Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, silverware, and my love life

Two days ago, A.O. Scott wrote an article in the New York Times about the similarities between Lincoln and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Since it normally requires a gun to the head to get me into a Spielberg film, I thought that I'd create my own double feature. If I treat myself to Django Unchained, then I'd have to sit through Lincoln. Roughly the same era, two vastly different filmmakers, and a set of protagonists who could not be further apart from each other in terms of worldview, social status, and, well... we'll just call it negotiating style.

There are few things that excite me more than a new Tarantino film. My interest in film and music flourished as his star rose, and I thrilled at the transgressive nature of sitting in a theater at the local mall watching gangsters turn on, mutilate, and outwit each other. Reservoir Dogs begat my love of yakuza and the dark, comedic rage of Eastern European cinema.
I see in my mind a direct line between my maturation and the swagger of Tarantino, the balletic violence of Takeshi Kitano, the absurdity that is the hallmark of any Emir Kusterica film, and the obsession of a life spent living with your demons that Lars Von Trier and I both seem to fixate on.

Violence isn't my thing anymore, but like a suburban mom who'll head to the club and snort up a line of coke once or twice a year, I find myself loving it even more because of the infrequency of a once common thrill.

What I loved about Django Unchained has less to do with the film than with my relationship to the movie.
One of the very few things I miss about my relationship is the shorthand that couples develop: the verbal and physical cues that allow two people to slowly kill each other with over time. We're not talking eyerolls here; that's strictly Disney. I'm talking "quit scrubbing the bathtub so that we can talk about what happened two Thursdays ago" shit.
And I realized, as I watched Django, that I (and millions) have that same relationship with Tarantino's films.
There's a language we share, and unlike a relationship gone bad, the tics and sputters are well... they're like foreplay. They're a taste of what happened before and what soon will be.

Here are a few of my favorites from Django:

Ears! There was a quick, loving shot of an ear - just one film frame too long to be accidental; yet too quick to have any real significance to the plot. Perhaps the ear remained intact throughout the film; perhaps it was blown off in the end. I can't even remember whose it was; I just know that it sang to me for one brief moment.

A woman buried underground. My biggest fear, yet I almost jumped out of my seat with joy upon seeing that hot box lying in the sun. My only question: why in the hell was it in the front yard? Seems like it would be hidden out back, like most of slavery's most unsavory aspects. Granted, the shot of all those men looking at the hotbox from the front porch was a powerful one, but I'm not sure that the disconnect was worth the three seconds of film time it would have taken to show them heading to the slave quarters. I'm just sayin': I doubt that the editors of Plantation Landscaping magazine were happy with that scene.

Dicks be bickering: Stiffing servers and KKK raids are pretty low on the list of things I'd like  to participate in, but this was one of my favorite scenes in the entire film. There's a blog post popping up in my feed about when it's okay for white people to laugh while watching this movie. I haven't read it and have no intention of doing so, but I"m sure this is on the safe list.
Maybe I'm wrong, but there was some funky editing going on during this scene; the poor guy married to that crappy seamstress seemed to float throughout the crowd. Oh hell.. what do I know? All Klansmen look the same to me.

Bring out the gimp. During bondage scenes, I usually go to my safe place by picturing Natasha Fatale from Rocky and Bullwinkle tied up on some railroad tracks, and this was the only time I had to look away. Well, that and when the dude got eaten by the dogs.

Oh look! There's a hundred armed killers on the second floor looking down at you. We'll all have fun watching you fight your way out of this. And indeed we did.

So.... on to Lincoln. Fuck that film. I despise Steven Spielberg's films. They fill me with an irrational rage. 20 years ago, a boy I had a crush on took me to see Jurassic Park. I seethed throughout the entire film and broke up with him on the way back to the car.

But I gamely sucked it up, purchased my ticket, thought about asking for a refund, decided against it, walked around the block a few times to wrestle with my conscience (I should have purchased a ticket to Hitchcock, then gone in to see Lincoln).

Opening scene: battlefield. Fuck you, Steven Spielberg and your damn big-budget glorifying of war.

Next scene: Lincoln talking to some soldiers: Everyone's in awe of the white man. Look, there's a black soldier earnestly telling the President what to do. And his friend is silently pleading with him to mind his manners and know his place. After watching Django mayhem his way through the South and Samuel Jackson create the greatest Stepin Fetchit in living memory, I was in no mood to see this shit.

Oh look... two more solders tongue-tied in the preseence of greatness. Steven Spielberg is the WalMart of filming human emotion. We got it all and it's cheap and plentiful.
Hokey spiritualism. Dreams, schmeams. Dreams are lazier filmmaking devices than flashbacks and you're stacking the deck 5 minutes in. Fuck you.

Of course there's a sad little boy by the fire! Of fucking course. Now the boy's gone, and all that's left is a pair of tattered slippers by the fire. Replace that with a mangled ear or a bulging dick in a metal codpiece and I'll give this another five minutes. Otherwise I'm outta here.

Never mind... I'm gone. This is 40 is playing across the hall.