Movie Review: Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ Stars Jamie Foxx

“Lincoln” and “Django Unchained,” the one a sober historical drama and the other a wild and bloody live-action cartoon, are essentially about different solutions to the same problem. You could almost imagine the two films, or at least their heroes, figuring in the kind of good-natured, racial-stereotype humor that used to be a staple of stand-up comedy (and was memorably parodied on “The Simpsons”): “white guys abolish slavery like this” (pass constitutional amendment); “but black guys, they abolish slavery like this” (blow up plantation).

A more substantive contrast might be drawn between the approaches of two filmmakers — both steeped in the history of popular cinema and both brilliant craftsmen whose skill inspires admiration, as well as a measure of suspicion — to a subject full of pain and fraught with peril. Mr. Spielberg, in his ambitious, history-minded projects, hews to the proud (though sometimes mocked) tradition of the Hollywood A picture, in which big themes are addressed with appropriately sweeping visual and emotional gestures. Mr. Tarantino finds inspiration in what are still frequently seen as less reputable genres and styles: Asian martial arts movies, spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation.

Not that you need, at this point, to choose. Among Mr. Tarantino’s achievements has been his successful argument that the maligned and neglected B movies of the past should be viewed with fresh eyes and unironic respect. His own tributes to the outlaw, outsider film tradition — flamboyant in their scholarly care and in their bold originality — have suggested new ways of taking movies seriously. “Django Unchained” is unabashedly and self-consciously pulpy, with camera moves and musical cues that evoke both the cornfed westerns of the 1950s and their pastafied progeny of the next decade. (The title comes from a series of Italian action movies whose first star, Franco Nero, shows up here in a cameo.) It is digressive, jokey, giddily brutal and ferociously profane. But it is also a troubling and important movie about slavery and racism.

As such, “Django Unchained” is obviously a companion to “Inglourious Basterds,” in which Mr. Tarantino had the audacity to turn the Nazi war against the Jews into the backdrop for a farcical, ultraviolent caper. He did not simply depart from the facts of history, inventing, in the title characters, a squad of mostly Jewish-American killers led by a United States Army lieutenant from Tennessee; he rewrote the past in the vivid, visceral language of film fantasy.

The point of “Inglourious Basterds” was not to engage in counterfactual speculation about a successful plot to kill Hitler, but rather to carry out a vicarious, belated and altogether impossible form of revenge, using the freedom of cinematic make-believe to even the score.

Like “Inglourious Basterds,” “Django Unchained” is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness. Christoph Waltz, who played the charming, sadistic SS officer Hans Landa in “Basterds,” here plays Dr. King Schultz, a charming, sadistic German bounty hunter (masquerading as an itinerant dentist) whose distaste for slavery makes him the hero’s ally and mentor.

That hero, first glimpsed in shackles and rags on a cold Texas night in 1858, is Django (Jamie Foxx), who becomes Schultz’s sidekick and business partner. Schultz is an amoral gun for hire, tracking down fugitives and habitually choosing the first option offered in the formulation “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

Over time the traditional roles of white gunslinger and nonwhite sidekick are reversed, as the duo’s mission shifts from Schultz’s work to the rescue of Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). After the couple tried to run away from their former plantation together, they were whipped and branded (the horrific punishment is shown in flashback), and Broomhilda was sold.

Django and Schultz’s search for her leads them to Candyland, a Mississippi estate whose debonair master, Calvin Candie, is played with almost indecent flair by Leonardo DiCaprio. Candie is assisted in his savagery by Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), a house slave who may be the most shocking invention in “Django Unchained.” He is an Uncle Tom whose servility has mutated into monstrosity and who represents the symbolic self Django must destroy to assert and maintain his freedom.

The plot is, by Mr. Tarantino’s standards, fairly linear, without the baroque chronology of “Pulp Fiction” or the parallel story lines of “Inglourious Basterds.” But the movie does take its time, and it wanders over a wide expanse of geographic and thematic territory.

In addition to Mr. Tarantino’s trademark dialogue-heavy, suspense-filled set pieces, there are moments of pure silliness, like a gathering of hooded night riders (led by Don Johnson), and a late escapade (featuring Mr. Tarantino speaking in an Australian accent) that perhaps owes more to Bugs Bunny than to any other cultural archetype.

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State of the Art: Android Cameras From Nikon and Samsung Go Beyond Cellphones - Review

But yes, that’s what it has come to. Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday snapshots, camera sales have been dropping. For millions of people, the ability to share a fresh photo wirelessly — Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, text message — is so tempting, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot of real-camera goodness.

That’s an awfully big convenience/photo-quality swap. A real camera teems with compelling features that most phones lack: optical zoom, big sensor, image stabilization, removable memory cards, removable batteries and decent ergonomics. (A four-inch, featureless glass slab is not exactly optimally shaped for a hand-held photographic instrument.)

But the camera makers aren’t taking the cellphone invasion lying down. New models from Nikon and Samsung are obvious graduates of the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” school. The Nikon Coolpix S800C ($300) and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera ($500 from AT&T, $550 from Verizon) are fascinating hybrids. They merge elements of the cellphone and the camera into something entirely new and — if these flawed 1.0 versions are any indication — very promising.

From the back, you could mistake both of these cameras for Android phones. The big black multitouch screen is filled with app icons. Yes, app icons. These cameras can run Angry Birds, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pandora, Firefox, GPS navigation programs and so on. You download and run them exactly the same way. (That’s right, a GPS function. “What’s the address, honey? I’ll plug it into my camera.”)

But the real reason you’d want an Android camera is wirelessness. Now you can take a real photo with a real camera — and post it or send it online instantly. You eliminate the whole “get home and transfer it to the computer” step.

And as long as your camera can get online, why stop there? These cameras also do a fine job of handling Web surfing, e-mail, YouTube videos, Facebook feeds and other online tasks. Well, as fine a job as a phone could do, anyway.

You can even make Skype video calls, although you won’t be able to see your conversation partner; the lens has to be pointing toward you.

Both cameras get online using Wi-Fi hot spots. The Samsung model can also get online over the cellular networks, just like a phone, so you can upload almost anywhere.

Of course, there’s a price for that luxury. Verizon charges at least $30 a month if you don’t have a Verizon plan, or $5 if you have a Verizon Share Everything plan. AT&T charges $50 a month or more for the camera alone, or $10 more if you already have a Mobile Share plan.

If you have a choice, Verizon is the way to go. Not only is $5 a month much more realistic than $10 a month, but Verizon’s 4G LTE network is far faster than AT&T’s 4G network. That’s an important consideration, since what you’ll mostly be doing with your 4G cellular camera is uploading big photo files. (Wow. Did I just write “4G cellular camera?”)

These cameras offer a second big attraction, though: freedom of photo software. The Android store overflows with photography apps. Mix and match. Take a shot with one app, crop, degrade and post it with Instagram.

Just beware that most of them are intended for cellphones, so they don’t recognize these actual cameras’ optical zoom controls. Some of the photo-editing apps can’t handle these cameras’ big 16-megapixel files, either. Unfortunately, you won’t really know until you pay the $1.50 or $4 to download these apps.

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Movie Review: Jessica Chastain in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

Jonathan Olley/Columbia PicturesJessica Chastain in "Zero Dark Thirty."

There is a crucial scene in “Zero Dark Thirty” — Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliantly directed fictionalized account about the search for Osama bin Laden — in which three Central Intelligence Agency officers stop talking and look at a television. On the screen Barack Obama is speaking with a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” It’s Nov. 16, 2008. “I have said repeatedly,” Mr. Obama asserts, “that America doesn’t torture.” The three look at the screen without a word, and then Ms. Bigelow cuts to a close-up of one, Maya (Jessica Chastain). The analyst’s face is a blank. This is, Mr. Obama continues, part of “an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”

Christ Pratt, left, and Joel Edgerton in "Zero Dark Thirty."

That vacant face partly explains, I suspect, why “Zero Dark Thirty” has stirred up so much controversy before hitting theaters. (It opens nationwide on Wednesday.) Is she stunned by what she hears? Contemptuous? Relieved? Irritated? Indifferent? Maya’s face reveals nothing and offers as much explanation as her silence. How viewers interpret this look will depend on them because here and throughout this difficult, urgent movie Ms. Bigelow does not fill in the blanks for them. Given that the opening sequences show Maya helping carry out violent, cruel interrogations of detainees, I read her expression as that of an employee absorbing a new set of marching orders from her next boss — orders that drastically reverse her old ones.

A seamless weave of truth and drama, “Zero Dark Thirty” tracks the long, twisted road to Bin Laden’s capture, beginning on Sept. 11 and ending a decade later at another conflagration, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. With a script by Mark Boal, who wrote “The Hurt Locker,” Ms. Bigelow’s last feature, this new movie is a cool, outwardly nonpartisan intelligence procedural — a detective story of sorts — in which a mass murderer is tracked down by people who spend a lot of time staring into computer screens and occasionally working in the field. It is also a wrenchingly sad, soul-shaking story about revenge and its moral costs, which makes it the most important American fiction movie about Sept. 11, a landmark that would be more impressive if there were more such films to choose from.

The story hinges on Maya, a spiky loner with next to no back story, no friend or family, who’s more of an ambivalent protagonist than a traditional heroine. She is introduced in the first scene during the interrogation of a prisoner, Ammar (Reda Kateb), by another C.I.A. officer, Dan (Jason Clarke). Ammar, whom Mr. Boal has said is a composite, looks as if he has been beaten. “I own you,” Dan says, “you belong to me.” Dan leaves the room with someone wearing a ski mask; this turns out to be Maya, who pushes him to continue. He does. During this scene and a second questioning, Dan knocks Ammar down, subjects him to simulated drowning and forces him inside a horrifyingly small box. The violence is ugly, stark, almost businesslike and is largely presented without music cues or any obvious filmmaking commentary.

The scarcity of fiction films about Sept. 11 only partly explains why this movie has provoked debate. Primarily, though, it is the representation of torture — and, more important, the assertion that such abuse produced information that led to Bin Laden — that has provoked outrage in some quarters. We are clearly hungry to work through this raw subject. The most difficult scenes occur early and set the grim mood and moral stakes. (Later there are other, briefer visions of detainees being treated harshly.) It is hard to imagine anyone watching them without feeling shaken or repulsed. Some of the worst is implied: You see a bruised face, not the punch that battered it. You see a man forced into a small box, rather than hear his screams inside it. In these early scenes there is also talk — threats and pleas.

If Ms. Bigelow leaves some of this to your imagination, it is because, I assume, she knows that the viewers for a movie like this one have been following the news for the past decade. They have read the articles, books and legal arguments about the C.I.A.’s use of what was called “enhanced interrogation” and that others have condemned as torture. Trusting the audience in this fashion is gutsy and all too rare in a movie released by a major studio. But it is an article of faith in “Zero Dark Thirty” that viewers are capable of filling in the blanks, managing narrative complexity and confronting their complicity. This is unusual territory for American moviegoers habituated to an industry that preaches simplified morality even as it turns torture into entertainment.

The scenes of Ammar in the C.I.A.’s medieval chamber of horrors are broken into two separate time frames and occur during the first 25 minutes. And while they take up 15 of the movie’s 156 minutes, they linger, casting a long, dreadful shadow over everything that comes after. The openings of movies are always significant (“Rosebud”), and the key to understanding this one is grasping what occurs during its introductory passages. The movie actually begins with a prelude: a brief stretch of black screen accompanied by a disturbing collage of voices from Sept. 11. The first of the two interrogations with Ammar follows immediately after, a juxtaposition that asserts a cause and effect relationship between the void of Sept. 11 voices and the lone man strung up in a cell.

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Movie Review: Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour,’ With Jean-Louis Trintignant

Did I mention this is a love story? It is, as well as a mystery of a type that, like some classic films noir and detective stories, reveals its secrets by rewinding to a past moment and then moving forward in time to return to the present. It opens with Georges and Anne, former music teachers, watching a concert by one of her prized students, the noted young pianist Alexandre Tharaud (as himself). Afterward they greet him backstage — Mr. Tharaud slices through a swarm of admirers to kiss her — and return home, an interlude set to his performance of Schubert’s Impromptu (Op. 90, No. 1), a type of music that’s called a character piece and is meant to convey a mood or idea.

The music helps set an air of soothing, restrained elegance as does Mr. Haneke’s meticulous compositions, his impeccable, steady framing and harmoniously arranged people and objects. Everything seems just so, just right, creating a sense of order that carries through until the couple reach their apartment and discover that the lock on their front door is broken. Someone apparently has tried to break in, a would-be intrusion that sends a shudder through the movie and down your spine. That’s because it echoes the first image of the firemen bursting into the apartment and because you never know what shocks, what brutality, Mr. Haneke — whose films include “The White Ribbon” and “Caché” as well as the Austrian version of “Funny Games” and its American redo — will let loose.

There is a jolt of violence in “Amour,” never fear (or do!). Nothing, though, seems amiss the next morning while Georges and Anne eat breakfast in a corner of their kitchen, talking amid the clatter of dishes and cutlery. He notices that the salt shaker is empty and rises to refill it, and he continues to chatter unaware that Anne has frozen in her chair, as if turned to stone. Perplexed, he waves a hand in front of her seemingly unseeing eyes. After a few beats, he dresses, presumably to get a doctor, but, as abruptly, Anne seems to return to normal. She scolds him gently — she doesn’t remember what just happened — and then she pours the tea and misses her cup.

By the time you next see them together, Anne in a wheelchair. She has had an operation for a carotid artery obstruction and while the procedure has a high success rate, she has drawn a fatal short straw. “It’s all terribly exciting,” a visibly unexcited, deadpan Georges explains to their daughter, Eva (a fantastic Isabelle Huppert). Wildly self-centered, Eva asks about the operation only after she natters on about her work (she’s a musician), her husband and children. She may be embarrassed or unsettled by her mother’s illness, but when Eva asks what she can do, her words sound hollow. “We’ve always coped, your mother and I,” Georges says, maybe to reassure himself as much as a daughter who can feel like a stranger.

A grace note of the movie is that the distance between Eva and her parents, an alienation that adds an edge into her voice when she talks to Georges and he to her, is never explained. Mr. Haneke doesn’t put his characters on the couch, offering up personalities that can be easily scanned and compartmentalized. As a consequence, his characters can be difficult to get a handle on, opaque, which might be frustrating if there wasn’t so much meaning packed into their everyday conversations and gestures, including what they leave unsaid. Early on, for instance, Anne teases Georges — at least she seems to be teasing — by calling him a monster. She doesn’t explain herself and neither does Mr. Haneke, which allows her meaning to reverberate, to grow steadily louder until it booms.

After Anne returns home, she gradually goes from bad to worse. Georges tries to care for her by himself, but, in time, is forced to hire nurses. The inevitable is, well, inevitable. But in this movie it is also consistently surprising because of the clarity of Mr. Haneke’s vision. There is a great deal that is difficult to watch here, the indignities of a debilitating illness included, and the equally harsh pain of witnessing a great love, a longtime companion, slowly fade away. The moving, subtly brilliant performances of Ms. Riva (best known for “Hiroshima Mon Amour”) and Mr. Trintignant (“A Man and a Woman”) are a particular gift in this respect. The two are, after all, at once forever young, immortalized in their films, and as familiar to us as our grandparents.

The representation of pain can be rightly difficult to watch, yet all too often also meaningless. But “Amour,” despite its agonizing subject, holds you willingly throughout. A key to understanding why comes at the beginning, when you see Georges and Anne at the concert, tucked in the audience that’s facing forward as if it were looking at the camera or, disconcertingly, us. It’s hard to see them, but they’re there, somewhat center and to the left, waiting and then clapping. It’s curious, this impression that the characters you’re watching are in turn watching and even applauding you. The moment can be characterized as an instance of Brechtian estrangement, which is meant to break the effects of illusion and awaken an attitude of criticism in the audience. More simply, the theater audience directly mirrors the movie audience, eroding the nominal distance between them.

This erosion of distance actually strengthens the film’s emotional power. Viewers acquainted with Mr. Haneke’s work may find “Amour” too cold, cruel even, and its depiction of suffering a punishing, familiar gesture from a director who’s long been interested in transforming spectators from simple consumers into critical thinkers. There are certainly arguments to be made about whether movie-watching is ever simple or noncritical. Yet there’s another point to be made here, namely that all the violence in “Amour” is crucial to Mr. Haneke’s rigorous, liberatingly unsentimental worldview, one that gazes on death with the same benevolent equanimity as life. All of which is to say: bring hankies. This is a film that will make you weep not only because life ends but also because it blooms.

“Amour” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Illness, suffering, death.

Amour

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Michael Haneke; director of photography, Darius Khondji; edited by Monika Willi and Nadine Muse; production design by Jean-Vincent Puzos; costumes by Catherine Leterrier; produced by Margaret Menegoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz; released by Sony Pictures Classics. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes.

WITH: Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges), Emmanuelle Riva (Anne), Isabelle Huppert (Eva), Alexandre Tharaud (Alexandre), William Shimell (Geoff), Ramón Agirre (Concierge’s Husband) and Rita Blanco (Concierge)

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