« Django Unchained », the dream project of Quentin Tarantino

  

First of all, allow me to wish you a Very Happy New Year 2013… Well, ok, it’s February, but it is never too late, isn’t it?

            The beginning of our second semester in Cultural mediation is focused on numeric arts and I realized that we’ve never written an article on cinema on this blog which is a shame because:

1.      Cinema is an art, the last but not the least

2.      It is possible to do the cultural mediation of a movie

3.      Cinema as theatre gives us the opportunity to talk about the work of different artists: the director, the actors, the composer…

I’ve recently seen “Django Unchained” by Quentin Tarantino and I thought that the movie was worth an article on this blog. I will only give you an as-much-as-possible-non-spoiling synopsis of the film and a few historic and cinematographic details to help you understand the film. Finally, you will find a link of a very complete and interesting interview of Quentin Tarantino by a university professor and co-founder of the website specialized in Afro-American culture, Henry Louis Gates Jr.

SYNOPSIS :

The film takes place in the year 1858, in the South of the United-States. A former German dentist now bounty hunter, Dr King Schultz is looking for the murderous Brittle Brothers. The slave, Django, is the only one who can lead him to them as the Brittle Brothers used to be supervisors in the plantation where Django worked. Honing vital hunting skills, Django remains focused on one goal: finding and rescuing Broomhilda, the wife he lost to the slave trade long ago. Django and Schultz's search ultimately leads them to Calvin Candie, the proprietor of "Candyland," an infamous plantation. Exploring the compound under false pretenses, Django and Schultz arouse the suspicion of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie's trusted house slave. --

INTERESTING FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW :

1. 1858: we are two years before the Civil War opposing the Northern States of the Union to the Southern Slave States of the Confederacy that seceded. The causes for this war are numerous and it would be inaccurate to say that it was all due to slavery. However, slavery was one of the major reasons of this conflict. For Northern States, slavery was anti-constitutional and therefore must stop. However, in Southern States which were less industrialized than Northern States and whose economy relied on agriculture, slaves were essential. It was, according to them, a constitutional right to own slaves. This opposition and many others led them to secede from the Union and finally, war erupted after Lincoln won the election in 1860 without being present in the ballot of nine Southern States.

2. Mississipi is a Southern State. The economy of this State relied on cotton that allowed plantation owners to become extremely wealthy and consequently gave them the power to buy more and more slaves. By 1860, the enslaved population numbered 436,631 or 55% of the state's total of 791,305. The planters' dependence on hundreds of thousands of slaves for labor and the severe wealth imbalances among whites, played strong roles both in state politics and in planters' support for secession. Mississipi was the second State to declare secession from the Union on January 1861.

3. The Western Spaghetti: it’s a pejorative name given by American Cinema professionals to Western films realized in Italy. What are the features of a Western Spaghetti?

a.      First of all, it is not a fight between Good represented by the White Cow-boy that conquered the Wild West and the Evil represented by Indians and Mexican bandits. Though Django is a former slave and should help his kin and do the Right thing because you don’t do to others what you didn’t like others did to you, he is not at all like that. At the very beginning of the film, Django says that killing White men for money is a dream job for him and the struggle with his conscience lasts, I would say, 2 minutes !

b.      Violence is everywhere in Western Spaghetti whether it is a duel or a hanging… The problem with “Django unchained” is that we don’t know if the violence comes from Quentin Tarantino (remember Pulp Fiction or Inglorious Basterds?) or from the genre of the film. We will just say that Tarantino has finally found his perfect genre. In “Django Unchained”, you obviously have lots of duels but also scenes of pure violence (SPOILERS: like this poor slave eaten alive by dogs or, and this is just so cool for an actor to do so, Jamie Foxx who blows up Tarantino).

c.      Aesthetically, it is common to find in those films wide camera angles with massive Western landscapes  but also more innovative angles such as the  low angle shots, filming the scene through a window with its frame apparent or through a rope or close-up framing. You will find these three features many times in Tarantino’s film (SPOILERS: there is a scene filmed through a rope, near the beginning of the film)

d.      The soundtrack of course is quite memorable in Western Spaghetti and the first name we think of is Enio Morricone. Enio Morricone takes part in the soundtrack of “Django Unchained” and you always recognize his music. What is striking in the film is that you are expecting a traditional Western Spaghetti, you read “music – Enio Morricone”, ok, and suddenly you have this Rap music, completely out of of the blue but which perfectly fits the moment! This association is astonishing.

e.      Finally the use of flashbacks to help understanding the main character. Tarantino used them to relate the love story between Broomhilda and Django and what led them to be separated.

Finally, I invite you to visit that page which is a very complete interview of Tarantino which focuses on racism and Slavery with some interesting extracts from old films such as The Birth of a Nation by D.W Griffith, one of the most racist films, released in 1915: http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/764530-django-unchained-un-reservoir-d-emotions-postmodernes-a-la-sauce-tarantino.html

ANASTASIA’s POINT OF VIEW :

After having revisited history with World War Two in Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino attacks this time American History and Slavery. Those two movies have much in common: long dialog scenes,  very absurd comical scenes and also tragical scenes. The fact that Quentin Tarantino juggles with very different emotions during almost three hours can be very disconcerting for the spectator, I almost feel uncomfortable - one moment you laugh because of the comic aspect (like the beginnings of the Ku-Klux-Klan and their hoods which make them unable to see anything, or the valet clothes of Django...) and the moment after the tragical situation and the serious context of the action gets the upper hand (like when a slave is eaten alive by a dog...).

The only way to feel less uncomfortable is to look at the « revenge » aspect of those two movies. Quentin Tarantino creates perfect heroes: Django, former slave saved by the kind German Doctor Schultz (the mind-blowing Christopher Waltz again). The « good » are moved by love against the « bad » slaveholders who are only moved by hate, the love story between the two slaves is the common thread in the middle of all this violence.

I would not say this is the best Quentin Tarantino's movie, but if you come see it for the show, you won't be disappointed.

TIFFANY’s POINT OF VIEW :

I am not the ultimate Tarantino’s fan but I must admit that he’s doing pretty good for his last couple of movies. Dealing with history suits him. First with “Inglorious Basterds” and the Nazis and now with “Django Unchained” and slave owners, he relates the History maybe not accurately but violently and honestly.

The scenes of violence you can find in the film (I think I’ve covered my eyes for at least one fourth of the film!) surely happened in these times and showing the violence against Black people was more and more used by abolitionists in the 1850s to appeal to the feelings and mercy of American people and to make them react and finally say “no more”.

You’ll find all the clichés of Western Spaghetti: flashbacks, closing-up framing, duels, violence, and dark sense of humour…. Of course, the success of the movie is not only due to this revisiting of the genre but also to the wonderful cast and I must say that I am pretty fond of Dr King Schultz and his lovely cart…