And the Oscar goes to...
Did y'all read what Frank Rich wrote about Django Unchained earlier this month? Take a minute. I'll wait.Unlike its fellow Best Picture contenders Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lincoln-- films purported to be ultra-relevant to today's political scene in America-- Django doesn't preach the false doctrine of nobility. We left the nobles behind in England. It doesn't congratulate the Great Nation on its ideals. It kicks the Great Nation in the balls. In Django, American imperialism is the enemy, not the hero. Though it features much more energy and pluck, Quentin Tarantino's fantasy story about a Civil War-era slavery revenge is really no more outrageous than Steven Spielberg's fantasy about a government of, by, and for the people. Tarantino often gets accused of talking too much about his movies, but unlike Spielberg, he has never made a public claim that one of his movies (or three) should be compulsory viewing in American schools. Now that's most audacious of all.
If Lincoln had been written by Tarantino, rather than by a pretentious, lifeless liberal like Tony Kushner, you could be damned sure that the emblematic scene of the picture wouldn't have observed the real-life radical and abolitionist hero Thaddeus Stevens (portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones) publicly renouncing his most strongly-held belief in life-- the innate equality of the races-- for the benefit of an inexact cinematic statement about political deal-making. Instead of a manufactured drama about congressional vote-counting, Tarantino might have conceived a climax in which Stevens throws a lit torch through a window of the Capitol. The narrative would have been labeled absurd, but then again, Doris Kearns Goodwin thinks that the similarities between Lincoln and President Obama's congressional battles today are "eerie," and if that's accurate, who the hell is the Thaddeus Stevens of the 113th Congress? I've searched high and low.
Beasts of the Southern Wild had some high voltage also. It dripped with emotion, and the graphic images at its conclusion caused the hair to rise on the scruff of my neck (and I had the handicap of watching it on the small screen). But the movie of the year, and for the last-- and next-- several years is Django. It's mercilessly entertaining. It's the only movie I've seen since the premiere of The Sopranos in 1999 to be bigger and badder than what I see on television on a semi-nightly basis. Spike Lee won't go to see it, but that's simple to explain: He's jealous. Django is a delirious riot of a film. Tarantino's masterpiece is Pulp Fiction, but his jeweled epic is Django Unchained. It kicked me in the balls too.
And the Oscar goes to... Django!
Django! Django! Django!
And the 'D' is silent.
posted by CM @ 8:52 PM
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