Creepy-Crawl Cinema: One Upon a Time in… Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

1969 feels pretty impossible to escape at the moment. All these 50th anniversaries coming thick and fast – moon landing, Manson murders, Woodstock, Brian Jones, Altamont – and now, man-of-that-particular-moment Peter Fonda passing away right on schedule, an exact half century after his image was pinned up on a thousand dorm room walls. Perfect timing then, for retromancer in chief Quentin Tarantino to chime in with the celluloid equivalent of a shiny collectible plate. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some room on the sideboard.

I.

Like many movie fans, I could frankly spend all day here trying to unpack my mixed feelings about Tarantino and his work, but for the sake of both your sanity and mine, I’ll try to keep it brief.

As sophisticated, cine-literate readers, you will no doubt have realised long ago that all of Tarantino’s films are essentially set within a fantastical movie wonderland. They are films-about-films, indulgent thrill-rides with zero real world relevance, offering pure, dumb-headed escapism.

An obvious point perhaps, but one that is worth restating at the outset, given the persistent failure of many mainstream critics to comprehend it. (Honestly, how they can continue to toil away under the misapprehension that ‘Django Unchained’ actually has something to say about slavery, or ‘Inglorious Bastards’ about the Second World War, is beyond me.)

Though I can dig this superficial, ‘fantasy-land’ approach to a certain extent, I confess its appeal has worn pretty thin for me over the years, particularly when (as in the examples above) the Big QT finds himself romping around in the midst of subject matter which would conventionally seem to demand a certain amount of depth or ideological engagement. For a while now, I’ve been hoping that one day he might finally leave the play-pen behind and make, like, you know – a proper, sincere movie of some kind?

By gently weaning Tarantino away from his films-about-films universe and moving to a painstakingly researched, naturalistic historical setting that just happens to be all about the making of those films he loves so much, ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ (man, I HATE that ellipsis) would seem to offer him the perfect opportunity to do this, allowing him to play his meta-textural, movie nerd games, but in a more grounded / ‘realistic’ context - one in which actions may be seen to have consequences, and in which characters might finally manage to acquire a second or third dimension for themselves.

Given that he basically fails to take up this offer though, instead delivering yet another barrage of defiantly shallow, crowd-pleasing nonsense, I think we can assume by this stage that he probably never will make the jump to the quote-unquote ‘next level’.

As such, this leaves us with a few things that we are just going to have to accept if we are ever going to enjoy any Tarantino movies.

Firstly, they will mean nothing. Any thematic framework or ideological intent detected within will be purely coincidental - probably just a by-product of all the cultural tropes being re-heated and played around with.

Secondly, they will be massively indulgent, typically containing upwards of an hour of entirely irrelevant material that he shot and kept in the movie just because he could. (We may roll our eyes, but hey, if it’s good enough for Fellini…)

And, thirdly, everything in his films will feel just slightly cartoon-ish and overblown. Comedy / character scenes will drag on too long, just to make sure everyone gets the joke. Serious/violent scenes will pretty much always fall off a cliff into OTT absurdity, just because, as all exploitation fans know, crazy stuff is cool, and cool = good. Pop-cultural references and tributes meanwhile will be so shamelessly foregrounded that they might as well be accompanied by a little QT popping up in a box in the corner of the screen ala a Japanese TV show, pointing to them and guffawing.

Once we accept these certainties and abandon the possibility that things may one day be otherwise, we can hopefully loosen up a bit and appreciate the fact that, taken on its own terms, ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ is about the most purely enjoyable three hours of cinema that the 21st century has yet been able to offer.

II.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time living and breathing the storied mythos of Hollywood ’69 over the years, I’ll confess that I was pretty psyched about seeing this movie, and that – leaving aside the caveats outlined above – I was not disappointed.

Although the film is packed with things (small details, creative decisions, wasted potential) which irked me, each of them is balanced out by two other things (character beats, clever gags and references, likable performances) which delighted me. (1)

Yes, this makes for a large number of ‘things’ in total - but such is only right and proper for a picture with this kind of gargantuan run time. If you like films with ‘things’ in them, well strap in buddy, cos you’ll certainly get your money’s worth here. The frantic pace barely ever flags across 170-odd minutes, and new stimuli comes thick n’ fast with every shot. As an immersive ‘Where’s Wally?’ puzzle for a pop-culturally literate crowd to lose themselves within, this film is hard to beat.

As such, it is ‘Once Upon a Time…’s production design which is chiefly deserving of celebration. Barbara Ling [Production Designer], John Dexter [Art Direction], Nancy Haigh [Set Decoration], Arianne Phillips [Costumes] – take a collective bow.

There are, it is safe to say, few other living filmmakers who have both the resources and the inclination to retro-fit vast swathes of Los Angeles to conform to some mystic, rose-tinted dream of late ‘60s perfection, and the results Tarantino’s team achieve in this regard are magnificent – a triumph of “world building” equal to any of this century’s CG-enhanced fantasy epics, and a hell of a lot more fun from my personal POV.

Again and again over the past forty years, we may have seen movie directors pay teary-eyed tribute to the days when Americans could roar around guilt-free in massive, pastel-coloured automobiles, chain-smoking their way into an early grave as they negotiate a neon labyrinth of cinema marquees, movie billboards and fast food outlets…. but never has this celebration been rendered quite so exuberantly, quite so convincingly, as it is here.

As a result, moments such as the panoramic shot in which Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth stands on the roof of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio)’s Cielo Drive house to fix the TV aerial, looking down over the perfectly rendered sprawl of the Hollywood Hills and down to the streets below, are pretty darn spine-tingling.

(The cinema in which I saw the film isn’t exactly what you’d call top of the line in terms of its A/V presentation, but even so, Robert Richardson’s 35mm photography, ripped through whatever kind of cutting edge HD processing brings it to our 21st century screens, looked *incredible*.)

Yes, brothers and sisters (but mainly brothers, let’s face it), this really WAS the promised land, Quentin seems to be telling us, and for a moment or two here and there, I do not feel inclined to disbelieve him.

The fact that Tarantino grew up in L.A. and was six years old in 1969 should probably be noted here, particularly in view of ‘Once Upon a Time..’s all-consuming obsession with syndicated TV, movie posters and radio ads. As you might well imagine, the film’s dense collage of movie nerd fan service is a joy to behold, at times becoming so dominant that it almost takes the movie into quasi-documentary territory, complete with voiceover narration and clip / poster-based alternate history recaps.

And, just as inevitably, I can’t help but love this stuff. Whatever high-minded reservations I may have about Quentin’s oeuvre, all I need do is think back on the fact that Rick Dalton’s calling card action movie was “The Fourteen Fists of McClusky”, or upon hearing Al Pacino (playing Dalton’s liaison with the Italian movie industry) describe Sergio Corbucci as “…only the SECOND BEST director of Spaghetti Westerns in the world” (in outraged, what-do-you-mean-‘who’ tone of voice), or indeed upon the clip of DiCaprio appearing in an Antonio Margheriti spy movie… and all is forgiven. I might as well be sharing popcorn with the fucker on weekend movie night.

(Incidentally, based on the audience’s mocking laughter, I think many of them must have assumed Tarantino was just making all this Italian b-movie shit up for giggles. Little do they know…)

III.

More surprisingly meanwhile, the film’s other great strength is its cast. In the past, I’ve often been surprised to read critics earnestly praising the committed performances of actors in Tarantino movies, given that the director doesn’t display much more concern for in-depth characterisation than if he were Michael Winner shuffling around the cannon fodder in a ‘Death Wish’ sequel… but, such is the paradox of an exploitation filmmaker who finds himself working with the kind of talent and resources usually reserved for critically-acclaimed Oscar-winners, I suppose.

Here though, the plaudits seem more justified. After all, ‘Once Upon a Time..’ is a long film which needs to retain our attention whilst holding back violent action or pyrotechnics until the final reel, and, as fictional creations with the chutzpah to get us there, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth certainly make for a winning pair of protagonists.

An anxious, clumsy, floundering movie star and his vastly more handsome and confident stuntman / gopher, they’re clearly conceived as an odd couple in the age-old Jeeves and Wooster mould, but their relationship is believable, their interplay with the movie’s other characters is always fun, and it’s basically easy for us to settle in and have a good time with their assorted travails and misadventures.

DiCaprio’s performance may have a touch too much huffing-and-puffing Wellsian grotesquery about it for my tastes, but this suits his character, and if nothing else, he certainly succeeds in persuading us to anchor our sympathies to a guy who is essentially pretty pathetic and dislikeable.

Here, though, is a sentence I never thought I’d find myself writing in a Breakfast in the Ruins post: it is Brad Pitt who is the real revelation here. He is not an actor I’ve ever much cared for in the past, but what can I say, he really seems to have “grown into himself” in ‘Once Upon a Time..’, if that makes any sense?

Essentially representing Tarantino’s ideal of the time-honoured Hollywood hero, Cliff Booth is our requisite humble, taciturn working class guy who looks good, does good, and always comes out on top. And, somehow, Pitt manages to embody this storied archetype whilst also ringing true as a fully-formed and immensely charming individual, absolutely nailing that crucial “yeah, what a cool guy” feeling we all love to get from our favourite movie heroes.

Of all of the far-fetched notions which film’s script asks us to accept in fact, probably the most outlandish is the idea that this guy has apparently been hanging around on TV and movie sets for decades, and no one seems to have noticed that he radiates star quality like a goddamned lighthouse.

IV.

Backing up this dynamic duo meanwhile are a wide variety of equally talented supporting players, whose work in small roles and ‘one-scene-wonder’ parts enhances the film considerably. I don’t so much mean the inevitable big name cameos (Pacino, Kurt Russell), but more the younger cast members really… which brings us neatly to the thorny issue of the film’s portrayal of the Manson Family.

Again, I have mixed feelings about this. In script terms, the Mansonites don’t really serve much of a purpose here beyond providing some generic antagonists, parachuted in to liven up the final act of what would otherwise basically be a stress-free three hour “hang out” movie. Indeed, Tarantino seems entirely unconcerned with exploring the context behind the Family’s existence and activities, instead relying entirely upon his audience’s perceived familiarity with the historical background – an approach which worked just fine for me, but which could easily cause problems in terms of the way the film plays for a wider audience.

For instance, I watched the film with a predominantly young crowd, and when, in a beautifully rendered scene early in the film, we see Cliff and Rick cruise past a group of ragged teenage girls who are scavenging from a roadside dumpster whilst singing one of Charlie’s songs, I could almost sense a 50/50 split in the audience between those who shared my shiver of recognition, and others who had no idea of the intended significance of what they were seeing.

Throughout the film, references to the cult’s lunatic beliefs or to Manson’s psychological hold over his followers are entirely avoided, leaving us in a strange situation where the only message which can drawn from the text itself is that dirty hippies are inherently evil and murderous, and that Quentin Tarantino hates ‘em.

That said however, the pivotal sequence in which Cliff visits the Spahn Ranch after picking up a fictional (I think?) Manson girl named ‘Pussycat’ (Margaret Qualley - and yes, fear not, Tarantino’s feverish obsession with trying to wring comedic value out of terms for female genitalia remains undiminished here), is wonderfully observed, feeling ‘real’ enough, and crammed with enough esoteric detail, to satisfy even the most demanding of Manson obsessives. (2)

Although Tarantino has the scary, dead-eyed hippies swarm and diminish like Romero zombies at times, what really won me over here is the fact that most of the Mansonites (barring a witchy, passive-aggressive turn from Dakota Fanning as Squeeky, and James Landry Hébert as a redneck grotesque Clem) are disarmingly naturalistic. The fact that they play it calm, friendly and not overtly crazy is to me more unsettling than any quantity of ominous, horror movie shit the film might have thrown at us.

(In view of my speculations below, it might be worth noting that the kill squad, when we share some time with them in the car on their way to Cielo Drive, basically speak very much like 21st century young people; I particularly liked Sadie/Susan (Mikey Madison) exclaiming that, “I’m sorry if I’m not familiar with every FASCIST who was on TV in the FIFTIES”.)

Likewise, the decision to concentrate during the ranch sequence on Cliff’s need to ascertain the well-being of George Spahn (a splendidly cantankerous performance from Bruce Dern – notable here I think as the only cast member who was actually on the scene in Hollywood when these events went down) proves an inspired one. It’s dramatically interesting, true to Pitt’s character, and allows the film to shine a light on an element of the Manson mythos which has largely been side-lined in the past, in factual and fictional chronicles alike.

Thinking about how Cliff immediately zeroes in on the necessity of speaking to George (because I mean, of course this 40-something stuntman would be more concerned with checking in on an old buddy than with quizzing a buncha fuckin’ hippies about the finer points of their belief system) meanwhile gets me thinking about the extent to which Tarantino essentially frames this entire film through the prism of his protagonists’ worldview. (Admittedly, it could be argued that this is not too far removed from his own worldview as another middle-aged Hollywood dude, but… let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume at least a thin line of division, shall we?).

V.

Though the surface signifiers of the counter-culture – in the form of sex, drugs and long hair - may have been ruling the roost in Movieland by 1969, Hollywood nonetheless remained a world in which women were expected to be seen and not heard, and in which non-white faces were almost literally invisible. And, this is exactly what Tarantino gives us - reality filtered through the eyes of a couple of old school, movie industry bros, with no explanation or apology offered along the way.

For better or for worse, proceeding in this manner, without even a passing nod to contemporary standards of representation, is a ballsy move on the director’s part, and as usual, certain sections of the media seem to have had a hard time even comprehending it. In particular, articles such as this one, which criticise the director for giving Margot Robbie little to do beyond looking pretty in her role as Sharon Tate, seem to be missing the point entirely.

After all, the sad fact is that the real Sharon Tate was given little to do in her tragically foreshortened life, beyond looking pretty. She was the product of a culture that allowed young women few other avenues for advancement, and her portrayal in the film merely reflects this. Of course, we can always imagine that she may have steered her life and career in a more rewarding direction had she lived, but trying to retrofit this ultimate victim of the era’s chauvinist attitudes as a super-capable 21st century heroine would have seemed questionable to say the least.

Likewise, I’m happy to defend Tarantino when it comes to the movie’s other big bone of contention, comedian Michael Moh’s portrayal of Bruce Lee as an egotistical buffoon. In a complete reversal of the Robbie/Tate issue, I have no reason to believe that this is an accurate characterisation of Bruce Lee, but at the same time there is something very refreshing about seeing such a revered, untouchable figure get the bubble of his legend so crudely ‘popped’ and – the ultimate justification for anything in a Tarantino film – the scene he shares with Pitt is loads of fun. (I particularly enjoyed the perfect take-down of the old “my fists are registered as lethal weapons” routine.) (3)

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WARNING: Spoilers follow in the next few paras. This film has some nice surprises, so please do go and see it before reading the rest of this review.

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Whilst I’m generally cool with all this stuff though, I do fear that, whether by accident or design, the director’s willingness to court controversy and blow a few gentle raspberries in the direction of quote-unquote “political correctness” may be apt to lead him into some choppy waters here, should anyone choose to disregard my First Rule of watching a Tarantino movie above, and succumb to the cardinal sin of actually thinking about the damn thing for five minutes after the lights go up.

After all, QT’s personal/professional reputation only just made it out of the whole Miramax / Weinstein debacle in one piece, so, as much as I wish I could just turn my brain off and go with the flow, it’s pretty difficult not to detect a certain, uh, emphasis in the fact that the first movie he has made since severing those connections ends with the triumphant spectacle of two middle-aged Hollywood dudes violently murdering a couple of mouthy young women who wish to forcibly disrupt their comfortable, decadent way of life… y’know what I mean…?

In real life of course, we know that those women were the brain-washed pawns of a criminal lunatic whose practice of racism and misogyny dwarfed that of any Hollywood playboy, but, given that ‘Once Upon a Time..’ pointedly fails to address this and instead merely depicts them as a bunch of damn fuckin’ hippies who won’t get off Leonardo DiCaprio’s drive…. well, let’s just say that the potential for a very troubling alternative reading of the film is certainly there, should you insist on poking it with a stick.

Personally, I’m happy to leave it be. As I stated at the outset, I’d question whether Tarantino has *ever* set out to make a film with this kind of ideological subtext, and even if he did, I’d inclined to believe that this film’s violent finale should be read as heavily tongue in cheek – an intent clearly acknowledged by the young audience at the screening I intended, as they gasped and guffawed in “I-can’t-believe-he-just-did-that” style disbelief.

Basically, I think Tarantino chose to end the film this way for the only reason he has ever done anything in his films – because it’s cool, and funny, and will leave the audience feeling good. The bad guys lose, and DIE! Movies and the swell guys who make them triumph! Brad and Leo save the ‘60s, and a brighter alternative pop cultural universe opens up for everyone.

Which, come to think of it, is the only possible conclusion for a movie named ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’. Fairy tale ending meets Western ending meets po-mo inter-textural headfuck ending. Perfect.

It may be crass and ugly and contrived and stupid… but there’s a strange kind of beauty here too. Just like Hollywood, am I right?

Boom, great ending for a review! Cut and print!

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(1) I couldn’t find a way to slot this into the main text, but the only thing that seriously annoyed me about Tarantino’s direction here was his decision to include lengthy scenes of DiCaprio’s character performing his lines in a TV western pilot,  shooting them with gliding Steadicam, beautiful diffuse lighting, Leone-esque cutting between multiple angles and other things that would obviously NOT have been present in a 1969 TV pilot.

Basically he presents these scenes exactly as if they were part of one of his *own* Westerns, having apparently not yet got that bug out of his system, which feels both disruptive to this film’s period setting and indulgent in all the worst ways. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more interesting to pull back and take a verite / behind-the-scenes kind of approach to these TV-show-within-the-film bits, giving us a look at the detail of how shows like this were made, and of what the crew were getting up to as the actors did their thing etc…? Just a thought.

(2) The set looks pretty much like an exact repro of the photos I’ve seen of the Spahn Ranch, and I loved details like the pile of dune buggy parts, the sign pointing toward the ‘chop shop’, and the inclusion of a few surly, disengaged bikers, and even a guy done up like Bobby Beausoleil, in the background. Well done, team, well done.

(3) For anyone counting the beans re: the film’s representational issues, I’m fairly sure Moh is the only non-white actor in the cast who actually even has *lines* -- but again, I’d put this down to nature of the world inhabited by our viewpoint characters, rather than any reflection of Tarantino’s personal agenda.

Wow, I Actually Saw a New Film:Some Thoughts on ‘Django Unchained’.



This week saw me undertaking my bi-annual trip to the cinema to actually see a new film, and turns out it gave me a whole bunch of stuff to get off my chest, so why not do so right here, I thought to myself, if only to spare my real life friends the hassle of having to listen?

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Readers should be aware that there are going to be some fairly extensive spoilers in what follows, so if that’s an issue for you, I’d suggest waiting until you’ve seen the film before reading.

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To begin, I should state that I like Quentin Tarantino’s films and offer no apology for it. For all that their thefts from other films can prove irksome at times, they remain ridiculously good fun, technically impeccable, and generally represent the best (only?) chance we currently get to see some of the spirit of 60s/70s low budget filmmaking blown up to 21st century blockbuster proportions. And like all QT pictures,’ Django..’ is indeed hugely entertaining - a defiantly UN-subtle, brightly hued business that’ll have you leaving the auditorium with a swing in your stride and a cool song in your head (hopefully the newly composed Ennio Morricone one, which is bloody stunning – wish it had been allowed to play out for longer in the film).

Moreso than any of his previous films though, the second you start to think more deeply on what just transpired on screen, the illusion collapses, and the gaping, ugly flaws of the project are revealed.

The thing is y’see, for me the success of Tarantino’s previous films rests on the fact that (with possible exception of ‘Jackie Brown’) they have all been entirely cynical, self-absorbed endeavours, wherein characters and situations simply play out as tropes of the various genres and aesthetics he’s riffing on – mechanisms for providing the requisite sights and sensations we expect from films like these, openly rejoicing in the fact that there’s no deeper purpose, no moral imperative at work whatsoever – the cinematic equivalent of the enthusiastic sneer that seems permanently etched on the director’s face. None of which is a criticism; on the contrary, it’s great, and it works very well for him.

‘Django Unchained’ though marks something of a sea-change in his approach. Perhaps tapping a bit too heavily into the underlying sentimentality of the Western genre, this one sees him inexplicably presenting us with what is essentially an earnest melodrama with a fairy tale ending – a film in which the characters speak directly in terms of love and friendship and destiny, rather than just offering barbed comment on the cinematic archetypes they represent, and in which genuine historical/political issues are evoked, and dealt with on a strictly one dimensional good vs evil type level. This new approach brings with it a new set of expectations, one that the director is perhaps not quite so used to meeting.

We’ll get onto that shortly, but first off, a more minor, personal, ranting-outside-the-cinema type gripe. I’ll put these paragraphs in italics so you can easily skip them if you just plain don’t give a shit.

Despite his presumed status as a big fan of Westerns, I felt that QT at several points failed to stay true to the core values of the genre as I understand it. I don’t mean in terms of stuff like shifting the action from the West to the South and pushing back the clock to the pre-civil war era (things that you could at least *imagine* Leone or Peckinpah doing, even if they didn’t actually do them), but more in terms of the way the characters function, and the way that their actions define our sympathies towards them.

In essence, what I’ve always loved about the figure of the archetypal cowboy hero – what makes him so distinct from the often tedious romantic/chivalric heroes of most popular fiction – is that he operates on a purely utilitarian level. In a good Western, making a big show of honour and pontificating about one’s beliefs is left up to the bad guy. The cowboy silently observes, his motives opaque. And when the time comes, he does what needs to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible, then buggers off, leaving the bad guy floundering in his own pomposity and hypocrisy until he meets his inevitable demise. Fucking brilliant! That’s what I want ‘heroism’ within this genre to represent basically, and I was hoping that, given his ingrained cynicism and love of genre tradition, QT would come though with some of that good stuff. Sadly not.

What particularly irked me was the key moment when Christoph Waltz’s character shoots DiCaprio. Waltz’s Dr Schultz very much comes from the ‘canny, educated foreigner / enabler of the primary hero’ tradition of Van Cleef in ‘For a Few Dollars More’, Franco Nero in ‘Companeros’ etc, and if there’s one thing all of those guys would have recognised, it’s that they had a clear chance here to walk away in one piece with their goal (freedom for Django’s wife) achieved, without having to fire a shot… mission accomplished. But instead Schultz gets involved in some sanctimonious puffery about refusing to shake hands with the guy. Any proper, utilitarian cowboy-hero would realise that shaking hands with a bastard means nothing – that both men will be judged by their actions, not some ceremonial gesture – and would have got on with it and got the hell out of there. Even William Holden and the Wild Bunch would have realised that the odds were against them at that point, capitulated and withdrawn to contemplate vengeance at a later date.

Not Tarantino’s beta-hero though – he’s got to beat his chest and refuse to compromise and make his big moral point… even when that guarantees his own death and of a life of continued misery for the friends he’s gone to so much trouble to help out. Schultz is presented to us as a steadfast and noble character, worthy of tribute, but as he dies all we can think is “what an idiot”. Tarantino sets him up as a hero, but in the end he doesn’t make the grade and dies a fool, betraying his ground level goals for some misplaced moment of idealism.

So that pissed me off. And as for Django himself, well his conduct is even more troublesome in the hero stakes. If you were to assemble a panel of great cowboys of yore – Franco Nero’s Django included - and ask them to put themselves in New Django’s shoes during the epic gun battle that immediately follows the deaths of Shultz and Candie, I think their priorities would be clear – the girl (D’s wife) is the pivotal object in this scenario (and as far as the film is concerned, she very much IS an object, but that’s another story..), so keep her in sight, keep her safe and get her out of there. But what does Django do? He abandons her completely, running off to some other part of the mansion and blasting away at everyone in sight, as the remaining baddies casually creep up and put a gun to her head. Again – what an idiot! I don’t care how cool and aspirational you look in your black cowboy get-up Django, you fail cowboy class for that one.

Obviously these are just my own bugbears with the minutiae of the film’s plotting, based on expectations created by a bunch of old movies I happen to like, and as such might be entirely irrelevant to the casual viewer, but there is also something more seriously wrong with ‘Django Unchained’ that didn’t really occur to me until I was walking home from the cinema, something that put a bad taste in my mouth and proceeded to infest my feelings about just about every part of the movie, and that – and I realise how much of an ass I sound saying this about a Quentin Tarantino film – is the moral message that ‘Django..’ conveys.

As mentioned above, ‘Django..’ is the first film Tarantino has made that, by the very nature of its melodramatic storytelling and emotive subject matter, is forced to embody a social/political message, however simplistic. Ok, so I guess ‘Inglourious Basterds’ spent a long time telling us that Nazis are bad, but hopefully most viewers were smart enough to realise that that movie had more to do with other war movies than it did with the actual war, and treated its goofily superficial ‘message’ accordingly. ‘Django..’s message is similarly blunt, and we get it sorted out nicely in the opening five minutes - “racism is bad, folks – now enjoy the show”. And we do, patting ourselves on the back for being such a good liberal audience as we go along.

But unlike ‘..Basterds’, ‘Django..’ has no post-modern safety-net to fall back on, and, well I don’t quite know how to best put this, but: demonstrating that racism is wrong and that black people are the equals of white people should not exactly be a difficult proposition for a filmmaker to achieve in a one dimensional comic book-style movie in 2013. Issues of fate vs free will, imprisonment vs self-determination, the individual as representative of the masses etc should pretty much write themselves into a story about slavery, with no additional head-thinkin’ required. It’s not like QT is trying to do anything difficult or challenging with this material – it’s straight down the line primary school level ethics, and yet somehow he manages to screw it up royally.

The mess he makes of things might not be immediately obvious on a surface level, but just dig this ok, and see if you can get what I’m talking about:

When Schultz picks out Django to help him at the start of the film, it’s more or less pure chance. It’s not because he’s the toughest or the coolest or the smartest, it’s just because of some random information he happens to possess. Under different circumstances, he could have picked out any other slave in the South, and surely, we assume, this is going to be the point of the movie – that each and every slave can become Django, can break free and define his or her own future.

And yet when we reach the end of the story some two and a half hours later, this fairly elementary point has never been made. Instead the film falls victim to the rather insidious notion of unearned exceptionalism that seems to have become the norm in heroic Hollywood narratives in recent years – a notion that takes on a particularly ugly aspect when mixed up with issues of racism and historical destiny.

Although Candie and the world he represents has been thoroughly shot, castrated, crippled and blown up by the end of the film, his central doctrine of phrenology-guided racism – which he is allowed to fully outline in a lengthy dialogue scene – has never actually been effectively challenged. At the film’s conclusion, Django actually TAKES A LINE from the dead villain’s bullshit, happily describing himself as “the one in ten thousand exceptional n**ger”, whilst the other black characters in the film remain helpless imbeciles, craven traitors or, in the case of the women, so incapable of independent action they might as well be statues.

I mean, I hate to be the one to engage in supercilious “blah blah, so and so’s being vaguely racially insensitive” internet bitching as regards a movie that was generally highly enjoyable, and yes, Spike Lee’s much-publicised dismissal of the film was pompous and self-defeating (pretty much turning his nose up at the idea that a mere genre film could ever address serious issues), but still: honest to god Quentin, what were you THINKING?

Not only does this poorly-managed shift from random everyman to pre-destined superhero make for a lousy bit of screen-writing that even a second-rate spaghetti western director would probably have wanted ironed out before the cameras rolled, it also exposes a failure to responsibly address even the most basic moral/political issues that reflects very badly on a guy who’s been directing pretty good movies for over twenty years now. Hopefully he can chalk this one up to experience and return to what he does best – making superficial, escapist capers about amoral characters with no connection to the real world whatsoever.

Because, on that level at least, ‘Django..’ succeeds pretty well. There are lots of memorable scenes, good gags, fine performances from the supporting cast, great bits of filmmaking etc, all present and correct. It’s a pretty light-hearted affair given the subject matter, but as long as you’re primed to expect something more like one of Robert Rodriquez’ shiny action movie westerns than a work that approaches the great directors mentioned elsewhere in this post, it’s a good time, with a handful of transcendent moments that stir the blood the way a good western should.

For me, the best of these moments comes in the scene in which Django dispatches the Australian gangers who have been charged with delivering him to a hell-on-earth mining operation and high-tails it back to Candie’s plantation for a final showdown. There’s something truly rousing – genuinely heroic - about the way he hitches himself up on an unsaddled horse and roars off over the horizon, rifle in hand, as his fellow slaves stare at him in disbelief, his legend being born behind their eyes – “holy shit, check THAT guy out”. The film could have benefitted hugely from a few more moments like that – moments that give the figure of Django a wider role in the emancipation of black America, rather than just callously writing him off as an “exceptional n**ger”, standing head and shoulders above his fellows.

The western may traditionally be regarded as a genre that celebrates the individual, but as aficionados of the form like Tarantino should be aware, many of the best entries in the canon – and even most lesser-known John Wayne flicks – tend to end with the hero succeeding only thanks to the bonds of trust and compromise he has built with his allies (that utilitarianism again). And in the rare instances in which westerns have engaged with political issues and succeeded in making some kind of point ( I’m thinking particularly of Corbucci’s ‘Companeros’ and Damiano Damiani’s superb ‘Quien Sabe’ /‘A Bullet For The General’), they have done so through an appeal to a basic revolutionary collectivism, ending with the individual hero subsumed into the mass of the people, ready to overthrow the grandiose clowns who oppress them, regardless of personal loss or gain. I think that this approach would have been a perfect fit for Tarantino’s mixture of spaghetti western and slave plantation Southern gothic, and could have really given Django’s story the wings it deserved.

Given the director’s joyous screwing with history in “..Basterds”, what I really wanted to see at the end of this film (and it wouldn’t have taken much of a change of narrative to bring it about) is Django riding back towards the Big House not alone, but at the head of a whole army of freed slaves, fighting the Civil War two years early, with no damn Abraham Lincoln needed to help him out.

Corny and obvious maybe, but then EVERYTHING in this story is corny and obvious, and if you’re going to spell things out for the audience rather than relying on their perceived cultural sophistication (as per QT’s previous ironic mode), you might as well go the whole distance and leave their hearts swelling with cathartic glee, rather than with that faint withering feeling that accompanies yet another tale of a Chosen One stomping all over everybody for the sake of his individual happiness with his plastic fairy tale bride.

And I know, I know – I’ve just spent two thousand words chewing Quentin Tarantino out for making a film that doesn’t *mean anything, man*. I can’t believe it either. What a bore. As I say, the fact that they don’t mean anything is what I LIKED about all his previous films! But like any good cowboy, if he’s going to talk the talk, he needs to walk the walk, and failing to even mosey through a one-dimensional “racism is bad” revenge story without falling on his ass does not bode well for his future career as a proponent of grown-up issues. Sorry dude. But at least the violence was cool, and the one-liners were funny, and the music was good. Roll on ‘Kill Bill Pt. III’.