![]() Django UnChained is nominated for an Oscar for best picture. Perhaps I don't understand newnoir or anesthetised violence. This movie is just not enjoyable. The characters (even those you should feel empathy with) are violent murderers who justify every killing because the Wanted Poster says, "Dead or Alive." Dr. King Schulz is a dentist who hasn't pracitsed for five years. It's more profitable (and likely faster) to shoot a fugitve, turn in the body and collect the cash. He has lost the trail of the three Brittle brothers when he "happens" upon a pair of slave traders and their "wares" He is looking for someone from the plantation where the Brittle brothers were overseers. He knows they have a bounty on their heads but has no idea what they look like. Enter Django who has been sold from that very plantation because he's a runner. The unlikely pair become friends. Schulz kills the slavers who own Django and then he offers Django his freedom for his help in identifying the Brittles. They find and dispatch the Brittles easily and brutally. Screaming ensues. They are so good together they agree to work the winter as partners. Django will then have earned the money to buy his wife's freedom. She has been sold and since Broomhilde von Schatz is her name and she speaks German, Sculz agrees to help an almost-country woman. The ridiculous plot unravels completely but there are places for a dog pack to rip apart a runaway, more random deaths by shooting and other nastiness. By the end of the movie bodies, blood and body parts flash and splatter across the screen. More agonized screaming as men are gut-shot and testicle shot. That's gotta hurt, right? Django is captured and suspended upside down. He barely escapes with testicles intact. More bodies and shooting at the very end. The violence wasn't anesthetising for me...it was visceral and my evening meal was a lump in my stomach all night. I didn't sleep much. Quentin Tarantino claims that Django is his tribute to sphagetti westerns and that he wants to expose an unsavoury part of American history (Django take place in the deep south, 2 years before the Civil War ). Yet, he has a plot that doesn't hang together, the KKK presented as bozos with pillowcases on their heads they can't see out of, and characters who are literate at a time when very few people could read. Don't waste your money. There must be a better way to expose the evil and travesty of slavery. It was a dark time in the south and the United States but this movie shines no light on the injustices. If you like blood, guts and gore and aren't particular about why they splatter everywhere, see Django. I wish I hadn't |
AuthorYes, I'm of a certain age but I'm pretty spry and like to think still smart enough. Archives
November 2017
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