Critic Dana Stevens is Unsettled by Django Unchained

Slate reviewer Dana Stevens experienced a series of emotions while watching Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. Ultimately, she is left feeling both "physically and morally queasy" by the films graphic violence. I'd suggest that this is the sign of a truly effective film. Of course, for me the ideal film experience is one that unsettles. I'm very particular. I don't like comedies unless they're dark. I only like horror or sci-fi if it's atmospheric and creepy (anything late 70s to early 80s). I like independent films but only if they're edgy and weird. I don't care for romance or melodrama. So, the only recently released film that I have really wanted to see has been Django Unchained. Perhaps I am slightly biased towards Tarantino's work but the sense of "moral unease" that the film creates and Stevens disliked is what makes the film work. Steven's rightly suggests that the change in Tarantino's subject matter in his most recent films, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained show that he is maturing. However, it seems that his moving beyond ultra violent and comedic crime films into ultra violent and comedic re-imaginings of historical events is not quite enough for her, rather she would prefer he treat history's horrors with a staid and reserved approach.

Though I disagree with Steven's final assessment of the film, I do agree that Tarantino should have focused longer on the character of Stephen (Samuel Jackson). This, I think, was Jackson's best performance ever.  He brilliantly captures the curious mixture of self-loathing and desire for autonomy that one can assume was present in every slave. Jackson's Stephen plays his Step-N-Fetchit role but there is a bright and terrifying rage behind his eyes and a shrewdness and mastery that is showcased in the way he handles his master Calvin Candie (fantastically played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Steven's refers to Jackson's role as compellingly "complex" and I would wholeheartedly concur.

Steven's remarks on Tarantino's characteristic "style pastiches [drawn] from...mob dramas, martial arts films and grade B exploitation flicks", however, I think it is reductive to assume that Tarantino is merely a collector, stitching his favorite movie memories together. Django Unchained is a moving film, it inspires laughter, anger, sadness and yes, even nausea. Steven's finds what she calls Tarantino's "directorial delectation" of "acts of racial violence" sickening because it "places the viewer in the position of Calvin Candie" in that they relish the violence of the film just as Candie relishes the violence his slaves display. This I think is purposeful on Tarantino's part. He wants the viewer to feel this way and that is the root of the unsettled feeling, the unease. Tarantino puts it on the screen for us without holding back. He shows that history has never been staid but rather for, the most part, violent and brutal and that there have always been willing participants and willing witnesses to this violence.