Whites say it, blacks say it. They use it functionally, as a descriptive term, and contemptuously, in order to degrade. Samuel L. Jackson, as the unctuous and tyrannical Stephen, uses the word with especial vigor as a way of keeping down all the other blacks and ensuring his own predominance. Well, sure it is, but how much of that talk does Tarantino need to make his point? How much of this n-wording is faithful reporting of the way people talked in , or necessary dramatic emphasis, and how much of it is there to titillate and razz the audience?
By the end of the movie, the n-word loses its didactic value as a sign of racism. Schooled in the lively swamps of a California video store, Tarantino has always delighted people with his encyclopedic knowledge of B-movies, his delving into disreputable genres and trolling through the bottom drawers of schlock. The long vistas alternating with super-tight closeups and snap zoom shots render homage to the visual tropes of the Spaghetti Westerns. But what is there to say about any of this referencing except that nodding to old movies is no particular virtue in itself?
What matters is what you do with the movie past. Django turns into a strutting modern dispenser of violence—a Fred Williamson who delivers frolicsome quips before dispensing each victim. Panache above all. The comic hyping of each speech, each emotion, each act becomes wearisome for me at least. The basic mechanism of exploitation is this: some bad person commits repeated atrocities against the innocent.
This sets the grounds for retaliation, because the good persons and their allies have reasons to take revenge. And of course, being a cinephile, Tarantino's cheeky way of having his characters kill off Hitler and his supporters by burning down a theater is a not-so-subtle hint as to the power of media and resistance. Look at the profound effect cinema has on people, especially in the United States; but Tarantino's message in this piece is plainly stated regarding Nazis, as according to Lt.
Aldo Raine: "They need to be dee-stroyed. Almost all Westerns from the golden era of the genre completely ignored or bounced around the topic of slavery, making for a notable absence of a major piece of US History in the "All-American" Western genre. That lack of slaver in cinema is what compelled Tarantino to tackle it in Django Unchained , and not shy away from revealing the plight of the enslaved people and the effect on the freed, the inhumanity of the slavers, and the callousness from people who wave it off.
The film's title even takes its name from the identically-named film Inglorious Basterds though it is not a remake. Macaroni Combat films are also known as "Spaghetti Combat" films because they resemble the famous Spaghetti Western genre.
Once again, the film is not a remake of the Django , but it takes a piece of the title as a nod to the style of filmmaking. Django Unchained might do its job a little too well with its approach because it is not just one of the best Spaghetti Westerns out there, but one of the best Westerns, period.
The soundtrack , cinematography, costumes, and characters are all wholly identifiable and memorable, yet they fall perfectly in line with what audiences have seen before. On the other hand, Tarantino seems to have mashed-up a revenge-driven spaghetti western with slavery. After leaving the movie, I felt off balance, unable to peg the content of the last minutes of my life.
I really wanted to love the movie but what kept nagging at me was the treatment of slavery in the context of badass Tarantino romp. Should I really be laughing at the gaggle of proto-KKK rednecks complaining about the eye-holes in their hoods it was a really a funny scene?
Should I be rooting for a character, Dr. Schultz, who, even though he hates slavery, still bought a human being and owned him for a short period of time?
Ultimately, should Tarantino expect us to have so much fun while watching a movie about the most grotesque chapter in American history, and in doing so does he dishonor the memories of those bound by slavery? Put another way, it's difficult to imagine cheering and laughing along with a buddy cop movie about the Holocaust, or at an improvised mockumentary about the Native American genocide.
We're talking about the unforgivable enslavement and torture -- both physical and psychological torture -- of an entire race of people for the sake of both propping up the southern economy and the socioeconomic status of its entitled gentry. Simply put: slavery was shockingly despicable nearly beyond description and, as such, should it be the centerpiece of a movie with such a cheeky tone? That's the conundrum. However, it's becoming clear to me that Tarantino made something far deeper than a spaghetti western -- or at least deeper than the spaghetti westerns I've seen.
But more than anything else, Tarantino has duped a lot of movie-goers into seeing a film about the monstrous, cancerous true nature of American slavery, and I'd wager that a considerable number of people who saw Django Unchained probably didn't see Spielberg's Amistad or The Color Purple or any other historical drama about slavery, many of which were sanitized for mass appeal. In that respect, I find myself squarely in Tarantino's camp as he faces criticism from various circles.
I understand why he frequently used the word "nigger" in the dialogue. It was historically accurate, after all, and part of the aforementioned brutality of slavery. I also understand the slavery side of his mash-up formula. The first opens on a dusty road on the eve of the Civil War, as the avuncular Dr. Schultz Christoph Waltz claims chain gang slave Django Jamie Foxx by violently disposing of his two owners one of them is James Remar , who crops up later in the second of these three films in a different role.
This subversion continues into a visit to the home of rich folk Big Daddy Don Johnson , who hems and haws upon learning Django is a free man, and therefore deserving of a more elaborate hierarchal treatment from his own slaves.
Schultz employs Django to spot his former slaveowners, wanted criminals according to the legal papers Schultz removes from his dandy coat pocket as if it were bottomless.
Instead, an empowered Django attacks the three savages who caused him pain, and Tarantino allows him, and us, to revel in the moment when he grabs up a whip and lashes out at one of them with merciless vigor.
Establishing Django and Schultz as the meanest bounty hunters of the south, the picture then merges into its second installment. Like the film, characters take the opportunity to play nice, adhering to the social strata of the time, forcing us to give up the more overt subversion of the first film in favor of pure genre immersion. Candyland is a place of sickening violence, as Candie hosts Mandingo brawls that allow for his black slaves to battle to the death.
He is first and foremost a capitalist, of course a point not lost on contemporary audiences, hopefully but one who shows such open disdain towards his slaves that they are acknowledged only as property to be exchanged for cash in transactions. DiCaprio lacks the raw talent to go full ham or full H. Growing up as the scion to a rich family, this is all he knows, and DiCaprio captures this myopia to a stomach-churning degree. The bloodshed is comically messy, with squibs exploding as if they were stored in condoms, thrown by frat boys.
The question remains: what do these movies have to do with each other?
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