After putting it off for months, I finally decided to sit down and watch my first Quentin Tarantino film ever, Django Unchained. Tarantino, the polarizing director behind Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglorious Basterds, has received a massive amount of critical acclaim for his revivals of classic American genres, like the crime film and the western. Here he is doing a fist bump.
Django Unchained, which is ranked as #46 in the IMDb Top 250, is a self-proclaimed “spaghetti western” a sub-genre of the Western created by the Italians. Normally, a hero stumbles into a town of two opposing gangs, and plays them both through deception and guile in order to protect a family caught in the middle. The namesake of Django Unchained, a 1966 Italian filmed called Django, tells the story of a man who decimates two feuding gangs, one for killing his wife and the other for attempting to kill him. The star of the film, France Nero, has a cameo in Django Unchained as “Big Daddy,” a rich plantation owner.
Another staple of the spaghetti Western is an insane amount of violence. Django in 1966 was considered one of the most violent movies of all time, and Django Unchained certainly pays tribute to that era by using a special effect where bullet wounds look more like grenades going off inside the victims body than just shots. I found it bizarre at sometimes, and hilarious at others.
So the story takes place in 1858, and follows Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who has just been purchased by Dr. King Shultz (Christophe Waltz), a bounty hunter. Shultz has purchased Django because he somehow knows that Django knows the three wanted criminals that Shultz is after. We later find out that the three criminals aggressively whipped Django’s long lost wife when the two tried to escape their former plantation, therefore making her unfit for indoor servant work. In the above gif, Django (who has dressed himself for the first time in his life, hence the Austin Powers outfit), kills the man who beat his wife and references the line he used when Django pleaded with him, “I like the way you beg, boy."
Christoph Waltz is the lovable German bounty hunter who hates slavery and sees Django as a friend, so he decides to make him his full time partner while the two go looking for Django’s wife. He intelligently talks himself out of any messy situation, but also can shoot a gun faster than anyone else in the film (that is, until he teaches Django how to shoot). The two learn that Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) is a slave on Calvin Candie’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) plantation, and they decide to go there disguised as mandingo buyers (the term used for a contest where slaves would fight to the death and their owners would bet on them). Then Dr. Shultz would talk his way into purchasing Broomhilda, and the two would escape the plantation before ever having to buy a ridiculously priced male slave.
Probably my favorite part about the film is the way the camera shot Leo, making everything he did overdramatic and hilarious. His acting was great (I definitely felt the Oscar snub there), and I thought he carried that entire portion of the film. Between his overexpressive face and his intense mannerisms, Leo turned the villain of Calvin Candie into a lovable bipolar, twisted plantation owner, making it even harder to root for Dr. Shultz and Django. I think the point when Django and his wife Broomhilda reunited saved me from jumping to rooting for Leo.
Also this gif perfectly describes how I felt during every violent scene. Basically the last hour or so is a whole mess of shenanigans, giant bloody battles, and trickery that I think made up for the first two hours of overhyped lack of action. Everything came together, and I don’t think I would have liked it if it ended any other way. Jamie Foxx also did a fantastic job as the cool newly freed slave trying to pass for a conman who was trying to pass for a mandingo expert.
All in all I did appreciate the film and I understand why it got a nomination. Also Tarantino won for Best Original Screenplay and Waltz won for Best Supporting Actor (he also won for Inglorious Basterds). However, I don’t think it cracks my top three 2013 Best Picture nominees (Life of Pi, Les Misérables, and Silver Linings Playbook). Now just Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Zero Dark Thirty, and I’ll have seen all nine! A totally useless accomplishment now that the Oscars are months behind us!
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