Django Unchained - Part 1

[RockSP]

QT has a massive hard on for black culture, he always has.

Second only to his foot fetish.

 

[samsnee]

So Django and Broomhilda are supposed to be Shaft's great great grandparents. But since Samuel L Jackson played Shaft in the remake, what are the chances Stephen knocked up Broomhilda?

 

[nightwing06]

Any writer,producer,or director who has used or will use slavery as part or as a whole in his or her work
is going to court and gain controversy. Slavery was/is sadistic,brutal,horrible and beyond degrading.
In Django Unchained Director/writer Quentin Tarantino crafts a story around the subject of slavery
that is part western,love story and revenge flick.



"Liberated " from slavery by bounty hunter/dentist Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz),Django (Jamie Foxx)
is asked to track down 3 men Schultz is seeking and can be only identified by Django and to join him for a season
of bounty hunting after which the 2 will rescue Django's beloved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from the clutches of
Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a plantation owner.


Some without seeing one frame of the film have rushed to judge it as a satire of slavery.Now there is without a doubt humor
throughout the film,but in no way is it some slapstick comedy about slavery Tarantino actually points out
the stupidity of bigotry in a few key scenes(the "bag head" scene is a standout and will be talked about for years)
Fortunately Tarantino put together and amazing cast.Foxx is great as Django ,he embodies the cowboys with no name ,
natural gunman, possesing the slow burn,reflecting on his wife which keeps his temper at bay though the brutality around him pushes
him to the limit. Waltz is brilliant as Schultz who detests slavery and the brutality that goes along with it.
Dicaprio almost completely vanishes into the character Candie,he is unflinchingly sinister,as a man who fancies
himself a gentleman,but is truly a sadistic,brutal,bigot.I truly admire Kerry Washington as Broomhilda and her bravery for taking on the role.
Last but not least there is Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, Candies
house slave under heavy make up he is one of the most intimidating and sinister characters i have ever seen on the big screen.


There are also brief but memorable turns by Walton Goggins ,Don Johnson ,James Russo,James Remar ,Tom Wopat ,Misty Upham
Bruce Dern,,Jonah Hill, and Dana Michelle Gourrier

By the time DU enters its last act it starts to drag a bit and some of the violence is over the top ,and the use of the N word in the film is a bit excessive,but
i cant write off this very good film because of it.
If your a Tarantino fan its a must see,but i think even the casual fan will enjoy this
Scale of 1-10 a 9

 

[redhawk23]

Saw this with my family on Christmas Day good times.

I really enjoyed the film.

I can't lay out my thoughts on the film much better than Gwynplaine already summed up the movie

I wish Tarantino had shaved some of the fat off though and worked on making the end of the film more unforgettable, which for me would have been the difference between a great movie and a masterpiece.
But like I said I love the film and I think QT is a genius, so it's all good

 

[redhawk23]

Also, I'm fairly sure Tom Savini was one of Candy's men.

 

[The Shape]

There were at least 3 ways that this film could have ended, 3 times where it could have faded to black. My only gripe is that the film was about 30 minutes too long.

Spoiler

Did Django really need to be captured AGAIN at the end (which leads to the dick scene)? From that point on, it was just filler until Django went back and saved his wife for good. We all knew it was going to happen, why waste time like that?

 

[redhawk23]

^ My thoughts exactly shape. There were certain beats Tarantino was trying to hit, and the beats themselves were fine, but the order of the scenes and the durration might have been a bit off. Certain things could have been cut out, shortened or really just folded together.

Spoiler

I really loved the shootout, and I really loved the end scene with Stephen and blowing up candyland, I even understand Django being redeemed in the eyes of his fellow slaves, but those things could have happened together without Django being captured again. The things that happen are great, it just takes a little too long to get there.

 

[jacobed]

^ My thoughts exactly shape. There were certain beats Tarantino was trying to hit, and the beats themselves were fine, but the order of the scenes and the durration might have been a bit off. Certain things could have been cut out, shortened or really just folded together.

Spoiler

I really loved the shootout, and I really loved the end scene with Stephen and blowing up candyland, I even understand Django being redeemed in the eyes of his fellow slaves, but those things could have happened together without Django being captured again. The things that happen are great, it just takes a little too long to get there.

agreed. It seems like the only reason he did that was so he could get a cameo in and man he looks terrible, he gained a lot of weight and someone needs to tell him he's an awful actor

 

[DarthSkywalker]

My big problem is that they were never going to top the shootout and the [BLACKOUT]death of Schultz and Candie[/BLACKOUT]. That is the end of the film. The part in which all momentum ceases and anything after that can't really matter as much. The film is still funny and clever afterwards, but it is an afterthought. It almost becomes lazy fanfiction, a different film in a way. How a fan wanting "justice" would end the film.

Also, Django maybe the main character, but Waltz and DiCaprio are the heart of the film. It is their characters who control the film, bring you in and give the movie its forward momentum. This feels like the second film in a row where that has happened to Tarantino. Where he kind of loses his main character in a very good and very funny supporting cast. The same happened with Basterds and Shosanna.

 

[Brain Damage]

My big problem is that they were never going to top the shootout and the [BLACKOUT]death of Schultz and Candie[/BLACKOUT]. That is the end of the film. The part in which all momentum ceases and anything after that can't really matter as much. The film is still funny and clever afterwards, but it is an afterthought. It almost becomes lazy fanfiction, a different film in a way. How a fan wanting "justice" would end the film.

Also, Django maybe the main character, but Waltz and DiCaprio are the heart of the film. It is their characters who control the film, bring you in and give the movie its forward momentum. This feels like the second film in a row where that has happened to Tarantino. Where he kind of loses his main character in a very good and very funny supporting cast. The same happened with Basterds and Shosanna.

I don't consider Shosanna the protagonist of Basterds. She's certainly a key player, maybe even the most key, but that film is the very definition of an "ensemble piece".

I can see your point about it happening in Django though. But I have a feeling it was always Tarantino's intent to shift the protagonist from Shultz to Django by the end of the film, which I believe he accomplished.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Yeah, especially after his explanation it makes sense. But not only that, I too did believe that

Spoiler

this would be the end of the film. But once he was hanging upside down, I had no idea where the story was gonna go. You think it's gonna end on a shoot 'em up style ending where everything falls into place, but you're taken off guard when you realize... "Oh, ****, there's more to this, now I have no idea what's gonna happen." Django being taken to the plantation just added so much uncertainty and tension to his fate. We all know Tarantino and how he dispenses his characters, even his most likeable ones. I thought Django was gonna bite it.

It made his escape from the Aussies even better and surprising. And the true reward was going after Stephen and more importantly, saving his wife.

 

[S. Grundy]

Also, I'm fairly sure Tom Savini was one of Candy's men.

He was one of the guys with the dogs, he's seemed a bit chunkier than usually. Also, Zoe Bell was in there too. I kept waiting for something to happen with her, but that never came.

 

[DarKush]

The thing is with Tarantino and he's admitted this is he writes as his characters not himself. So he thinks how they would speak not how he would.

So when he's writing black gangsters or any gangsters he writes from their point of view. Not Quinton Tarantino the white director. Spike lee's used the n-word just about as much as tarrantino has in his movies but he feels that him being black makes it okay which is hypocritical when it comes to art. Again quinton is not writing what he would have said but what his characters would.

And for django we have to take off our 2012 perspective goggles. With these characters he's portraying these slavers, who have no respect for their slaves why would they use anything but the worst word/s to call them. If you have a character willing to let dogs rip apart a slave you think he's gonna spare the worst words for them? Quinton could have pulled back on the language but then he could have pulled back on the violence and pretty much everything else that made these guys so despicable.

I think that Tarantino might write what his perception of black gangsters or black people might say, which goes through whatever mental/cultural filters he has regarding black people and black culture. I'm assuming a good chunk of his knowledge of those subjects come from blaxploitation movies. So in a sense Tarantino's black characters are very much his idea of what black people are, and may not be rooted in reality or research.

I don't think we have to take off our 2012 goggles at all. This film was written by a contemporary guy for contemporary audiences. If this film was so historically accurate, why the Tupac music or just about every other song that was not of the time period? What about the usage of the f-word, motherf**ker, or 'aight'. Or Stephen telling Candie that the bounty hunters were "playin'" him. Tarantino used contemporary words when he wanted to do so.

 

[Mr.?]

The biggest laugh for me was:

Spoiler

Right after the scene of the men complaining about not being able to see out the bags, hilarious btw, they cut back to the action of them circling Schultz's caravan and one of them screams "Can't see **** out of this thing!"

made me burst out laughing.

 

[terry78]

The main focus of the film was to show

Spoiler

Django's evolution into a gunslinger hero, so having it end with Schultz and Candie's demise would make no sense. He had been the student all film, now he had to showcase that he was the master.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

I don't consider Shosanna the protagonist of Basterds. She's certainly a key player, maybe even the most key, but that film is the very definition of an "ensemble piece".

I can see your point about it happening in Django though. But I have a feeling it was always Tarantino's intent to shift the protagonist from Shultz to Django by the end of the film, which I believe he accomplished.

I read the Basterds script before ever seeing the film, so perhaps that is why my perception was clouded. But in the script it is most definitely Shosanna's story. Her importance however is cutdown in the film. She is lost amongst many who have no actual emotional arc. She is very much the emotional center of the script and should have been of the film.

 

[Pink Ranger]

I don't think we have to take off our 2012 goggles at all. This film was written by a contemporary guy for contemporary audiences. If this film was so historically accurate, why the Tupac music or just about every other song that was not of the time period? What about the usage of the f-word, motherf**ker, or 'aight'. Or Stephen telling Candie that the bounty hunters were "playin'" him. Tarantino used contemporary words when he wanted to do so.

I saw the movie just yesterday (I liked it, but I feel it is not Oscar-worthy) and kept thinking about the character of Stephen, especially when we meet him the first time at that verbal confrontation in front of the mansion by the horse carriage, and the movie audience's reaction to him.

I think that character is one of Tarantino's "reflect the movie back at the audience" plot devices, like the German audience in IB is supposed to be a refracted mirror image of the audience watching IB itself. Stephen is supposed to be the sum total of every traditional image of "amusing" black characters in American movies: the audience (my audience at least) laughs at his confounded mannerisms at the beginning, his befuddled exchange with his master, basically his entire character at his introduction is a send-up of the nostalgic down-home, earthy black servant that even today mainstream audiences find amusement in without irony.

Then he becomes the tough-talkin post-90s stereotype (basically SLJ himself as a character), which the mainstream audience also finds amusing, ironically or un-ironically.

 

[terry78]

The whole KKK/bag scene was an obvious homage to Mel Brooks/Monty Python, and it definitely worked in the context. At first I felt it was kinda out of place, but Big Daddy himself was a very cartoonish character.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

I love that scene.

And you're right Terry. Ending it with Schultz and Candie wouldn't have been right. I like that it continued with Django, but I admit it after those two characters deaths it could have been stronger. I believe it had to do with the mentor taking out the main antagonist instead of the student.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

The main focus of the film was to show

Spoiler

Django's evolution into a gunslinger hero, so having it end with Schultz and Candie's demise would make no sense. He had been the student all film, now he had to showcase that he was the master.

Which is why I think it is a problem with how it is written (Not simply the scene, but the film), not necessary the idea itself. The weight of the film isn't with Django.

 

[FilmNerdJamie]

My big problem is that they were never going to top the shootout and the [BLACKOUT]death of Schultz and Candie[/BLACKOUT]. That is the end of the film. The part in which all momentum ceases and anything after that can't really matter as much. The film is still funny and clever afterwards, but it is an afterthought. It almost becomes lazy fanfiction, a different film in a way. How a fan wanting "justice" would end the film.

Agreed.

 

[DACrowe]

Yep. I was loving the movie, but the last 20 minutes are just so indulgent to me. There is no tension when Django comes back like there was to the build up of that scene between Schultz and Candie. It just went a little too long at the end.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

The funny thing is, it was so tense when the film faded to black, Django surrounded. I was like "no, that can't be the end". Now I kind of wish it was.

 

[Matt Mortem]

He was one of the guys with the dogs, he's seemed a bit chunkier than usually. Also, Zoe Bell was in there too. I kept waiting for something to happen with her, but that never came.

I kept wondering what Zoe's characters significance was. The camera kept lingering on her when they're riding up to candy land. I thought her character was going to have some prominence later based on how she was initially presented.

 

[terry78]

It would have been like Hitler winning in IG to me. Granted Candie was dead, but Stephen was obviously going to carry on the slavery tradition.