Django Unchained
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Walton Goggins, James Remar, Amber Tamblyn, Bruce Dern, Zoe Bell, Don Johnson, Jonah Hill, Franco Nero, Quentin Tarantino
Plot:
Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) is a bounty hunter who’s looking for a trio of brothers that he can’t identify. But he knows that the recently sold slave Django (Jamie Foxx) can. So he goes after Django and frees him in return for his help with the bounty hunting. Django agrees and the two of them start working very well together. But Django really wants to get his wife (Kerry Washington) back who has been sold separately. So he and Schultz hatch a plan how to get her out of the clutches of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Django Unchained was pretty damn great. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun, had a great cast, beautiful cinematography and, as usual for Tarantino movies, an amazing soundtrack.
I think that the most outstanding thing about this film was how much fun the actors seemed to have with their characters. I mean, with those kind of characters, who wouldn’t? But it still made for an incredible atmosphere and really great performances. Christoph Waltz gets nominated for everything anyway and Leonardo DiCaprio not getting nominated is already its own meme. But let me also take a moment to say that Jamie Foxx was the epitome of cool (while still maintaining a sense of humor) and Samuel L. Jackson was brilliantly insane in his role. We should be talking more about them.
A cast having so much fun with the ir characters would already be enough on its own to make me enjoy the film. But it also looks really great and, as I said, the soundtrack is amazing. First of all, there’s this song with which I fell in love immediately. But there are also several delicious moments where the soundtrack fits and doesn’t fit at all at the same time. Like the badass Hip Hop song that is playing while we see a caravan of horses and wagons moving along.
But the movie does have its faults, too. Tarantino might have overdone it with the whole nigger-thing. That word is thrown around like nobody’s business and at least in the audience I was in, that was taken as an excuse to laugh heartily at all kinds of offensive jokes. Jokes that were probably told that way during that time, but should not be seen as funny today.
And I just wanted Hildy to have a little more agency. It gets better towards the end, but basically she just gets pushed around until Django frees her and then she just takes on his agency. And she doesn’t even have enough self-control as to not risk Django’s plan. But at least she doesn’t get raped. (In fact, I have to applaud Tarantino that he managed to make an entire film about slavery and violence and not include a single rape scene. Not because that didn’t happen but because there are so many forms of violence and rape nowadays gets overdone anyway and often in a titillating fashion.)
But other than that, the movie was a whole damn lot of fun and I did enjoy it.
Summarising: fun, fun, fun.
kalafudra's Stuff 
on the “n-word”
I think it was a stupid audience and not Tarantino’s fault in this case :)
I’m not a fan of using the phrase “n-word”. I do think it should be absolutely taboo to call a person a nigger, but if you’re discussing the word and the use of the word, you have to be able to use it. But that just on a sidenote.
I do think that it was authentic for Tarantino to use the word as much as he did, both as a filmmaker (when you consider his career) and within the context of his film. But the thing is, I don’t think I attended the film with an exceptional audience and if the audience I saw it with basically has the option to straight-out laugh at black people being called niggers and at the racist jokes levelled at slaves, something is off. And yes, it is obviously the attitudes of the people in the audience foremost, but I think it’s also fair to criticise the film for leaving that option open.
[Much like Foucault was criticised for making it possible for fascits to interpret his work their way, even if that was not his intention of point of view.]
And I’m not saying that Tarantino shouldn’t have used the word. I think that he should have shoved people’s face more into the fact that they might find this funny and what the hell is wrong with them. [How he could have done this exactly, I admit I don’t know.]
I like your review. And Jamie Foxx is hot.
And I’ve always been Leonardo Di Caprio’s fan.
Your comment about “the N-word” is very intelligent. (Do you know that always when I think how intelligent you are and how systematically you can approach things I think of you as “Someone who’d make such a good lawyer”? :D)
PS: And I wanted to give you a call yesterday as Carinthia now has a red-green majority. Just so that you know how cool and civilized we really are.
Jamie Foxx is very hot. And Leonardo DiCaprio is getting hotter every day. Both are very talented and absolutely great in this film.
And thanks for the compliments! Maybe I’ll make lawyer my fourth career or so. ;)
Regarding Carinthia: I saw a tweet yesterday (I don’t remember who wrote it) with “Kärnten ist frei!” I thought that was very accurate.
In any case: congratulations! ;)
Hotness: Yawp.
Carinthia: Thx. We had a good time making it happen (my part = small, but still, I got to see it all close and that was cool). :)
Compliment: I mean it. Of course I know you will not be a lawyer.It’s just like you watch a child playing soccer and think “She would make a great dancer, too”… or like you see JRupert Everett and think “Oh, he should so marry me”.
You know it’s not gonna happen, but you think she/he would make hell of a good figure.
Well, by now I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to my career and maybe the Law will manage to woo me with candlelight dinners and super-thoughtful presents and then I will suddenly find that I actually like it and that maybe we should be more than just acquaintances.
The Law as your suitor
This a) makes complete sense to me.
And b) involves two meanings of suitor.
I love it.
And I’m going to draw it.
I’m very much looking forward to that drawing. :D
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