“Apparently shooting a slave owner is only funny to me and
Neil. But if I could I’d do it every week! ‘ Dave Chapelle. In this run of
revenge movies Tarantino has made including Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds, and
now Django Unchained, how can you not have fun at the movies? It’s what movies
are supposed to be, living out childhood fantasies through film. George Lucas
made billions off of it by making the Dark Side all Nazis. The best part of it
is, is that he’s not really playing the villains up just for cinematic purposes
. Most Nazis and slave owners were
unbelievably bad people or at least they became this way once the mentality of
the era took over their daily lives. Jews and Black people weren't really considered
human, so why not burn or beat them to death as if it were a sport. As a kid
watching Roots or one of the two hundred Civil Rights made for tv movies that came
on, I kept thinking to myself that I am way too crazy to let someone beat me or
force to me to drink from another water fountain. I like white women too much
for this lifestyle. They’d have to kill me! “Where the white women at?” Sorry,
I have to say that at least once a day.
So my brother and I
would always imagine crazy scenarios in which we’d break free while of course
killing a few slave owners, field crack whippers (this is where the term crackers
came from), and maybe the house n word on our way out. And I am sure my Jewish
brothers and maybe white people who hate the Japanese did something similar
while growing up. So naturally when these movies came out we all ran to the
theater and left with big grins on our faces.
I would’ve been at
the theater opening night but due to bad weather, I had to wait for the next
afternoon. The movie starts out with a Western song Django by Luis Bacalov to
let you know that what you’re in for is an old school Technicolor Western. The
opening scene involves the purchasing of Django (Jamie Foxx) by Dr Schultz
(Chrstoph Waltz) from two couriers who are not willing to let him go. In a way
only he can, Waltz steals this scene with his mannerisms, voice inflection, and
his general presence. Once he’s been freed, he explains to Django that he hates
this entire idea of slavery but that he will temporarily own him while he helps
him track down three brothers that have a bounty on their head. He also clues
him in to the fact that they will always play the role of characters to help
them infiltrate wherever they need to go to get the job done. This leads to one
of the funnier scenes of the movie where he allows Django to pick out his own
clothes.
Once they track down the three brothers Schultz notices that
Django has a natural talent for killing
people and decides to recruit him for the winter to help him collect bounties. I
should also mention that Don Johnson steals every scene he is in. He plays a
slave owner at the plantation the three brothers happen to be working on.
Anyway, once this job is completed, Schultz learns that Django’s wife had been
taken from him and sold to the evil Calvin Candie who’s own infamous plantation
is known as Candieland. Once he hears the story of his wife’s upbringing an
instant bond is formed between the two and they set off on a journey to get her
back.
Foxx being a proud man who worked hard to reach where he is
now, initially had a hard time playing the role of someone who was at first
submissive, couldn’t read, and a considered sub human until Tarantino sat him
down and explained that the only way he could truly make this movie work was to
put away his Louis Vuitton bag and Range Rover keys and consider the
significance of what was being played out through the script. And once he did
he brought a darkness and anger to the role that I don’t think Will Smith could
have (originally this role was created for him). Plus Big Willy Style would
have sneaked in at least one “Aww hell naw!!” in the movie for no reason at
all. So Foxx is sure to get an Oscar nomination for this role. Leo Dicaprio is
nothing short of amazing as Calvin Candie, and I never say that about Leo. There
is one intense scene between him and Foxx where he is testing out the authenticity
of his and Waltz’s story. It leads to one of the most gruesome death scenes you
will see in a movie. It’s hard to see Leo (who also reportedly had a hard time
playing this role) as evil but he is able to properly do so in a manner where
he rarely scowls or frowns on screen. He instead is smiling and generally happy
for the most part which makes his character all the more creepy. He too
warrants a nomination for Best Supporting actor.
But in the end, the only actor who I believe will actually
win one is Samuel Jackson. He plays the role of Stephen, Candie’s House N word.
If you don’t know the role of this person, they were basically the slave who
forgot that they were black and treated their owner as if they were basically
their father. And they treated the other slaves almost as poorly as the slave owners did.
He destroys this role with both his typical Sam Jackson humor and his Jewels
from Pulp Fiction menacing behavior.
This movie definitely lives up to the hype and I rate it as
kind of TIGHT! The combination of
tarantino’s writing and the actors he cast to bring those words to life makes
this one of his most memorable movies. It’s really funny, intense, depressing,
and exhilarating all at the same time. In his past movies, he would force the N
word in unnecessarily but every time he uses it here (around 500, not joking)
it’s fitting as it sets the tone and the mood of the time period they lived in.
Definitely go see it, if for nothing else to see white people nervously laugh
as they look around for black people who may be sitting around them.
