Analysis of Django Unchained
Review of Django Unchained
Warning: may contain spoilers…
I am a Tarantino fan, with a love of spaghetti western,s and so had high expectations for this latest creation. I was worried however about the horror of the subject matter and by the time we were in our cinema seats I realised I was actually rather anxious about how violent the movie would be – it has been a while since I saw something like this on the big screen.
In the end I only had to shield my view during two scenes (the dog attack and the Mandingo fight) and I thoroughly enjoyed pretty much every other moment of the film (which ran to nearly three hours). It would have been hard to see where this time could have been cut down. The director makes every moment of the film work hard. There were some rumblings about this production suffering, as it is the first of QT’s feature films not edited by Sally Menke, but I found it to be very impressive and certainly on a par with Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds (which I adored).
There is masses of laugh-out-loud humour and Christopher Waltz’s character is so charming that it makes for an easy watch. Jamie Foxx takes a while to grown into his part but this may have been deliberate as it builds to a fantastic climax and leaves the viewer feeling exhilarated and satisfied with the turn of events. It is visually gorgeous but without the cinematography distracting from the story development.
I was relieved to find Tarantino does not exploit the potential violence of slavery – to me it seemed he showed just enough to convey the atrocities and injustices but without ever wallowing in it. Even the excessive use of the N-word was not as troubling as I had feared – it just serves to illustrate how commonplace and ludicrous it was in that era.
My only real criticism would be the weakness of the female characters – they were mostly inconsequential, including the mysterious woman tracker with her face covered by a bandanna. I also thought the
Warning: may contain spoilers…
I am a Tarantino fan, with a love of spaghetti western,s and so had high expectations for this latest creation. I was worried however about the horror of the subject matter and by the time we were in our cinema seats I realised I was actually rather anxious about how violent the movie would be – it has been a while since I saw something like this on the big screen.
In the end I only had to shield my view during two scenes (the dog attack and the Mandingo fight) and I thoroughly enjoyed pretty much every other moment of the film (which ran to nearly three hours). It would have been hard to see where this time could have been cut down. The director makes every moment of the film work hard. There were some rumblings about this production suffering, as it is the first of QT’s feature films not edited by Sally Menke, but I found it to be very impressive and certainly on a par with Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds (which I adored).
There is masses of laugh-out-loud humour and Christopher Waltz’s character is so charming that it makes for an easy watch. Jamie Foxx takes a while to grown into his part but this may have been deliberate as it builds to a fantastic climax and leaves the viewer feeling exhilarated and satisfied with the turn of events. It is visually gorgeous but without the cinematography distracting from the story development.
I was relieved to find Tarantino does not exploit the potential violence of slavery – to me it seemed he showed just enough to convey the atrocities and injustices but without ever wallowing in it. Even the excessive use of the N-word was not as troubling as I had feared – it just serves to illustrate how commonplace and ludicrous it was in that era.
My only real criticism would be the weakness of the female characters – they were mostly inconsequential, including the mysterious woman tracker with her face covered by a bandanna. I also thought the