the point of almost disappearing. However, the point is that it’s a Tarantino film: and Tarantino is a good director, or rather, one of the few Americans who makes at least enjoyable blockbusters. This is because Tarantino has crafted his aesthetic (he succeeded, unlike others), and it seems this aesthetic is well-liked. 

It’s in this sense that Django hits the mark because, essentially, it’s not a spaghetti-western and, in this sense, not even a western, since it lacks the anti-heroism of the former as the protagonist, and here, in "Django Unchained", the lines between good/bad are quite clear & distinct, and of the latter, it lacks the grandeur of John Ford’s passages, those long shots which were the only reason to endure a John Ford film, from which Tarantino also eliminates the theme of the journey, which is present but not predominant. Predominant, however, is the verbosity, which continues to characterize Tarantino’s cinema and, in this as in others, stretches an 80-minute story to nearly three hours. But there’s the Corbucci music, there’s the John Woo-style shootouts that resolve half an hour of suspense, there’s an implied moral message (anti-racism) accompanying a somewhat more intrinsic one (perhaps a shame in admitting to being American?), there’s the valorization of acting (just look at Samuel L. Jackson’s expression in his first appearance), there’s the referentiality and there’s the pop philosophy that Hollywood cinema has accustomed us to, from the Coens to Tarantino. In short, quite a bit of stuff. 

The problem is: is it enough? In my opinion, no. Or rather yes, if it weren’t a Tarantino film. Or maybe it’s enough precisely because it’s a Tarantino film, of this-Tarantino (from Kill Bill onwards) and not that-Tarantino (from Jackie Brown backwards). And it all boils down to the question: who is Tarantino? Answer: Tarantino is no longer the one from Pulp Fiction. He is a director who knows his craft, period. In this sense, "Django Unchained" is a good film, worth watching, and above the average of contemporary blockbusters; in another sense, which sees Tarantino as a cinema genius, Django Unchained is a muddled film laid on a bed of pork cheek, all served on the finest porcelain dish. Because it’s all been seen before, the dialogues no longer surprise, the referentiality feels stale and too often masks an underlying emptiness detectable in the film’s moral that racism is a bad thing (no kidding). And the happy ending, this happy ending that distinguishes this-Tarantino from that-Tarantino and that, along with the increasingly opulent manifestation of his aesthetic, makes him a director now too schematic, predictable: who knows what his audience wants. It’s like watching a sit-com, whose sole purpose is to make you feel safe and thus must be predictable, especially in the plot twists, which precisely in their unpredictability are predictable or, at least, foreseeable in the viewer’s mind. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But the magic of Tarantino – or his storytelling knot, take your pick – is the claim to elevate the audience sitting in the theater, too often so unaware as not even to notice but conscious of the fact that it is indeed happening, and it’s in this sense that referentiality is a winning card because I, viewer x who enters the theater where Tarantino is programmed, am aware of being at a higher level than viewer y entering a theater where – let’s say – "Frankenweenie" is shown, because Tarantino requires greater cinematic knowledge from me (note, not awareness), and although I do not know it, I am conscious of the fact that, before me, Tarantino is referencing this and that director. 

Which makes me a connoisseur, but not necessarily.