Django Unchained

I wouldn't take anything like your post as a personal attack. I've got enough of that on the blog site. hehe

In order of your comments:

RE: The delayed release. I think they simply felt it would risk being viewed as insensitive given all the blood and simply took the "smart" path of avoiding the issue entirely. The two week delay didn't hurt it as far as I can tell.

RE: Disjointed. I felt as if scenes didn't flow well together and that his styles change so much that it keeps you from feeling "fluid". It's often as if what you're watching are vignettes and not a single entity. I felt the same way with Inglorious Basterds. Understand I am a fan. I think KB:V1 is a masterpiece. I just suddenly feel like he's turning into the Dennis Miller of movie directing (lots of obscure references as if he wants to show off how much he knows that you don't). Miller does that a lot. Here I think it's not so much to show off but to pay homage. That's fine but tell me up front so I can prepare or have the right expectations.

RE: The blood. I don't feel as if any of the other movies were more gratuitously bloodly. It was comical here. There's the one scene in KB:V1 but not really much else. Reservoir Dogs was more "violent" but it was very much in-character. Here it just felt, to me, like Tarantino was trying to see what the limit is for blood in a movie.

RE: Gone With The Wind. Thanks. That explains it but I still feel it's not "balanced". In GWTW it's done as a title. Here it's done for one location but another location is done differently. Again, that, for me, plays into the "disjointed" feeling.

The rest is pretty obvious. As I said, I really felt that most of my concerns (all of them?) could have been EASILY avoided by simply marketing the movie as an homage to the genre. I'd have then without criticism assuming I simply didn't have the background to really get the connections (which I don't). Instead, none of the previews I saw presented this as anything but a traditional, mainstream movie effort from him and, as expected, I went into it with that mindset.

Just out of curiosity, what would be an example where you thought Tarantino used blood artistically in previous movies?

As I said above, Kill Bill: Volume 1.

I think it was done well in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (the brain matter--where is clearly needed to be there for the entire scene to hit home).

Here it literally was shooting out onto walls, into the air, all over--for literally the sake of it. In KB there was more of it in one scene but it was very much about the ambiance of the scene--the red contrasting with the blue, cold winter scene to follow.

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Regarding Inglorious Basterds, I agree. I think it's a better film than this in many, many ways (and I still think it was just a bit better than average).

Regarding Mississippi, you sold me. See? These discussions do change minds. I can see it now. I'd still suggest that it's pretty obscure and stuff like that can lose people (as this did with me and I'm not exactly a movie noob). However, as noted, at least now it makes sense so thanks for that.

I must say that, somehow, I haven't seen Tarantino interviewed much (if at all) so I've missed his background on this. I only had the previews to go by. As far as Kill Bill, there's a fluidity and cohesiveness to it that doesn't require you to know any/all of the references. It easily stands on its own. Thinking back I can't recall anything in it where I wondered what the point was.

With Inglorious Basterds, one of the things we get that, for me, creates a disconnect is the Stiglitz introduction. He's the first team member we meet (beyond Aldo) and we get this cartoon-like, super-hero presentation. I loved it. I thought, "Cool, we're going to meet everyone this way... It's going to be so slick and this plays off the whole team with a new perspective." Then? Nothing. No one else gets that. Yes, it makes him stand apart but he already did. Not doing it just stuck out like a sore thumb. It'd be like Traffic and its use of color but then if they didn't follow through with it you'd be confused as to what the point was.

Was there really anything in Django Unchained that didn't make sense? I get the Mississippi title was pretty random and obscure, but I wouldn't say that it was confusing if you didn't get the Gone with the Wind reference.

As far as the Stiglitz intro, I completely agree. That was one of the things I didn't like about the movie. Perhaps there were some back stories to all of the characters in the original script and they had to be cut.

All I can say about Django Unchained was that the last act had no business being in the film at all.

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Mubi

Why? It was a spaghetti western. That would have been so anticlimactic if there was no shootout.

There was a shootout, and then Tarantino's self-indulgent onscreen "cameo," and then more shooting, and more bland bada**ery, and then a final shot confirming that this was nothing more than another one of Tarantino's regular revenge flicks, just in the old west this time.

I don't think it is fair to say that the person who spent hundreds of hours writing and directing a movie can't make a short appearance in it.

And I don't understand how someone could not have enjoyed the shootouts and the bada**ery, but to each his own I suppose.

Are you suggesting that Tarantino should've ended the movie after the handshake between Candie and Schultz, or worse yet, before it even came to that? Because the real bloodbath started after that handshake scene. I think that had Tarantino decided to end it that way, the movie would've obviously failed. You can't expect a former slave to go and rescue his slave wife so easily, and it's a western so there has to be plenty of killing and blood.

I have to admit that after watching it for the first time I also found the shootout scenes excessive, and I felt that they were slightly overdone. Then I decided to watch it again after a couple of days and my opinion changed almost completely. Now, not only that I think that the amount of blood used is justified, I also think that each scene is masterfully done. I personally still can't think of anything else that Tarantino could've added/removed, but I'm not saying the movie is flawless and that it's perfect.

I also feel that Inglourious Basterds is sort of more complete, by the way, but I enjoyed Django much more and I personally like it more, because it's way more entertaining. In Inglourious Basterds QT wanted more drama and more suspense. In Django he wanted more action, more gunfights and more blood. Django Unchained is basically Tarantino unleashed.

I don't think there's anything wrong with what Tarantino does with that most of the time. The problem I had here was that it occurred after I had lost interest (the film's trajectory was obvious and bland). It just seemed a little late in the game to make me realize I'm watching a movie.

I think Tarantino is one of our better action directors around. Unlike the spatially and logically impaired action directors of today, for the sake of the argument, we'll call them Christopher Nolans, Tarantino has a much better feel for time and space within action shots. Instead of overly rapid cutting, or events that seem like cut and pasted pieces, like a Nolan, Tarantino's direction makes the events look like part of a whole staged event happening in real time. I feel that I could recreate the Candieland house in my head with his spatial logic, whereas a highway in Gotham city would come out looking like a crop circle.

That being said, the entire last act's scenes come not out of necessity, but out of Tarantino's, and his character's self-indulgence. They're shot well, but with no feeling behind them (partially because the relationship between Django and Broomhilda was never expanded upon/taken mostly for granted, which does make a particular sense when you see his choice in the final shot). I didn't want the neat and tidy, film in a box package, which I got due to Tarantino's necessity for more bloodbaths.

A lot of people die in Eastwood westerns. There's a lot of carnage but it's not ridiculous. The sheer volume of people falling and blood flying in every single, seemingly-endless direction for literally minutes upon minutes just took it from a roller coaster ride to a train off the tracks completely out of control. It lost me entirely there. I was numbed to it after a bit and people in our theater literally got up and walked out at that point (and that's nearly the end!)

The Crazy 88's sequence in Kill Bill is carnage on steroids but somehow it raises to an artistic level. The only word I can think of for this scene in DU is gratuitous. It added nothing to the story. It was just there for people to ooh and ahh over it. For me I say no thanks.

For me, the Crazy 88 sequence is way more brutal than this. In the crazy 88, people get killed in unimaginable ways for pretty much 10 minutes straight. Arms, legs, feet, and heads cut off while blood shoots out, entire bodies sliced in half, faces mangled, an eye snatched out. In Django, it's just globs of blood coming out when someone gets shot.

I think the only thing rougher in Django is the sounds. A lot of screaming and yelling and gruesome noises, whereas Kill Bill had more music and the gruesome sounds were replaced with the sword sounds.

Whilst I loved the film I have to agree with this criticism. Throughout the whole film we knew that the love story was the central element to how the events occurred, but i only really acted as a platform that would allow the characters to interact with each other (Candie, Stephen, Schultz etc.). Once we get to the final act it feels as though the film has already finished and it's just their to complete it, there's no development of Broomhilda at all in the film really.

Excellent use of Whilst, Daniel M.

As a Big fan of Tarantino, I liked the movie. But I felt a little lacking of "meat", And yet lasted three hours, with non justified reason.. "Tarantino twists" was litlle missing to me in the movie.

And I was disappointed that he cut the story line of how Brohmilda arrived to candyland. Still a great movie .. but not even my TOP 4 of Tarantino(However, all those four are masterpieces to me).

Now, spoilers.



I see this film in 3 acts. Act I is Schultz taking Django under his wing and training him to be a bounty hunter and basically "free" him. Act II is them working as a team and us seeing Django and Schultz balance their duo act. Act III is Django's starring role as we see him emerge as the hero he was trained to be.

But Act II is where its apparent that Schultz is now "breaking." It's all over the place in Act II. Even him asking Candie if he may talk to Django, after a mishap, would raise a red flag and Django even scolded him for it. Then Schultz tries to reimburse Candie so the slave won't be ripped apart by dogs. He's breaking even more. The roles of Django and Schultz have now switched as Django is now the one with common sense as Schultz is, simply, losing it. It's obvious the effect of the slave being ripped apart had on him. When Candie is on to them and giving the skull-speech, it is obvious how shaken Schultz is. He is never going to recover from that. When Candie slams the hammer and pretends to smash Hildi, just look at Schultz, he's cowering like a baby.

The next scene is us seeing him fully engulfed in his downfall. He even loses it and tells the harp player to stop playing. This man is gone. Logic escapes him now. He's not the cool-cat he was in the beginning. In many ways, saving Django caused him to bring himself down and ultimately his own life. I see Django as not only a tale of slavery for black people but slavery in general. The whole portion of Act II is Schultz learning what it's like to be in a slave-like world, being paraded around by Candie and having to oblige him and act like everything is fine despite all the torment he witnesses along the way. He's no longer in charge like he was in Act I.



The scene in which Schultz and Django sitting with Kennedy at the table(the best scene in the movie imo), is almost exact recovery of the pub scene in basterds(the best scene in the movie imo.

in Bastards, there is a group of Allied soldiers pretending to be a band of German soldiers, and trying to fool on the SS officer in their table. in django, Schultz and Django trying to pretend to slave traders, and try to fool on candy that sits at the table with them. In both cases, at some point the bad guy discover that the people in front are not who they claim to be. He reveals it in front of them, and threatening them if they do not do as he pleases (in bastards, probably surrender to the Nazis, and in django, give him the money and shake his hand) the results will be devastating to them. In both cases, there is a simpler option. with is surrender.

and In both cases, the good guys choose option that is considered to a suicide, rather than just give up. And this is Tarantino's mythology, a bloody and beautiful end.

I think the reason that Tarantino is suck a great film maker, is beacuse he manages to combine between a smart cinema, and enjoyable cinema, and that is something that is very difficult to do.

i thing it should at least 1 comment.

Hey did you write this on Imdb too? Think I saw this there a couple weeks ago.

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Let's talk some jive.

To me, Tarantino went about this one a bit whimsically as an ode to Spaghetti Westerns. That's cool and I liked it fine, but if he developed Dr. King Schulz's character for another project, that's what I'd really like to see.

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