Django Unchained

Started by MacGuffin, March 27, 2011, 10:14:40 PM

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Cloudy

This is an amazing interview. Samuel L. Jackson DP/30 Django


matt35mm

I thought this movie was OKAY, in the sense that there are several parts of the movie that are entertaining. That's about all I can really say for the movie, though.

I have mixed feelings about what it's doing in its portrayal of slavery, but the Sam Jackson character turns that mixed feeling into a strength by deliberately complicating it. That said, I think that Spike Lee is right about it being disrespectful. That's not a giant problem except for when lip service is being paid to being respectful. It also does that thing of making every white character (except for DiCaprio's character) a total buffoon, which is too easy and makes them nothing but white bags of blood to shoot down, and there's not much satisfaction it in. It's just a series of "Hoo, that white guy's head blew up real good!"

Anyway, worth watching, but at the end of the day, it's my least favorite Tarantino movie. It is very similar to INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS in spirit, shape, and themes, but it's sloppier. Pacing's weird. Characters less defined. Humor less sharp.

Like I said, it's an okay movie, but I'm certainly hoping that Tarantino does something very different after this, because I think he's tapped this revenge flick well for all it's gonna give him.

jenkins

Spoiler time,

I'd like to hear you expand your thoughts about Jackson's character and how he's a strengthening complexity, like what aspect of him strikes you harder than Mandingo fighters and black slavers. Just like what you're thinking.

Edit -- where I'm coming from, where my thoughts are: I wish there was a character to add another point of contact or to somehow enlarge this world, which is a horrible and small world. He's terrible, his situation is terrible, his response is terrible, but all that's terrible about him is in his world. These are my initial thoughts about him.

matt35mm

SPOILERS I GUESS

I don't see how the Mandingo element complicates anything. It's just more of white people being bad to black people. The thing that's complicated about Sam Jackson's character (Stephen) is that he's a black person being bad to black people out of loyalty to the white person. The movie shows all the other black people as feeling deeply wronged by slavery--give any of them a gun and they wouldn't hesitate to kill whitey. Give Stephen a gun and he'll kill the black folks to protect whitey. He buys into the idea of the natural right for white people to own black people.

What you said is another aspect of his character that is complicated. Are his actions against Django totally his fault, or is it simply due to having been born into a world where slavery is the norm? Within that world, Sam Jackson is actually doing pretty well. He gets to the boss of the other slaves, and even gets to pal around and get emotionally close to Candie. His motivations are understandable, and in a sense, pure, but that's all the worse because he is merely believing what he's been told all his life. He truly believes that he is a lower form of the species than white people, despite his great intelligence (the only one to figure out Django's plan). Candie is an idiot by comparison.

And yet, while many audience members will straight up root against Stephen, that's hard to justify because he is a tragic figure. His life has been demeaning. Candie asks why the black people don't just rise up and kill the white people--Stephen is an example of why. He took care of Candie. He loved Candie. He believed that people like Candie possessed the natural right to be the master. That's very complicated and very tragic. Rising up and killing the whites is an easy modern answer, and indeed the movie gives this easy answer through Django, a super-modern and supernaturally-capable character dropped into this old world to deliver justice.

Stephen is also an example of the insidiousness of authority, because he has some. How do you maintain a whole institution of slavery? Give some of the black people a little bit of power over the others. Now they've got a sense of righteousness and a taste of power, and this simple notion of white people v.s. black people is complicated. The final "battle" of the movie is Django v.s. Stephen, two victims of slavery. That's more complicated than Django v.s. Candie. I can't say that the movie handles it in a terribly interesting way, though, and maybe it didn't need to.

So I say that Stephen's character strengthens the film because there's nothing else worth talking about in the movie, but I obviously could write some things to say about Stephen, the only complicated, layered character in the whole movie. Everyone else is just a mouthpiece for clever dialogue, which is fine because the dialogue is clever.

pete

Quote from: Freddie on December 22, 2012, 06:01:59 PM
Just like I'm not gonna see his "remake" of OLD BOY...   Talk about being disrespectful.

not sure if you're being tongue in cheek, but I do appreciate the comparison between slavery and the remake of an ok movie.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

jenkins


Kellen

Just got out of the theater here are some random thoughts (spoilers obviously):

This lands somewhere in the middle of Tarantino's filmography for me.  On one hand I thought there were some really brilliant moments in here the taxi driver-ish shoot out at candy land. The brittle brother being shot off the horse with the blood splattering onto the cotton field was cool. DiCaprio's scene with the skull and hammer was good.  Some of the stuff I didn't like:  The scene with the eye holes on the masks felt like to took forever and was almost a some kind of cheap knock off of the Reservoir Dogs scene when they're arguing over why someone was named Mr. Pink. The only other Tarantino cameos/roles I liked were Pulp Fiction and His stint as Richie Gecko in From Dusk till Dawn this one was terrible, Waltz was good but he's almost doing the exact mannerisms/acting job that he did in Inglorious Basterds.  The soundtrack was pretty much hit and miss for me. Also, I don't know why but I felt right after the huge shoot out at the plantation that the film started to drag on a bit.

Brando

SPOILERS


The people in the theater loved the film, thought it was hilarious and a few even clapped when the credits started rolling.  That makes me wonder if this might end up being Tarantino's biggest blockbuster.  I've never seen a Tarantino film where the entire theater was enthralled from beginning to end.

I thought it was very funny, good but way too long.  I imagine the film could be cut down a lot and be better. I read the script and know he cut out a lot but it still dragged. I did become uncomfortable in a couple of spots.  The mandingo fight in the Cleopatra club and the dog scene.  They were a different kind of violence from the rest of the film. The violence in the rest of the film is over the top and revenge amusement.  Those two scenes were too real and made you remember the true horrors of slavery.  Inglorious Basterds completely ignored concentration camps and the holocaust cause of that reason. I would place it in the middle of his filmography. I'm no where the Tarantino fan I was six years ago.  I would have been going crazy when I heard Tarantino was making a western. I think my expectations now was perfect Django.



If you think this is going to have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.

Kellen

Quote from: Brando on December 26, 2012, 08:20:46 PM
SPOILERS


The people in the theater loved the film, thought it was hilarious and a few even clapped when the credits started rolling.  That makes me wonder if this might end up being Tarantino's biggest blockbuster.  I've never seen a Tarantino film where the entire theater was enthralled from beginning to end.

I thought it was very funny, good but way too long.  I imagine the film could be cut down a lot and be better. I read the script and know he cut out a lot but it still dragged. I did become uncomfortable in a couple of spots.  The mandingo fight in the Cleopatra club and the dog scene.  They were a different kind of violence from the rest of the film. The violence in the rest of the film is over the top and revenge amusement.  Those two scenes were too real and made you remember the true horrors of slavery.  Inglorious Basterds completely ignored concentration camps and the holocaust cause of that reason. I would place it in the middle of his filmography. I'm no where the Tarantino fan I was six years ago.  I would have been going crazy when I heard Tarantino was making a western. I think my expectations now was perfect Django.


People in my theater were into the Mandingo fight scene, and Leo cheering em on, Some even clapped when the one slave broke the others arm.  The scene with the dog pretty much shocked most of the audience here though -- the room felt uncomfortable during that moment which is telling because everyone was into all the other scenes.   I agree with you about the film maybe being trimmed down a tad.

Did anyone have walkouts during their showing?  A group of four people left right after the scene in which Jamie Foxx is captured and upside down in the shed. 

Kellen


Frederico Fellini

We fought against the day and we won... WE WON.

Cinema is something you do for a billion years... or not at all.

Neil

SPOILS

Things I liked.

I enjoyed the few jabs that were made with regards to those who are social slaves and not necessarily legal slaves.  For Instance Candie's lawyer, and "Moonlight." Django makes it clear that both of their lives parallel those who are legally enslaved, not treated as harshly, but their socially enslaved, just like their beliefs.

I enjoyed the Phrenology scene.  it is great in showing that the argument of blacks being inferior, specifically to Europeans is based on complete bullshit.  I loved how you can just sit and watch a villain and know their entire perspective is based on nonsense.  Neat touch, he should've done more things like this.

I'm not sure how much complexity is added to the film with Stephen, but I enjoyed that he was the true enemy of Django in the end.  It seemed to me that Stephen was threatened because he was the, "1 N***** out of 9,999" until Django stepped in. 

Personally, I thought the bag head scene was great, and I actually thought I heard QT talking there, but then that Aussie bullshit happened.

Not sure about the rick ross song. Just seemed bizarre. not out of place, but wasn't expecting it.

I will say that there is more importance to the dog scene than the last few folks are letting on.  To argue it's too graphic is something not worth addressing in my opinion, no offense.

Like most of the film, that scene is paralleling the German myth that Django is undertaking.  As you can see Dr. Schultz can't handle the stuff that Django is bearing and any respectable man, certainly one who's been in that position wouldn't be as cold as Django was. The mountain to Candie land is very tall. You could argue that he is desensitized to it, but I'm not sure there is such thing as being desensitized to something of that magnitude and nature.  django deserves redemption.

I enjoyed the fact that when Candie found out that he was being played for a fool, that didn't start the shoot-out-pay-off.  I felt as if that was to be expected, it was great in building tension. I also liked the anti climactic death of Schultz and subtle nature of Candie's death. It was suspenseful, but not because you knew Schultz was trying to pull something, it actually felt like Candie was up to something. Really well done.


The movie has its problems but my brain tended to focus more on the things I enjoyed. 
more if i see it again.
it's not the wrench, it's the plumber.

Cloudy

That was a lot of fun! Seriously entertaining film. It'll probably be my least favorite of Tarantino's good films (RD, PF, JB, IB), but everything's relative.
I personally agree with those two scenes, they were out of context. They kind of reminded me of that scene in Boogie Nights PTA talks about in commentary where the test-crowd was laughing during a scene he thought they should've been horrified by. I shut the hell up during those scenes, but then I hear a crowd of people in the audience rooting on this horrifying slavery violence. I don't think QT showed the right kind of respect in a movie like this.

SPOILERS





Nice bit of trivia about Leo's hand bleeding:
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/2013-golden-globes/leonardo-dicaprio-real-blood-django-unchained-scene-201237591.html

RegularKarate

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie, but I'm pretty torn. I definitely need to see it again (fuck, I wish it were showing in 35MM here).

I don't think this is a revenge movie. I think this is a story about a man in love who will stop at nothing to get his wife back. He just happens to get some revenge along the way.

I actually think it could have been longer. I felt like there was a lot more in there wanting to burst out. Changing editors really hurt this one.

Reel

spoils

I loved it. Just like with The Master I was laughing my ass off the first time, the whipping scene by Django had me dying and I think Schultz picking off the last Brittle brother trying to get away on the horse was my favorite moment. I went into a later show to watch the Phrenology scene onward and it was interesting to gage the crowds reaction. People were dead silent in that scene, and once Django's wrath takes over everybody's guard went down because they were finally getting to see the carnage they'd expected after 2 whole hours. The loudest and longest laugh it got in that screening was the first dick shooting, because I was watching this movie with children ( yes, there were goo goo, ga ga's at this show. HOW DO YOU BRING A KID TO THIS FUCKING MOVIE?!?! ) I feel like that got such a huge reaction that when Django shoots Billy Crash in his dick it didn't have the same impact, there shoulda just been one dick shooting. I will see this as many chances I can get and share my thoughts on how it works overall as a movie then.

Few things:

1. Reading the script is what got me the most excited for this, but I really wished I didn't now. Totally killed the element of surprise for me. If I hadn't read it, I'm sure I'd be raving a lot more about this. That's a bad habit of mine and I'm not gonna read scripts anymore before I see the movie unless it's one of your guys'.

2. I didn't get to see Jonah Hill's fatass get killed.

3.
Quote from: Neil on December 27, 2012, 12:06:31 AM
Personally, I thought the bag head scene was great, and I actually thought I heard QT talking there,
Yep. That was him. In the Charlie Rose interview above your post, he confirms that he made TWO cameo appearances.

4.
Quote from: Cloudy on December 27, 2012, 04:54:58 AM
Nice bit of trivia about Leo's hand bleeding:
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/2013-golden-globes/leonardo-dicaprio-real-blood-django-unchained-scene-201237591.html
"As his hand bled quite visibly, DiCaprio kept going, even using the hand as a new dramatic prop. At one point he smears his bloodied hand over Broomhilda's face in an act of evil dominance. And Broomhilda (Washington) looks horrified as he does it. (Perhaps Washington wasn't acting!) And that was the take that director Quentin Tarantino kept in the film."

Come on, dude. How about a warning? Or QT, how about you cut and cover his hand with fake blood before he does that? Hope those test results come back negative, Kerry.

5.
Quote from: Kellen on December 26, 2012, 08:40:23 PM
People in my theater were into the Mandingo fight scene, and Leo cheering em on, Some even clapped when the one slave broke the others arm.
Glad to see that racism is alive and well in America ( I'M KIDDING OF COURSE! ) Seriously though, what part of the south are you from?