Django Unchained

I didn't like the over the top last gun fighting scenes...but I loved the movie otherwise. I thought it had far more depth than Deathproof, and the first part of Kill Bill.
I love Tarantino as much as anybody, but one weakness I thought his movies have had, is that "disconnected" feel with the characters- For example- In Pulp Fiction, almost everyone is a sociopath, lol. They SEEM to have emotions, but then they really don't. Same thing in most of his characters. Jackie Brown actually had the most "emotion"...but that was an Elmore Leonard story.
I thought Django actually had some emotion and depth- I think it's in my top 4 QT films now.
 
This pretty closely sums up my take as well. Particularly (spoiler alert) the inexplicably suicidal choice by King Schultz (same problem for me as in the Walken/Hopper-suicidal "Sicilian" scene in True Romance). Agreed also that it was too long, too gratuitously gory, and not among QT's best efforts. But I did enjoy it, and it did feature enough of QT's genius to satisfy me overall. And while too long, it was rarely boring. So my saying it's one of my least favorite QT films is like saying "that's one of the worst Ferraris I've ever driven"... : )

A Messenger said:
After seeing the movie last night I'm surprised the only criticism the movie seems to be receiving is regarding it's language and violence. To me the movie seemed to be overly long, poorly paced, with a flimsy plot, and with key characters that act outside of their nature to serve the plot. The style of the movie seems to act as a smoke screen hiding the sub par story at hand. It think this is QT's worst film so far (and I've liked all the others he's made).

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I thought the story was moving along very nicely up until the point that Candie was introduced and the main characters posed as potential buyers for Candie's fighting slaves. They make their way out to the house and eventually the ruse falls apart and yet they still get to buy Django's wife and leave unharmed. Looking back at this section I remember very few laughs and a bit of tension build up that ultimately goes nowhere - this is after spending an hour in travel to the house. The fact that they were ultimately able to buy the wife back for a price (that appeared) so easy for them to pay and with no ramifications seems to undermine the entire ultimate fighting plot - I'm not sure anyone gets to edit QT's screenplays these days - 3hr movie with a 1hr asside that ultimately doesn't pay off is not good.

So, after the wife is returned to Django and they are free to go the Doctor (who we have seen throughout the movie is very clever) inexplicably decides to pull a kamikazi move by killing Candie while a gun is pointed at an unarmed Django. To be fair the movie makes an attempt to show that the Doctor has been scarred by the events he's witnessed at the plantation but to me this seemed pretty weak. It would have seemed much more plausible that they would have left with the wife and then, if the Doctor was set on killing Candie, they would have set up more favor conditions for themselves (both being armed and not being held at gunpoint). To me the sign of a poorly written story is one where characters are forced to behave in unreasonable ways in order to break a log jam in the plot - Django illustrates this problem perfectly.

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I find disappointment in the fact that he had the chance to open a real discussion on a dark period in American history but couldn't resist turning it into another juvenile comic book movie.

The 1st two acts feel as though he's headed in that direction, but the last act succumbs to school boy wish-fulfillment fantasy, a la "Inglorious Basterds".

BTW, I also feel like Rob Richardson brings a lot to the tabel but there's an old adage that when you have a lot going on with the characters (dialogue, plot development, etc), you don't need a lot going on everywhere else (cinematography, editing, sound design...)

Just my ¢.02
 
bill totolo said:
...there's an old adage that when you have a lot going on with the characters (dialogue, plot development, etc), you don't need a lot going on everywhere else (cinematography, editing, sound design...)

Just my ¢.02
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But it can't hurt if it's also great, right? "Enemy Of The State" comes to mind...
 
The last act was a bit over the top, but it didn't take away anything for me. It didn't reduce how seriously the subject matter was taken - I thought it was a great mesh and really showed Tarantino's style.

Loved it from beginning to end and thought it was well paced. Yes, lots of movies are unnecessarily long these days (what movie is under 2hrs at the box office right now?)...I don't think the same of this one.

Kegan
 
I can definitely see how some take the violence as gratuitous, I'm still unsure as to how I feel about it.

It was definitely over the top at the end, almost comic book like as some have said, but for me a lot of it is to show contrast from the earlier violence (the slave fighting, the dog)

These different types/flavors of violence showed a more complex dynamic and truly made the violent actions against slaves seem all the more terrible/evil.

I'm still not sure how I feel about it, I would like it see it again
 
bill totolo said:
I find disappointment in the fact that he had the chance to open a real discussion on a dark period in American history but couldn't resist turning it into another juvenile comic book movie.

The 1st two acts feel as though he's headed in that direction, but the last act succumbs to school boy wish-fulfillment fantasy, a la "Inglorious Basterds".
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Why would you want to turn EVERYTHING into a docudrama? If someone wants to open dialog and make political statements, let them have at it. Spike Lee can give it a try if he thinks he can do better.

I'm sick of real discussions about serious issues. Give me fantasy!
 
Gillvane said:
Why would you want to turn EVERYTHING into a docudrama? If someone wants to open dialog and make political statements, let them have at it. Spike Lee can give it a try if he thinks he can do better.

I'm sick of real discussions about serious issues. Give me fantasy!
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But he sold it as though he were trying to open a dialogue in the interviews I viewed.
I'm not saying he should have gone the Spike Lee route, that's too "on the nose" for most people's taste.

What would have been surreptitious is if he could have traveled a little in Kubrick's shoes. Take, for instance, "The Shining".
For anyone who doesn't know, there's a deep current of cynicism in the movie criticizing America's role in one of the least discussed genocides in the modern world.

Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbLB21If2YA

Link to Rudyard Kipling reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden
 
bill totolo said:
But he sold it as though he were trying to open a dialogue in the interviews I viewed.
I'm not saying he should have gone the Spike Lee route, that's too "on the nose" for most people's taste.

What would have been surreptitious is if he could have traveled a little in Kubrick's shoes. Take, for instance, "The Shining".
For anyone who doesn't know, there's a deep current of cynicism in the movie criticizing America's role in one of the least discussed genocides in the modern world.

Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbLB21If2YA

Link to Rudyard Kipling reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden
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Yes, really deep. So deep it's not really there.
 
I agree with Bill Totolo that Tarantino sort of lost it in act 3, particularly in terms of character. Up until then, for the most part, Schultz was methodical and constructive (if a bit cold-blooded), and Django was evolving nicely into his freedom, with admirable restraint. All of that (IMO) went, substantially inexplicably, over the transom in act 3...
 
With Kubrick you know there is a ton of unexplained meaning behind everything he presents, and it's so complex and abstract that it makes it easy to read into it whatever you want. I love that about his work. Everyone leaves the movie with the memory of something different.
 
Ted Spencer said:
I agree with Bill Totolo that Tarantino sort of lost it in act 3, particularly in terms of character. Up until then, for the most part, Schultz was methodical and constructive (if a bit cold-blooded), and Django was evolving nicely into his freedom, with admirable restraint. All of that (IMO) went, substantially inexplicably, over the transom in act 3...
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I can see your argument that Schultz would not have killed Candie; that he would have just bit his tongue and shook hands, then left with what he came for, the girl.

However, Schultz did blow up all those KKK members when he really didn't have to, and was going to shoot Big Daddy (Don Johnson) for no real reason other than he was getting away. Heck, the movie opens with Shultz killing a slaver in cold blood just because he wants Django, then telling the slaves to kill the other one that's trapped under his dead horse. I think Schultz has a well established pattern of killing people he doesn't like so it's not really out of character when he kills Candie. In fact it seems just like the opening scene where Schultz first makes his case logically and politely, then resorts to killing someone that doesn't see things his way.


As for Django, well, they almost cut off his balls. I can see how someone might lose their restraint after that.
 
Ted Spencer said:
I agree with Bill Totolo that Tarantino sort of lost it in act 3, particularly in terms of character. Up until then, for the most part, Schultz was methodical and constructive (if a bit cold-blooded), and Django was evolving nicely into his freedom, with admirable restraint. All of that (IMO) went, substantially inexplicably, over the transom in act 3...
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The more I think about it Ted, a movie that did pull off something a bit more archetypal, and metaphorical, was "There Will Be Blood".
Each character stood in for an American idealism, and the final act DID resolve in a logical, irrevocable truth. That movie served as a thesis that was successfully proven by P.T. Anderson, whereas, I think, Quentin lost the narrative. If he kept it smaller, limited the climax to Candie vs. Django, then I think he'd be an Oscar contender. There you would have two opposing values combating one another, and "Lincoln" showed that was a difficult battle.
 
Gillvane said:
I can see your argument that Schultz would not have killed Candie; that he would have just bit his tongue and shook hands, then left with what he came for, the girl.

However, Schultz did blow up all those KKK members when he really didn't have to, and was going to shoot Big Daddy (Don Johnson) for no real reason other than he was getting away. Heck, the movie opens with Shultz killing a slaver in cold blood just because he wants Django, then telling the slaves to kill the other one that's trapped under his dead horse. I think Schultz has a well established pattern of killing people he doesn't like so it's not really out of character when he kills Candie. In fact it seems just like the opening scene where Schultz first makes his case logically and politely, then resorts to killing someone that doesn't see things his way.
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My problem is that Shultz's character is easily smart enough to know that shooting Candie would be immediately suicidal. That choice seemed completely out of character to me.

As for Django, well, they almost cut off his balls. I can see how someone might lose their restraint after that.
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One could theorize that things as bad or worse "almost" happened during his slavery. In act 3 he goes from (relatively) dignified restraint to over the top revenge-maniacism in pretty much the blink of an eye. If QT had included some specific craze-inducing incident/situation that caused such an extreme and sudden split (sufficiently out of context with Django's presumed abuse-history), then maybe I'd have bought it. As it was, it seemed undermotivated, taking me out of Django's imagined world...and into QT's...

My $.02
 
Anybody here think QT borrowed a few elements of Garth Ennis' Preacher? Might be a bit of a stretch but, for example, Kerry Wash being thrown in the pit (coffin in Preacher), Django rushing back to the house slaughtering everyone and burning it down to save his lady. I dunno. Kind of reminded me of the comic is all.
 
Interesting to see some of the criticisms here of the films tonal and character "inconsistencies".

Light and shadow, man, that's what makes Tarantino Tarantino in my book. His movies run the gamut from being hyperreal in a way that most other directors aren't able to achieve to being intimately realistic in a way that most other directors could never achieve. All in the same movie.

As far as the climactic gunfight, I found the sudden burst of action after such a prolonged but intense slow burn very cathartic, personally.
 
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