Say Goodbye to Miss Lara

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Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino - 2012

Quentin Tarantino may hold the record for most critically acclaimed revenge flicks directed, and because of his style and his devotion to the badass underdog, his record has not been contested. All of these films – Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Death Proof, Inglorious Basterds, and finally, Django Unchained – are imbued with Tarantino’s characteristic sense of humor. Tarantino’s most recent film, Django Unchained, displays this violent humor especially during the last act (out of too many acts to count), during which Django escapes from a fate in the mines, returns to Candyland, saves his wife Broomhilda, and kills the final group of people who have just returned to the mansion from Candie’s funeral, including Samuel L. Jackson’s Stephen, before riding off into the night with his wife. This last sequence acts as a showcase of Django’s new-learned skills in wit, deception, sharpshooting, and honor.

Most of the humor of these last scenes come from Tarantino’s own ridiculous Australian accent, Django’s easy manipulation of the Aussies, or the bewilderment of the on-looking slaves. In most of the film, the humor comes from the characters’ mouths and not their actions, and usually the light-humored characters, especially Dr. King Schultz’s mannerisms, are placed in sharp juxtaposition with the brutal and hyper-stylized violence of the film. Tarantino tempers the violence, doling it out quickly, like with regards to how the scene proceeding Candie’s death unfolds – a huge massacre that lasts seemingly forever – and Django’s subsequent punishment, an extremely difficult to watch scene featuring a naked, exposed, frightening humiliation of our protagonist that in the long scheme of the plot has no place in the plot other than to derail the audience.

The last battle scene, by contrast, is very simple, stark, and unelaborate. Its main theme is revenge, and is to overwhelm and terrify the characters, not the audience. At this point, the audience is on Django’s side and does not need any further coercion; what they do need is to see Django win and to see him win spectacularly. Django makes a subtle yet flamboyant entrance, dressed in Calvin Candie’s own clothes, solidifying his occupancy of the house. He’s taken over and this is his domain. His first act of violence is to take out Candie’s henchman, and just as he is about to shoot off Billy Crash’s penis, he says, with a certain flair, “Billy Crash, now where were we? Oh, that’s right. Last time I saw you, you had your hands on my—” The violence here is not taken comically, only triumphantly. Django’s suave “The ‘D’ is silent, hillbilly,” is a line the audience can get behind. There are screams and shudders when he is finally executed.

The main vehicle of comedy in this scene is in the death of Calvin Candie’s sister, Lara Lee. Django calmly tells Cora to tell Miss Lara goodbye. She says, “Bye, Miss Lara,” and Django shoots her out of frame. Several things happen here. The first reason the audience has cause to laugh at Lara’s death is because of how sudden it is and how it still remains sudden even though we are told to say goodbye to her. By saying goodbye, she is effectively dead, so the audience, vicariously through Cora, does in fact tell her “Bye, Miss Lara.” In her death, she’s no longer a person, but a prop for Tarantino to play around with. And he does. Via excellent use of awareness of the frame, Tarantino yanks her out of the room and off-screen in a direction impossible from the angle of Django’s gun.

Tarantino does some interesting things with Lara’s death that could be read into further. We have to ask ourselves why her death is the funny one, why he chooses to rid the room of white people with her exit, and why her death is last. Django has stripped the house of its white – and therefore rightful – inhabitants, and he physically expels Lara, the white mistress, out of the room. Tarantino completely trivializes her death by making it funny and by lending it that element of impossibility, and in doing so awards Django ultimate free reign. I think there are further implications in the treatment of Lara as a prop, a comedic device, and a character, but most importantly her death gives the scene a morbid comedy that allows Django the superiority and confidence to approach Stephen.

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