Best days long gone, Part 2: "Django Unchained"

Quentin Tarantino had a good run about 20 years ago. He had a five-year burst of creativity from "Reservoir Dogs" to "Jackie Brown." In between those, he wrote and directed his masterpiece, "Pulp Fiction," wrote "True Romance" and provided the story for "Natural Born Killers."

That was his time. And his time has long passed.

I never bothered with the "Kill Bill" movies, because I'm not into martial arts, violence, and fantasy (at least that's how I perceive them from snippets and previews). Tarantino took six years off between "Jackie Brown" and the "Kill Bill" movies, and somehow his aesthetic went from cool pulp fiction to just plain pulp. By the time his Grindhouse phase kicked in, I was checked out; it wasn't worth a few scenes of transcendent streaming dialogue and sublime plot twists if it meant I had to sit through the gore and simplistic storytelling that dominates the films.

Which brings us to the breathtaking revenge porn of "Django Unchained."

First, I did sample "Django's" table-setter, "Inglourious Basterds," on video last year and was underwhelmed; I was alternately bored and disgusted. The performances were flat. Tarantino's provocations -- Nazis! Scalping! Vigilantism! Brad Pitt! -- were juvenile. It's as if his true 12-year-old was finally set free by his '90s successes, and the Weinsteins' blank checks gave him free rein to wank off.

I don't allege that he's not talented or sincere; of course he is. It's just that his filmmaking suffers from a fatal cynicism; he exhibits almost a condescending disgust for his followers and the rest of disposable humanity. It is simply stylized and soulless nihilism.

"Django" is almost unwatchable because of the boatloads of blood and the ridiculous autopsy-level violence. In the polar opposite of old Hollywood's bloodless slayings, here gunshot victims explode in powerjet blasts of blood. Bodies are hit multiple times, spraying or burbling every time. It might be Tarantino's idea of realism, but it comes off as beyond cartoonish. In fact, it's downright Pythonesque; it's the sober fanboy's unironic take on that troupe's hilarious homage to Peckinpah (or its faux John Wayne title "Buckets of Blood Pouring Out of People's Heads"). (And it's really unnecessary at this point to even mention the mind-boggling number of times a treasured racial epithet riddles the script. It's the linguistic equivalent of a bloodbath.)

Django (Jamie Foxx), passing as a freed slave under the cover of a prolific bounty hunter, Schultz (Christoph Waltz), perpetually seethes with hatred and often reflexively reaches for his sidearm, just hoping for an excuse to blow a bad guy away. (In his revenge fantasy come true, not even Uncle Toms are safe from disfigurement.) Django's goal is to rescue his wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (kute!) from the clutches of her owner, plantation big-shot Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, nearly out of his league).

Is there any doubt that the noble hero (watch him outwit and outshoot a dozen gunmen at the same time!) will save the horrifically degraded damsel? Alas, Foxx is mostly asked to narrow his eyes and sneer, in a performance straight out of the Joaquin Phoenix School of Scowling. (And is it heresy to say that Waltz is a gifted character actor but that his hard-ass-eccentric shtick typically gets old by the third reel?)

Frankly, this is all a fetish of Tarantino's, playing out in public. Some of this might be entertaining if it felt even remotely original. I'm sure he means it as homage, but the silly soundtrack and the pseudo-Cinemascope display come off simply as cheaply derivative. Just because he's infatuated with Spaghetti Westerns or Grindhouse shtick doesn't mean we want to watch him ape it in the 21st century. Doesn't he know a lot of that was crap anyway? How outre of him to get his fingernails dirty like this; no wonder he's Oscar's guilty pleasure.

Tarantino does get credit for regularly employing cinematographer Robert Richardson. Some of the shots in "Django" are lush and lovely, and I wish I'd seen them (or at least parts of them) on the big screen. But, frankly, anyone with a generous budget can ape David Lean or Sergio Leone. And, honestly, who can appreciate this cinematic elegance when we're all just checking our watches waiting for the climactic holocaust awaiting a theater full of Nazis or a plantation full of slaveholders?

I will hand it to the pulpmeister, though. In each movie, he crafts a handful of scenes that capture the old magic, the spiel of biblical proportions. And there's one scene each in "Basterds" and "Django" that rival the giddy brilliance of "Pulp Fiction." Of course, the opening scene in "Basterds," in which Waltz's Nazi character interrogates the rural family hiding Jews under their floorboards, is expertly crafted. And in "Django," DiCaprio acquits himself with a confrontational/phrenological monologue/rant that turns Hamlet and jurisprudence on their skulls. Such intermittent joys do not make a movie, however, especially one that clocks in at a bloated 166 minutes. (It's an epic, you see!)

I've been fond of subscribing to a Three-Album Rule (a corollary to the Salinger rule):  most bands are lucky to have a run of three consecutive releases. (Even the Beatles' peak can be pegged from "Rubber Soul" to "Sgt. Pepper.") Quentin Tarantino is the cinematic poster child for that rule; "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown" were brilliant. He and I bonded during those years. And then we went our separate ways.

I feel good about where I've ended up.


GRADES
Django Unchained (C+)
Inglorious Basterds (B-minus)
Jackie Brown (A)
Pulp Fiction (A)
Reservoir Dogs (A-minus)
True Romance (B-plus)