In which I am a cinéaste
May. 27th, 2013 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
underthewillowsJust watched Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" now that it's for rent online. He gets the look of a 70s spaghetti western spot-on, and the opening credits are pitch-perfect for the mood - I saw a few of these in the cinema back in the 70s so I can tell :-)
Incredibly violent, going up to Itchy and Scratchy levels of mayhem. Also, I see the problem about this being the "Great White Saviour" trope all over again. Plus, there is usually some kind of redemption arc going on in a Tarantino film (hush, no, I'm serious) but the only thing approaching that is for the character of Dr. King Schultz, which - in a film supposed to be about a black protagonist - is problematic again. We know by the timeline that the Civil War is two years down the line, so what Django's part in that or how it will affect him is going to be interesting. I realise that the theme of this film is purely about revenge so yeah.
Anyway! Things at random: Don Johnson's suit. It is gorgeous. I coveted that suit. Leonardo DiCaprio - I can't tell you if he was good, bad or indifferent. I can never judge his performance in any film because he looks the spitting image of my youngest brother (save for eye colour and being fairer in skin and hair tones usually) and you would not believe how distracting it is trying to watch an actor when in every scene where he appears, your brain is telling you "That's *name of baby brother*!"
Kind of hoping for a Director's Cut or Extended Edition because there are definitely a lot more stories in this film than we got to see, e.g. the woman tracker on the Candyland estate with the bandana and the prostitute(?) with the crutch in the first town Django and Schultz rode into and what is the story behind Brünnhilde having a rosary beads wrapped around her wrist when she is being flogged? Particularly as the man doing the flogging has pages of the Bible pinned all over him, carries a Bible, and seems to rev himself up for flogging slaves by reciting verses from it? A Protestant-Catholic dichotomy, or Tarantino just wholesale copying and recreating scenes down to the least detail from the aforementioned spaghetti westerns without caring about what may appear to be the meaning?
Would I recommend it? With caveats - you would want to be in the mood to watch it, don't expect a great movie (it's good, but it's not great), but if you want to see a spaghetti western remade with the bloodshed ramped up to eleven, then this is the film for you!
Incredibly violent, going up to Itchy and Scratchy levels of mayhem. Also, I see the problem about this being the "Great White Saviour" trope all over again. Plus, there is usually some kind of redemption arc going on in a Tarantino film (hush, no, I'm serious) but the only thing approaching that is for the character of Dr. King Schultz, which - in a film supposed to be about a black protagonist - is problematic again. We know by the timeline that the Civil War is two years down the line, so what Django's part in that or how it will affect him is going to be interesting. I realise that the theme of this film is purely about revenge so yeah.
Anyway! Things at random: Don Johnson's suit. It is gorgeous. I coveted that suit. Leonardo DiCaprio - I can't tell you if he was good, bad or indifferent. I can never judge his performance in any film because he looks the spitting image of my youngest brother (save for eye colour and being fairer in skin and hair tones usually) and you would not believe how distracting it is trying to watch an actor when in every scene where he appears, your brain is telling you "That's *name of baby brother*!"
Kind of hoping for a Director's Cut or Extended Edition because there are definitely a lot more stories in this film than we got to see, e.g. the woman tracker on the Candyland estate with the bandana and the prostitute(?) with the crutch in the first town Django and Schultz rode into and what is the story behind Brünnhilde having a rosary beads wrapped around her wrist when she is being flogged? Particularly as the man doing the flogging has pages of the Bible pinned all over him, carries a Bible, and seems to rev himself up for flogging slaves by reciting verses from it? A Protestant-Catholic dichotomy, or Tarantino just wholesale copying and recreating scenes down to the least detail from the aforementioned spaghetti westerns without caring about what may appear to be the meaning?
Would I recommend it? With caveats - you would want to be in the mood to watch it, don't expect a great movie (it's good, but it's not great), but if you want to see a spaghetti western remade with the bloodshed ramped up to eleven, then this is the film for you!
